When the $19 trillion national debt is thrown in your face one has to always remember that it doesn't bother the "defense intellectuals"...who have no problem adding on the cost of 2500 dud jets at $130 million each [entire F-35 program $1.5 trillion]. For whatever expeditures (social or whatever), technically there is "nothing" there to allocate. Congress has to agree, though, each year how much more red ink will be added. Any "surpluses" (even Clinton's) are/were (lately) only in terms of the target red ink projected for the end of whatever 10 year period--they're only in terms of our NOT having expended the ADDITIONAL red ink allowed up to the end yr of whichever 10 yr period. The trillions in national debt remain. The rationale is that any phenomenon for which funds are allocated will end up injecting into our economy...an asset eventually equal to the appropriation (around 1.2 X the appropriated funds IIRC). The economic facts of life we need to share with the uninformed. http://dollarsandsense.org/.../0509reusskeynespartI.html
Thoughts after the interlude.
When you lose a parent you begin to have regrets. Appreciation not shown at this time or at that time. In my case in some instances it seems I carried this over to valuing mom's possessions over my own. Of course, they still have value, great value. What I feel I can relate now about all this pertains to books. Any gift book from mom I have, since she passed, put on a pedistal. Ones she thought special, same thing. Perhaps I came to lose my own track in terms of discovering things. Work has been ever more challenging, and news on the net pulled me away from spiritual books. It's so much more up to the minute.
There are a number of pathways lit by a numbers of authors mom discovered (as far as our family goes) that are priceless. But after this back injury somehow I found the time to return to one tome both mom and I had an interest in on separate occasions. If I recall correctly, I bought an additional copy when I saw a used version on sale at A.R.E...."The Other Side of Silence" by Morton Kelsey. Actually, I'm not sure if mom had gotten a copy first; and I'm pretty sure I got a used copy.
I went so far with mom & dad's "The Gospel of Ramakrishna" (and other books at A.R.E.) that I finally learned the real meaning of a few Hindu terms. That, though, was a distance [a length of distance] I travelled pretty much by myself. Mom turned me on to the radio show "New Dimensions," and many of their guests were mind expanding [of those many folks I've sort of singled out Taoist psychologist John Heider as having provided ME the advice I was/am most in need of...not everyone needs it so desperately].
Yes, with "The Other Side of Silence" I see I was launched on to another extended journey, most miles of which I travelled on my own. The diagrams Kelsey included were mainly what I thought was so profound in the book [they're pretty heavy], but in the past week I have discovered there is much, much more. I suppose I was on to something...on the path to something after all. My shortcomings I lament, but, even given what they were, I still was on a trek to something I had chosen myself.
One can drive an old familar road four, five, or six times in 18 years, and old memories may not surface REAL vividly but once. Going down Va Beach Blvd the other day to First Colonial, I was slowed down enough from the rat race evidently to fall into a wormhole back to our surf treks on the boulevard before 264 was around. And I only realized how vivid the memory was after I had returned home from the doctor visit! Was the memory all in my head? I don't think so. I think maybe the imprints of our trips are held somehow in the Earth itself. Perhaps this is the "big thing" about pilgrimages.
And I have to mention too mom's 1971 gift to me "A Second Treasury of Kalil Gibran." Don't know if she'd read it much. Though I tried to go through it all at once a few times, I never made it. Maybe it was because I always thought it was supposed to be as upbeat as "The Prophet," and that an opposite note wasn't giving way to something more "lite" as many pages as I'd read. Yeah, but I'm glad to re-discover it, and to continue travelling more miles with its words.
Everyone who agrees here has swallowed the Matrix "blue pill" that embraces off-shored manufacturing and an economy of cube jobs as normal. You've accepted this entire universe as real. Wake up from the hallucination.
I differ with my fellow liberals in that I realize it's not just a matter of, in a Christian manner, "receiving the stranger." I differ with those of you here who think our economy can't handle it. The trouble with the latter stand is that...it doesn't understand what's really happened to our economy. And, yes, that lack of understanding is to me pret'near the main issue. Normally our economy COULD handle it. The GREAT DELUSION that is piped along the way by the deficit hawks, by the whole duopoly (except Sanders' version is less deceptive), and by Trump...is that borrowed allocations are just fine for military interventions all over the place (no matter the amount)...but then weirdly it makes sense for the entire duopoly to be REAL STINGY when it comes to allocating past what-we-have-on-hand for social needs...US vets & homeless for example [we issue bonds and the eventual income from same will cover everything]. WE have to join together to oppose this blatant mob-hypocrisy. And Sanders is the closest thing we have to a spokesperson.
Providing for refugees isn't "only charity" in the real economic world; it's only framed as such in the philosophy of deficit-hawkism. All outlays are conceived to add net value to the overall economy, or recover lost value. The no-money-argument has things COMPLETELY TWISTED around. If you think there won't be enough jobs forever, get informed re America's actual economic potential. http://www.amazon.com/dp/1603580794/?tag=mh0b-20&hvadid=3484994322&hvqmt=e&hvbmt=be&hvdev=c&ref=pd_sl_52u81aa74l_e
When these Orwellian Fox/Trump know-nothings start throwing "$19 TRILION NATIONAL DEBT" in your face, keep this in mind: That sum isn't bothering at all "defense intellectuals" who have no problem adding on the cost of 2400 dud jets at $130 million each [entire projected F-35 program $1.5 trillion]. For whatever expeditures (social or whatever) technically there is "nothing" there to allocate. Congress has to agree, though, each year how much more red ink will be allowed for the ten yrs to follow. Any "surpluses" (even Clinton's) are/were (lately) only in terms of the target red ink projected for the end of whatever 10 year period--they're only in terms of our making-up-for some of the ADDITIONAL red ink allowed up to the end of whichever 10 yr period. The trillions in national debt remain.
The deal is: expenditures for things like vet hospital beef-ups, schools, affordable housing, and mental facilities...yes put us in the red temporarily, but ULTIMATELY REPRESENT A VALUE CREATED (ADDED) TO THE OVERALL US ECONOMY. This goes for absorbing the global anger generated by Bush 43's crazy war in Iraq too. When we alienate the world, folks, it's points for BRICS (trading bloc consisting of Brazil, Russia..etc).
Trust me, the powers that be have NEVER allocated funds for "social" projects they didn't conceive as eventually adding back into the economy a net value equal to 1.3 times the amount allocated.
http://dollarsandsense.org/archives/2009/0509reusskeynespartI.html
Your opinion that the coffers are empty is only a statistic because, like the rest the increasingly noisy witch-hunting crowd across the land, you believe Fox and Viral "Patriot" re who's to blame; and, alas, take the blue pill of blame-bliss. All questions are solved for you because they tell you who to blame...end of any attempt to understand what's going down. Instead of blabbering on about who recognizes reality, why don't you at least tell me where one and a half trillion dollars comes from for a plane that doesn't work one iota better than the A-10 Warthog? You could have at least tried to address one real issue. Every year, Dee, the national debt stays at 19 trillion (and probably much more). So where does the money come from? Better question...where do the profits go? You're a good little indoctrinated puppet, cause you believe those who speak for the corporations...who plow the profits not back into employing projects...but into buying back their company's stock which of course makes the richest 5% richer. The top 1% got 91% of the INCREASED American earnings in 2014, Dee. And yet you say there's no money. The trend is just like it was before the crash of '29. Read some history. Look at the graph (2nd link...doesn't go as far as '14).
http://www.demos.org/publication/higher-wage-possible-walmart-2014-update
http://www.cbpp.org/research/top-1-percent-of-americans-reaped-two-thirds-of-income-gains-in-last-economic-expansion
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/9034-the-f-35-joint-strike-fighter-the-most-expensive-weapon-ever
m. Prescott's blog
I found Michael's blog years ago with dial-up, and somehow lost track of it. For me, it's good to read speculation regarding answers to these questions. It seems possibly to be going in the direction Husserl had envisioned.
Olbab's "old souls" idea is similar to my own conjecturing at times.
If we look at development during "youth" of any creature's life on Earth, it seems it mirrors somewhat (or re-capitulates) the birthing process itself. I used to align somewhat (in moments) with Origen or gnosticism. Lately I've had another idea.
Firstly, I realized that my idea of co-eternal (souls/God) was not really that...that I in fact held on to a notion of souls being <i>created</i>...however many bilions, and billions, and billions of years ago. Secondly, what drives people such as those who read here? A lack of knowledge. The "pleasures of the mind." The fruit from that tree (of the knowledge of good & evil)?
"I have been disabused of any notion that God has a perfect knowledge of the future, or has omnipotence."
In spite of Pascal's infinitely speedy point scanning the 3D universe (analogy), I've found myself doubting in moments that God has omniscience even in regard to Her/His <i>present</i> creative venture...ie this present universe. For, to endow us with freedom, it had to be unfathomably <i>large</i>. Perhaps it is fundamentally <i>our</i> realm, and not His/Her realm. We could imagine the creation of angel beings if we wish. One thing they might have lacked which they desired may have been..."knowledge" regarding their own beginnings and futures. However angels speculated, they may have lacked the particular assistance our brains give the "Higher Self," or angelic-cognitive-state.
We have been instructed to pray. Perhaps this is how God becomes aware of our own particular/unique/local...condition/state/situation.
There was a question here re availability of funds, which can get pretty thorny. I've had time to go into it over the years, so I'll share what I've come across. If Kim's going to cite the national debt deficit, one has to remember that it doesn't bother the "defense intellectuals"...who have no problem adding on the cost of 50 dud jets at $130 million each [entire F-35 program $1.5 trillion]. For whatever expeditures (social or whatever), technically there is "nothing" there to allocate. Congress has to agree, though, each year how much more red ink will be added. Any "surpluses" (even Clinton's) are/were (lately) only in terms of the target red ink projected for the end of whatever 10 year period--they're only in terms of our NOT having expended the ADDITIONAL red ink allowed up to the end yr of whichever 10 yr period. The trillions in national debt remain. The economic facts of life we need to share with the uninformed. http://dollarsandsense.org/archives/2009/0509reusskeynespartI.html
Providing for refugees isn't only charity in the real economic world; it's only framed as such in the philosophy of deficit-hawkism. All outlays are conceived to add net value to the overall economy, or recover lost value. The no-money-argument has things COMPLETELY TWISTED around. If you think there won't be enough jobs forever, then I think you as a Friend should go back to E.F. Schumacher or Inst for Policy Studies (their share the other day) and start examining what alternatives would look like...economy-wise. http://www.dailyyonder.com/speak-your-piece-send-syrian-refugees-to-rural-america/2015/11/23/9910/
The details are not pretty, and sometimes I wonder if there are more important things to read about. I'd like for someone to make things clearer, but most commentators seem to believe strongly readers in general would simply be better off telling their congresspersons to support diplomacy.
Prashad seems right-on regarding almost everything, and I'm grateful for the interview. I end up with questions though. The "false hope" doesn't seem like it could be a hope at all with Russia there. I don't think negotiations will get them to exit...first (to make way for the "hope" (or some US bombing-Assad-campaign)). But if SA and Turkey actually for some reason believe the Russians can be negotiated out first to make way for bombing, then I take Prashad's point.
Also, the thing about fighting mostly being in the "west." What I've read is that many of the Russian strikes have been in the west. Sites I can't corroborate talk about arms coming in to ISIL from the west, even tanks. Is the US hitting this area for the most part as well? Maps available leave out so many obvious bearings and the colors are so poor, one gets the feeling they are being thrown together by the not-knowledgeable based on maps published previously by the not-knowledgeable. Maybe things are intentionally left out so that ISIL itself (or the other "moderates") won't know exactly what's going on at any particular moment? In the map on this page (best I've found yet) the area of "operation free Sinjar," for example, [between Raqqa and Mosul] is shown not so much in the "west" by my take. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-...
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-33952451
But maybe Vijay was refering to "most" of the bombing which is Russian. I've wondered about the Russian tactic, and come up with the idea that they've been trying to cut the west-to-east supply route first [basically the same tactic as Operation Free Sinjar]...knowing that blanket hit or miss bombing of ISIL cities merely kills civilians, and that ISIL military assets in their own territory are too spread out to bomb and make any difference. Or most of the Syrian army advances/battles have also been in the west?
Everyone who agrees here has swallowed the Matrix "blue pill" that embraces off-shored manufacturing and an economy of cube jobs as normal. You've accepted this entire universe as real. Wake up from the hallucination.
I differ with my fellow liberals in that I realize it's not just a matter of, in a Christian manner, "receiving the stranger." I differ with those of you here who think our economy can't handle it. The trouble with the latter stand is that...it doesn't understand what's really happened to our economy. And, yes, that lack of understanding is to me pert'near the main issue. Normally our economy COULD handle it. The GREAT DELUSION that is piped along the way by the deficit hawks, by the whole duopoly (except Sanders' version is less extremely deceptive), and by Trump...is that borrowed allocations [we issue bonds and the eventual income from same will cover everything] are just fine for military interventions all over the place (no matter the amount)..........but then weirdly it makes sense for the entire duopoly to be REAL SINGY when it comes to allocating past what-we-have-on-hand for social needs (US vets & homeless for example). WE have to join together to oppose this crazy disjunction. And Sanders is the closest thing we have to a spokesperson.
Providing for refugees isn't "only charity" in the real economic world; it's only framed as such in the philosophy of deficit-hawkism. All outlays are conceived to add net value to the overall economy, or recover lost value. The no-money-argument has things COMPLETELY TWISTED around. If you think there won't be enough jobs forever, get informed re America's actual economic potential. http://www.amazon.com/dp/1603580794/?tag=mh0b-20&hvadid=3484994322&hvqmt=e&hvbmt=be&hvdev=c&ref=pd_sl_52u81aa74l_e
When these Orwellian Fox/Trump know-nothings start throwing "$19 TRILION NATIONAL DEBT" in your face, keep this in mind: That sum isn't bothering at all "defense intellectuals" who have no problem adding on the cost of 2400 dud jets at $130 million each [entire projected F-35 program $1.5 trillion]. For whatever expeditures (social or whatever) technically there is "nothing" there to allocate. Congress has to agree, though, each year how much more red ink will be allowed for the ten yrs to follow. Any "surpluses" (even Clinton's) are/were (lately) only in terms of the target red ink projected for the end of whatever 10 year period--they're only in terms of our NOT having expended the ADDITIONAL red ink allowed up to the end of successive 10 yr periods. The trillions in national debt remain.
The deal is: expenditures for things like vet hospital beef-ups, schools, affordable housing, and mental facilities...yes put us in the red temporarily, but ULTIMATELY REPRESENT A VALUE CREATED (ADDED) TO THE OVERALL US ECONOMY. This goes for absorbing the global anger generated by Bush 43's crazy war in Iraq too. When we alienate the world, folks, it's points for BRICS (trading bloc consisting of Brazil, Russia..etc).
Trust me, the powers that be have NEVER allocated funds they didn't conceive as eventually adding back into the economy a net value equal to 1.3 times the amount allocated.
http://dollarsandsense.org/archives/2009/0509reusskeynespartI.html
Everyone who agrees here has swallowed the Matrix "red pill" that embraces off-shored manufacturing and an economy of cube jobs as normal. You've accepted this entire universe as real. Wake up from the hallucination.
Everyone who agrees here has swallowed the Matrix "blue pill" that embraces off-shored manufacturing and an economy of cube jobs as normal. You've accepted this entire universe as real. Wake up from the hallucination.
I differ with my fellow liberals in that I realize it's not just a matter of, in a Christian manner, "receiving the stranger." I differ with those of you here who think our economy can't handle it. The trouble with the latter stand is that...it doesn't understand what's really happened to our economy. And, yes, that lack of understanding is to me pert'near the main issue. Normally our economy COULD handle it. The GREAT DELUSION that is piped along the way by the deficit hawks, by the whole duopoly (except Sanders' version is less extremely deceptive), and by Trump...is that borrowed allocations [we issue bonds and the eventual income from same will cover everything] are just fine for military interventions all over the place (no matter the amount)..........but then weirdly it makes sense for the entire duopoly to be REAL STINGY when it comes to allocating past what-we-have-on-hand for social needs (US vets & homeless for example). WE have to join together to oppose this blatant mob-hypocrisy. And Sanders is the closest thing we have to a spokesperson.
Providing for refugees isn't "only charity" in the real economic world; it's only framed as such in the philosophy of deficit-hawkism. All outlays are conceived to add net value to the overall economy, or recover lost value. The no-money-argument has things COMPLETELY TWISTED around. If you think there won't be enough jobs forever, get informed re America's actual economic potential. http://www.amazon.com/dp/1603580794/?tag=mh0b-20&hvadid=3484994322&hvqmt=e&hvbmt=be&hvdev=c&ref=pd_sl_52u81aa74l_e
When these Orwellian Fox/Trump know-nothings start throwing "$19 TRILION NATIONAL DEBT" in your face, keep this in mind: That sum isn't bothering at all "defense intellectuals" who have no problem adding on the cost of 2400 dud jets at $130 million each [entire projected F-35 program $1.5 trillion]. For whatever expeditures (social or whatever) technically there is "nothing" there to allocate. Congress has to agree, though, each year how much more red ink will be allowed for the ten yrs to follow. Any "surpluses" (even Clinton's) are/were (lately) only in terms of the target red ink projected for the end of whatever 10 year period--they're only in terms of our NOT having expended the ADDITIONAL red ink allowed up to the end of successive 10 yr periods. The trillions in national debt remain.
The deal is: expenditures for things like vet hospital beef-ups, schools, affordable housing, and mental facilities...yes put us in the red temporarily, but ULTIMATELY REPRESENT A VALUE CREATED (ADDED) TO THE OVERALL US ECONOMY. This goes for absorbing the global anger generated by Bush 43's crazy war in Iraq too. When we alienate the world, folks, it's points for BRICS (trading bloc consisting of Brazil, Russia..etc).
Trust me, the powers that be have NEVER allocated funds for "social" projects they didn't conceive as eventually adding back into the economy a net value equal to 1.3 times the amount allocated.
http://dollarsandsense.org/archives/2009/0509reusskeynespartI.html
There seems to be an inference that, if we can't follow sparse signs/clues along YOUR obtuse labyrinth, we don't deserve to enter into knowledge of Girard's weaknesses. Sounds pretty gnostic.
Nice try.
!
I replied to Karla Lyman on "Viral Patriot"s page (link to page in first comment).
I couldn't watch Climate Reanalyzer's video due to a videos-on-fb-glitch I've got...just realized: go to the real site! Anyway, this first link gives a scenario for eastern US in ten days (hope it doesn't happen). Second link...source to former with explanation. Third link, some site breaking the taboo and using once again the "split polar vortex" lingo.
http://www.meteorologistjoecioffi.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/gfs300-2.jpg
http://www.meteorologistjoecioffi.com/index.php/2015/12/30/storm-signals-on-gfs-model/
http://robertscribbler.com/2015/12/27/warm-arctic-storm-to-hurl-hurricane-force-winds-at-uk-and-iceland-push-temps-to-72-degrees-f-above-normal-at-north-pole/polar-vortex-ripped-in-half-late-dec-2015/
Is there any info on how sentiments line up in eastern Ukraine by area or by town/country? Things seemed stirred with a stick Kafka style. I get the feeling rural folks might be more prone to donate to "the brothers," but then I wonder if the "donations" are prompted by fear rather than an understanding of the actual struggle.
https://theintercept.com/2015/02/26/midst-war-ukraine-becomes-gateway-europe-jihad/
This Guardian article doesn't even mention "the brothers."
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/15/ukraine-civil-war-fears-mount-volunteer-units-kiev-russia
Get up from your own computer, Dee, and face the real world yourself. Your opinion that the coffers are empty is only a statistic because, like the rest the increasingly noisy witch-hunting crowd across the land, you believe Fox and Viral "Patriot" re who's to blame; and, alas, take the blue pill of blame-bliss. All questions are solved for you because they tell you who to blame...end of any attempt to understand what's going down. Instead of blabbering on about who recognizes reality, why don't you at least tell me where one and a half trillion dollars comes from for a plane that doesn't work one iota better than the A-10 Warthog? You could have at least tried to address one real issue. Every year, Dee, the national debt stays at 19 trillion (and probably much more). So where does the money come from? Better question...where do the profits go? You're a good little indoctrinated puppet, cause you believe those who speak for the corporations...who plow the profits not back into employing projects...but into buying back their company's stock which of course makes the richest 5% richer. The top 1% got 91% of the INCREASED American earnings in 2014, Dee. And yet you say there's no money. The trend is just like it was before the crash of '29. Read some history. Look at the graph (2nd link...doesn't go as far as '14).
http://www.demos.org/publication/higher-wage-possible-walmart-2014-update
http://www.cbpp.org/research/top-1-percent-of-americans-reaped-two-thirds-of-income-gains-in-last-economic-expansion
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/9034-the-f-35-joint-strike-fighter-the-most-expensive-weapon-ever
http://michaelprescott.typepad.com/michael_prescotts_blog/2015/12/gasbags-grab-bag.html
I'll take a guess. The behavior in question is more completely governed by cell activity according to Dawkins, whereas with Girard a counter principle is available from dimensions beyond four...a la Gibran or Rupert Sheldrake?
From these lines directly below (lowermost link) I caught myself wondering what territory east of the Dnieper River near Ukraine looked like. So, I checked it out via Google's "Panoramio" (worth getting familar with folks).
"In the 17th century, the area to the east of the Dnieper River was known as the 'wilderness,' an ungoverned territory that attracted refugees, criminals and peasants — a place beyond the reach of the Russian empire. Today, this part of Ukraine plays a similar role, this time for Muslim brothers. In eastern Ukraine, the green flag of jihad flies over some of the private battalions’ bases."
Right next to busy Ukraine and so close to Moscow...can there still be any "wilderness" about it? If there is, what's its particular draw that makes it "home" for revolutionaries? I like wilderness. But when I go exploring wilderness (internet for too many years) I think I'm looking for something I've seen before. I think perhaps I am challenged and assuming: surely I will see the beauty in wilderness I have seen before no matter who is calling it "alien." If they think it's wilderness I will see something of the unspoiled there. Now, I was raised in "country." It was two miles from what you might call a busy town road. But it was a stretched out town. In truth there were suburbs there before many places in America. They sprang up during WWII as there are all kinds of ports in the area. At the far eastern end of all this there is tourism...the ocean. But there is also a less exotic "vacation spot" nearer to the center of it all on a bay (not that our stretch of ocean was really all that "exotic"). At any rate, back then just two miles from this relatively busy "town" or county road (and all the businesses on both sides of it) there was real country! Lately, the poorer families have come to mind. When it's "real" country I suppose they will be there. I know the look of this too.
When I saw this church I saw something familar. http://www.panoramio.com/photo/6220334
And then that old debate arose in my mind: Did the church's uplift counterbalance its institutionalism and legalism? It's intermittent "structural blindness" as Rohr says. Anyway, something about this photo seemed to convince me that the benefit (maybe not its control of donations) was ultimately a real plus...an actual benefit as a place to worship for...the people.
I don't know how many intelligent protestant and catholic westerners have assumed there were even more guys like Saint Emmanuel the Good (Unamuno) in the east than in Spain. I guess long ago I must have had some thought like this (those yrs when I held that opinion had to have been few, around the time of the Cuban missle crisis). And then at some point a little later, moving on from this thought, I must have wondered if all such buildings over the Earth were vanity and for nothing. But now of course what a building meant to my mother m ns something a hundred times more profound than it did during most of my life. For during the eight years I accepted Darwin (not Shelldrake, didn't know about him then)...as a humanitarian I left this world little compared to what my mother left. And then as a Christian the same has proven true again.
https://theintercept.com/2015/02/26/midst-war-ukraine-becomes-gateway-europe-jihad/
We got too carried away with bells and whistles (Jung, though Jung has his insights). Here's a quote of a Fromm quote...which I am chopping up horrendously. You can find the author at the link.
'...Repression is thus always relational, defined relative to the historical possibility of freedom. What constitutes the repression of the performance principle, when evaluated in light of current states of “material and intellectual” knowledge, can only be seen to be surplus, repression beyond that required to guarantee the individual a ‘good human life’...
...Marcuse’s detachment of concepts from their clinical basis opens them up to an infinite field of potential interpretations, interpretations that need not necessarily be related to Freud’s intentions. It is the lack of concern with the technical aspect of psychoanalysis which renders the modified concepts immune to criticism: the “philosophers” are “‘free’ to make fantastic constructions precisely because they have no empirical knowledge against which to check their speculations” (Fromm, 1970, 27). According to Fromm, Marcuse distorts the concept of repression because of this. Marcuse loses the significance of the concept by transmuting it into a dynamic phenomenon that covers both unconscious and conscious processes. To Freud, repression refers simply to a process by which something is lost or removed from consciousness. Repression, thus understood, cannot be equated with Marcuse’s social definition of repression as oppression or domination. Marcuse “plays on the double meaning of the word ‘repression’, making it appear as if the two meanings were one, and in this process the meaning of repression in the psychoanalytic sense is lost – although a nice formula is found which unifies a political and psychological category by the ambiguity of the word” (Fromm, 1970, 28).'
http://www.psyartjournal.com/article/show/holman-on_the_aesthetic_structure_of_sublimatio
Yes, they seem to be projecting their shadow/anxiety on us the unworthy. But if this causes "projective identification"...will we all be at war with one another?
http://prn.fm/economists-discover-inequality-jack-rasmus/
I recommend reading the article first, but I did this outline. Everything emboldened was emboldened by me. Things in italics indicate my own immediate, less-studied, and non-professional counter opinions.
"Explaining inequality—not just reporting it—requires an analysis of how these various ‘forms of wages’ have been reduced in recent decades and especially since 2009. That deeper analysis leads to explanations of trends of destruction of unions and thus the higher union wage, the growing trend of outright ‘wage theft’ by businesses, the avoidance of paying overtime pay by reclassifying millions of workers as ‘exempt’ instead of hourly paid, the atrophying of the real minimum wage, the wage reduction effects of free trade, the shift to contingent labor, and all the reasons why the total unemployed (in and out of the labor force) are rising steadily and are chronically longer term jobless."
The Three Legs
1. Wage reduction
2. Increased "income" generated by wealthiest households
3. Changes in the tax system
4. Removing (off shoring) large sectors of production, enhancing "profit margins"...removing wage earning opportunities
5. Failure to anticipate appropriate & profitable products
Saez focused mostly on growing inequities of the tax system.
"The tax system changes are but one of a ‘three legged stool’ of income inequality forces at work."
The Three Legs
1. Wage reduction
2. Increased "income" generated by wealthiest households
3. Changes in the tax system
<i>I would emphasize, in addition, two other factors
4. Removing (off shoring) large sectors of production, enhancing profit margins...removing wage earning opportunities
5. Failure to anticipate appropriate & profitable products</i>
Saez focused a little on trends with respect to trends in senior executive pay in business. Such trends, however, "represent more an internal transfer of potential capital income’s rising share from stockholders and bondholders of a corporation to active CEO and senior management" versus focusing on "how the overall share of incomes from Capital in general is rising at the expense of workers’ earned incomes, i.e. wages and salary incomes—and especially the sub-category of hourly wages and weekly earnings for the roughly 110 million production and non-supervisory workers in the U.S."
Rasmus notes Saez and Picketty have elucidated the fact that the top 20 have been doing better continuously through the "half dozen or so" recessions since 1980 while the bottom 80% "working class households are stagnating at best, or actually declining in terms of real wages, real earnings, and real disposable income...getting poorer over the longer term."
2 ways the 20%'s increasing income is generated
1. Manipulation "of global financial assets and speculative financial trading, on the one hand. That is, from returns on capital from global stock & bond trading, foreign exchange speculation, interest, real estate, commodity futures, structured finance and derivatives in myriad proliferating forms, rents, and so forth—to mention just a short list. This is just ‘money making money’ and doesn’t involve..."
2. "...shifting income from workers by reducing their real wages, cutting their health care and retirement benefits, stealing all their productivity gains, and the many other ways their corporations shift income from the working class to themselves."
<i>One thing I would note here is that elements of #1 are always garnering a fraction of members from the bottom 80 who are tempted to do a quantum leap "up" into playing on said field...or to "playing the market"</i>
***You wanna feel in a class by yourself? Try being a fan of Radio Havana Cuba while not being a true blue Marxist. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reproduction_(economics)
</b>Refuting the Happy Recovery Trend Hype.</b> "Government data reporting on ‘wages and compensation’ in general include salaries and benefits for CEOs and senior managers, whose ‘wage’ and salary increases may be significant and thus ‘bias upward’ the total average for wages and benefits in general."
1. "...deferred wages previously paid in the form of workers’ pensions and healthcare contributions that are reclaimed and taken back."
2. future wages "reduced by means of issuance of credit and debt to workers"
3. Social wages reduced in ones "account." "Workers pay into the social security fund in expectation of a claim on that payment when retired. A reduction in social security monthly benefits and/or a rise in co-pays by retirees for Physician or Prescription drug coverage represents a reclaiming of part of the social wage previous paid."
4. Inflation. "US government inflation indices have been ‘smoothed out’ over recent decades by introducing statistical estimation techniques that reduce the volatility of price inflation."
<u>Causes in accelerating corporate profits</u>
1. "...manipulation of financial asset prices by investors, by creating new forms of money and credit, and recycling money capital to create still more money capital where nothing is actually being produced except for money capital."
2. Profits from making goods and providing non-financial services. "Here profits grow by either selling more goods, raising prices of the goods sold, or reducing costs of producing those goods—especially labor costs. Since the June 2009 recession, the data show profits from production quickly escalated to record levels in the US, exceeding the historic high pre-recession 2007 levels. But this profits escalation has not primarily resulted from selling more output or at higher prices. Today’s record pre-tax corporate profits are primarily the outcome of the growth of ‘profit margins’; that is, profits generated from reduction of operating costs, in particular labor costs and therefore by raising productivity and/or reducing wages and compensation."
has petition in comments - advocates no punishment for trafficked sex worker minors
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/06/the-truth-about-the-effort-to-end-sex-trafficking-118600.html#.VYhJfvlVikp
2nd article
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/06/justice-for-victims-of-sex-trafficking-war-on-crime-118512.html#.VYhKJflViko
It seems if we can't find out how the JVTA effects Mexican human traffickers (if at all), then we can't find out how it effects a very big slice of human trafficking germane to the U.S. I heard mention of the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act getting passed in May (see first comment; at the time they called it anti-trafficking legislation); but I heard nothing, nor can I find anything, re if it expanded provisions of the 2008 go ahead to deport child immigrants. Here are things as they stood a year ago...
"One policy change that Republicans are expected to demand (in order to give the Obama administration the $3.7 billion in emergency funding it’s asked for) has actually gotten the support of members of Congress from both parties, and encouraging hints from the White House. That change: updating a 2008 law so that Central American children could be returned to their home countries as quickly as Mexican children are today.
"But a secret UN report obtained by Vox paints a very disturbing picture: the current process is totally failing to protect Mexican children from harm. Children who have reason to fear for their lives, or who are victims of human trafficking, are almost certainly being sent back into danger." Dara Hind (3rd item going down)
The article I'm linking in this comment was followed by a sequel...a full on rebuttal, which I'll link second. There is a petition in the comments of this first one advocating ending "punishment" of trafficked minors...which makes me wonder if such punishment (what?) was addressed at all by the JVTA.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/06/justice-for-victims-of-sex-trafficking-war-on-crime-118512.html#.VYhYYvlVikp
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/06/the-truth-about-the-effort-to-end-sex-trafficking-118600.html#.VYhZZvlVikq
blowback due to domestic policy
"That meant there was no protection for children in danger back home. Worse, it meant that child victims of human trafficking — children who were being taken into the US not by choice, but to be exploited for labor or forced into prostitution— were getting shipped right back to the traffickers to try again." Dana Hindhttp://immigrantsandiego.org/category/central-american-refugees/
Right on. Newsweek says I've accessed five of their articles in the past month (which I don't remember), and they want me to subscribe.
It was after May that I began reading previous anticipations re how anti-trafficking law might be changed (eventually changed in May). But after it was signed I've found no summaries re how it affected deportation turn around time for Central American kids. Does anybody know? Yes, I've found the official government version online, but as of yet have not found the time to wade through it.
2014 "That meant there was no protection for children in danger back home. Worse, it meant that child victims of human trafficking — children who were being taken into the US not by choice, but to be exploited for labor or forced into prostitution— were getting shipped right back to the traffickers to try again." Dana Hind
-----------------------------------------------------
Right on. Newsweek says I've accessed five of their articles in the past month (which I don't remember), and they want me to subscribe.
It was after May that I began reading previous anticipations re how anti-trafficking law might be changed (eventually changed in May). But after it was signed I've found no summaries re how it affected deportation turn around time for Central American kids. Does anybody know? Yes, I've found the official government version online, but as of yet have not found the time to wade through it.
2014 "That meant there was no protection for children in danger back home. Worse, it meant that child victims of human trafficking — children who were being taken into the US not by choice, but to be exploited for labor or forced into prostitution— were getting shipped right back to the traffickers to try again." Dana Hind
prisons
"When CCA made its 2012 offer to 48 states to buy the state prison systems outright, that offer came with one important condition: the state would have to 'guarantee' a 90% occupancy rate." left in Alabama dot com (link below)
"Five Corporations You've Never Heard of Are Making Millions From Mass Incarceration"
Truthout, 1/19/15
http://truth-out.org/news/item/28501-five-corporations-you-ve-never-heard-of-making-millions-from-mass-incarceration
http://www.leftinalabama.com/diary/11152/part-5-private-prisons-sweetheart-contracts-fill-beds-pad-profits
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_criticism
Lasch http://brandon.multics.org/library/Christopher%20Lasch/lasch1994revolt.html
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Social-Critic/116271745049903?sk=wiki
http://clichereality.blogspot.com/2009/01/camus-on-marxism.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boomeritis
http://www.criticalpsychoanalysis.com/gpage5.html
unexplored: "Narcissism, Group Behavior, and Terrorism" http://samvak.tripod.com/12.html
SELF INITIATED
I will begin this leaving out sources documenting poor strategy of entities and agencies. Many of us here already know that story. As we look for the origins of things like "self-inititated contact" (Taibbi, Democracy Now), have we overlooked the possibility that American cities could be doing a full court press in reaction to an <i>increase</i> in violence? Taibbi claims there's been a decrease in violent crime.
keep any of above?
Liberal blinders on this one? At some sites I visit it's said violent crime is down. Matt Taibbi just said this recently, though he admitted it's a "mystery." Actually I don't believe it. Tend to suspect at least drug-related homicides are up on our side of the southern border too. Pockets of upsurge I believe happen all over. Perhaps they cool a couple degrees now and then, say eg, in Chicago. Obviously, the hotspots shift. An idea that came to mind was: Anticipating virtual anarchy in more and more neighborhoods [yeah, when it's claimed the numbers indicate actual shrinkage] could have given rise to the big clampdown.
somewhat old material, but...nevertheless
2010
http://www.politifact.com/texas/statements/2010/dec/31/lamar-smith/us-rep-lamar-smith-says-border-death-toll-28000/
1995 http://drugcrazy.com/chapter1.htm
http://www.thepanamericanpost.com/2012/01/questioning-mexicos-tally-of-drug.html
The intolerance appears to have gone north to MO, but looks like the violence has gone south. My guess is that the rise in violence in the south defines the total tally as...violence is up in general.
Hedges writes about Camden ('A weapon is never more than a few feet away'). And we know from Mike Gray (vividly) what was happening in Chicago as recently as 1995.
http://drugcrazy.com/chapter1.htm
Violence seems to be squeezed into "sacrifice zones," and perhaps only in small pockets within the sacrifice zones. Whatever crime shows they watch on TV, most Americans have NO IDEA what such places are like [save perhaps those who saw The Wire series...I didn't cause I don't pay for cable & don't have time for the DVD(s)]. In such places the third world pockets have has indeed popped up...right here in America...as Richard J. Barnet observed.
June 29, 2015
To me it seems like when you have slavery you have discrimination. And when you have discrimination you have a scapegoat. You mention "sterile." The fact is we'd be hard pressed to count or even imagine the diseases and extinctions brought about by enterprises utilizing trafficked humans (slaves). Aside from the infamous health issues of slaves themselves, in our era we have this additional karma from the institution on our hands. When we designate the value of any group of humans such that slave status can't devalue it any further, then IMO you have a scapegoat class. And the impacts of re-introducing slaves (scapegoats) on so large a scale have ended up so out-of-control that if the Earth's entire human population became sterile-control-freaks over night (including you and me)...our task would still be gargantuan. Kevin Alexander Gray says the whole of America's been "southernized," but the fact is it's the global economy that's been southernized. I'll say it, but the State Dept's not gonna go that far.
http://www.state.gov/j/tip/rls/fs/2014/227667.htm
70 percent of homicides
The "drop in crime" IMO could be a very paradoxical thing. "El Universal has a breakdown of drug-related homicides by state. According to the government data, over 70 percent of homicides are concentrated in just eight states, the majority of them near the US-Mexico border." http://www.thepanamericanpost.com/.../questioning-mexicos...
The intolerance appears to have gone north to MO, but looks like the violence has gone south. My guess is that the rise in violence in the south defines the total tally as...violence is up in general.
Hedges writes about Camden ('A weapon is never more than a few feet away'). And we know from Mike Gray (vividly) what was happening in Chicago as recently as 1995.
http://drugcrazy.com/chapter1.htm
Violence seems to be squeezed into "sacrifice zones," and perhaps only in small pockets within the sacrifice zones. Whatever crime shows they watch on TV, most Americans have NO IDEA what such places are like [save perhaps those who saw The Wire series...I didn't cause I don't pay for cable & don't have time for the DVD(s)]. In such places the third world has indeed popped up...right here in America...as Richard J. Barnet observed.
Taibbi is always cogent and never boring. When you think there's nothing in hard copy worth reading...Taibbi's stuff proves itself worth it.
July 2015
Kudos to Trump? Horse feathers. Trump's stereotyping of Mexicans and Central Americans has convinced you guys he really doesn't want them to keep coming. Anyway, when a candidate can allow such blatantly biased generalizations out of his mouth, you begin to question how many other Republican candidates (or Democrat) really give one hoot'n holler re WHAT happens to immigrants from the south. Possibly you should be telling us he's a mite detached for having nothing to say (either good or bad) re "anti-trafficking legislation" that keeps sending kids back IMMEDIATELY....right back into traffickers' hands. He doesn't care if it is sending them back too fast, or he's glad the revised laws (revised in May) are sending even more child immigrants back?? But I'd wager you don't know if the legislation passed in May is now sending central american kids back as fast as previous policy dictated Mexican kids go back, just as I don't know. MSM hasn't reported squat about it. The difference is you have the mike. It's not an issue to you? It is slavery you know. Fact is Trump will still have the cheap labor (and the border, both sides, will still have the trafficked sex workers) no matter what he bloviates about in his "campaign."
TRUMAN
I made some changes to this 4/4. Remember how it starts? The intro mentions the show has IIRC a billion watchers. So, there were yrs building that audience. I'm talking about the period in which the show went on and on gaining popularity...25 yrs at least! I guess I'm talking in the context of the show itself (a contrivance in a fiction; screenplay Andrew Niccol), not I guess in the context of the movie phenomenon. For many of those years I would assume Christof was viewed by the audience [in the context of the fictionalized story], if they gave a hoot about him at all, as some genius hipster. All those years Truman was the subject of surveillance by masses of people, and didn't even know it. It was totally unethical. I wonder if his father would have tried to tell him when he broke back in on the set (after Christof had removed him, right?). The dude was actually married, and no one had tried to tell him. Of course the audience believed they loved Truman, but it's funny no one loved him enough to get him in on the skinny, until Sylvia (and she ended up only planting seeds of the realization). Boxing comes to mind...Davie Moore, etc. Prince Charles maybe. As a civ we're too wrapped up in celebrities, and not enough in the Source. If the system's off the beam we can imagine what might happen to the demigods. All the childhood years Truman epitomized the zeitgeist [for fans during that period], and Christof was no villain. Doesn't Girard say closeness to perfection is oft times a hall mark (before the crowd turns)? Yes, in this particular tale the audience ended up wanting him free [and I was right in there with'em]; but, thanks to their inaction prior, the odds were he'd return and live out his days in Sea Haven. So, in this era, would that be the nature of the "death" that occurs? A film that would play it closer to what happens quite often, like "The Last of Robin Hood," has Erol Flynn medicating himself to the point where he hasn't provided for the one he loved the most after his death. Flynn made no detour to "basic reality" like Truman. Beverly wasn't so real to Flynn (at least as the movie portrays things) that some such kind of consummate reality strengthened him. She was someone he only plopped into his unreal dream of a life. Flynn's lawyer tried to wake him up to reality, but if he had detoured in that direction the end of Flynn's story might not have included her so much. Wasn't it the Aztecs' victims who were allowed all things they wished for a year prior to their sacrificial death? You mentioned Matrix. I've seen the first, and IIRC at least most of one of the others...if not both sequels. I think the Truman Show is even more successful than The Matrix in elucidating how easily we can accept unreality...how powerful the program of the day to day myth can be. It seems The Truman Show tried to reflect an unreality-program that no one in all of history could have imagined (up until maybe the time of Orwell). Whatever tales with their last minute escapes, few could speak to us more and IMO encourage us more to take some steps out of this weird quicksand. Both screenwriter and director seem to know a lot about the latter's nature.
Rhem 4/4/15
If you wanna worry about ineffective spending, you need to think about your camp's involvement in mishandling 14 trillion buckeroos.
You're focusing on a few trees and ignoring the forest. Think of the principle "synergy" (which Republican asset-strippers love to tout), and think of it as applied to Congressional authorized spending. No one thinks education will solve everything; the economy has to be vitalized as well. All kinds of institutions and industries need help. Actually, it doesn't look like attempts to upgrade other facets of the economy were very well synergized. Which paradoxically was due to conservative acceptance of a gov-as-teat-philosophy on the part of the banks...just as the crash itself resulted from the de-regulating crowd (OK, there are Dems too in that one).
The amount doesn't bother me; where it ended up is what bothers me.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2010/01/real-size-bailout-treasury-fed
That's like saying all Israelis are to blame for last summer because Likud has most seats in the Knesset. The over-arching all powerful neoliberal paradigm here in the U.S. has been wangled into place by mergers, job exportation, insane financial instruments, Citizens United, deficit hawks, voter cross check, and zenophobic shock jocks. All these things have been more buttressed by Republican deficit hawks' propaganda and maneuvers than anything Democrats were up to. Republicans subverted the whole country faster than they could get Democrats out of office.
All Democrat public servants should have been saying exactly what Sanders is saying. Instead they succumbed to this paradigm and basically told their constituents: I'm laboring tirelessly to get you some straw for the brick making!
As things have ended up, there's a symbiotic relationship between the austerity wasteland and the dope shadow economy. The shadow economy's really the power in charge on the Baltimore turf from which many of the serious problems emerge. Neither party's touching that power with a ten foot pole. So far, they're unwilling cause they realize the only way to do so is by way of overhauling the legit economy (or start with focusing on likely suspects rather than everyone).
Listen to Bill Curry at the link I cited, Apr 18's "show." Curry maintains presidential candidates should aim to convince Congress to give the people what it's gov's job to deliver. We the people have to contact both. Are local politicians excluded? Why should they be? Look, here in VA our state delegates presumably want Congress to nix ACA. They say, no, we won't have expanded Medicaid here. This time round we have to know what we want. Affirmative action might be fine in some quarters, but over all it's not gonna do it. All of us have to stop believing we shouldn't expect anything except flip'n burgers, customer service, and/or making enemies for the US abroad (and at a lousy wage). We've been too accustomed to this. We have to look at the other possibilities: a well paid nurse, a well paid psychologist, a well paid solar installer. Shoot...a well paid agricultural worker! We've gotta see the whole picture and know our alternatives. We need a little faith when we do our research. Descriptions of the system are out there! I've tried to summarize some things in my posts below as well (if your reading newest-at-top-format).
I'm just trying to remember how many crashed investment firms there were by the time Obama's bailout was passed (versus at the time of Bush's stimulus). The housing bubble had peaked in '06. Freddie & Fanny were in conservatorship by Sept '08. Anyway, ever since FDR gov has realized it had to intervene with spending. Bush attempted to too, 152 billion dollars worth in Feb '08. Hmm, what had gone wrong?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_Stimulus_Act_of_2008
Anyway, there was the '08 stimulus, Freddie, Fannie, Maiden Lane, and TARP...all under Bush. The "Talk" page at Wikipedia on TARP is interesting. Supposedly as investments they paid off yielding no net cost...but how many foreclosed on got a mortgage again? Weren't they paid off during the time the '09 bailout funds were being dispersed?
Bernanke was a Bush man. Democrat-in-name-only-Summers was instrumental in knocking out provisions of Glass-Steagall and in de-regulating derivatives. Why did Obama appoint these dudes? I never got that far into it.
Was Kuttner right or what?
<blockquote>"Owners of bank stocks are not really relevant. They have already lost upwards of 95 percent of their investments. When a bank is taken into receivership, they will lose the rest. But it's no big deal for the system. Trying to use public money to pump up the value of bank stocks -- Geithner's approach -- has it backwards.
"Finally, when the banks are restored to solvency, they need to be returned to private ownership.
"Hoenig is not exactly a Bolshevik, but he is embracing Roosevelt and the President's men are not. A well-staffed government corporation, which would take insolvent banks into receivership, is the most effective approach because it gets the job done swiftly and transparently, and with the least unnecessary government subsidy of market middlemen." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-kuttner/lifting-the-tarp-will-pre_b_175149.html? <blockquote>
see talk page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Troubled_Asset_Relief_Program
Non-neoliberals touting themselves as "progressives" have for too long been struggling to believe rosy figures regarding the economy. Doublethink pure and simple. Though we have made some strides in dealing with racism, the more determinative marginalizer of humans has not really been dealt with in a radical way since FDR.
<blockquote>"What happened next was astounding -- by the standards of 1933 and, for that matter, of 2010. Indeed, Hopkins' initiative and ambition should be a model for our response to today's Great Recession. Hopkins' program, the Civil Works Administration (CWA), began operating on Nov. 9. He summoned governors and mayors to meet with him in Washington on Nov. 15 and submit proposals to put people to work. As the proposals came in, he approved them: 122 on Nov. 20, 109 on Nov. 21. By Nov. 26, he had approved 920 projects for Indiana alone, and 48,500 Indianans were already on the job, on the CWA's payroll, by that day.
"'Ickes was concerned about the return on the taxpayers' investment,' Robert Sherwood writes in his 1948 biography Roosevelt and Hopkins. 'Hopkins did not give a damn about the return; his approach was that of a social worker who was interested only in getting relief to the miserable and getting it there quickly.'
"By Christmas, the CWA was employing 2.6 million Americans. A few weeks later, Congress appropriated an additional $950 million, funding the expansion of the program to encompass a total of 4,264,000 workers. Thirteen million Americans had been unemployed at the start of November; by early February, that figure had dropped to 9 million."
https://prospect.org/article/work-history-0
"A libertarian case for expanding Medicaid"
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/05/a-libertarian-case-for-expanding-medicaid.html
http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/01/02/scare-tactics-michel-houellebecq-on-his-new-book/
HISTORY
Do I have it right...between the Romans' exodous (5th century) and William's entrance the Saxons' Gemeinschaft(s) were pretty fair? Misplaced my copy of “What would Jefferson do?" Anyway, Jefferson based his knowledge of this in large part on Paul de Rapin-Thoyras' history. This is as close as I could get.
http://www.thomhartmann.com/blog/2012/01/transcript-thom-hartmann-scott-keyes-electing-president-popular-vote-threat-our-country
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vedic_period
"The Indo-Aryans were a branch of the Indo-Iranians, which originated in the Andronovo culture[10] in the Bactria-Margiana era, in present northern Afganistan.[11] The roots of this culture go back further to the Sintashta culture, with funeral sacrifices which show close parallels to the sacrificial funeral rites of the Rig Veda.[12] The Indo-Aryans split-off around 1800-1600 BCE from the Iranians,[13] where-after they were defeated and split into two groups by the Iranians,[14] who dominated the Central Eurasian steppe zone[15] and "chased them to the extermities of Central Eurasia."[15] One group were the Indo-Aryans who founded the Mitanni kingdom in northern Syria[11] (ca.1500-1300 BCE). The other group were the Vedic people, who were pursued by the Iranians "across the Near East to the Levant (the lands of the eastern Mediterranean littoral), across Iran into India."[16]"
scroll down for map of migrations
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romani_people
Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex, 2300–1700 BCE, centered on the upper Amu Darya (Oxus River). Its sites were discovered and named by the Soviet archaeologist Viktor Sarianidi (1976). Bactria was the Greek name for the area of Bactra (modern Balkh), in what is now northern Afghanistan, and Margiana was the Greek name for the Persian satrapy of Margu, the capital of which was Merv, in modern-day southeastern Turkmenistan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMAC
PRE-HISTORY
If they were "megalithic," these purportedly "big" underwater structures would move the dates back for earliest antecedents of Mayan civ [architecture in the photo] in an astounding fashion! If the usage of "megalithic" in your article [or John's, I forget] goes beyond neolithic & includes mesolithic....then let's say a minimal move-back-date would be something like 10,000 BCE...8k yrs beyond the earliest "beginnings" recognized as 2000 BCE (remarkably early already). Yeah, I should have said "Mayan," not "Aztec" up there [so I changed it]. And...if they are claiming "before the last ice age"...it would of course imply even earlier...12K yrs earlier than what's been recognized (using a conservative guesstimate of say 1000 yrs prior to the most recent conjectured end of the most recent ice age which was 13K yrs back...a guestimate which does not even put these beginnings prior to the ENTIRE duration of said ice age).
"The construction of these structures took place mainly in the Neolithic (though earlier Mesolithic examples are known) and continued into the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age."http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megalithic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesolithic
"During the most recent North American glaciation, during the latter part of the Wisconsin Stage (26,000 to 13,300 years ago), sheets extended to about 45 degrees north latitude. These sheets were 3 to 4 km thick." Wikipedia
"The construction of these structures took place mainly in the Neolithic (though earlier Mesolithic examples are known) and continued into the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age."http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megalithic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesolithic
"During the most recent North American glaciation, during the latter part of the Wisconsin Stage (26,000 to 13,300 years ago), sheets extended to about 45 degrees north latitude. These sheets were 3 to 4 km thick." Wikipedia
not a disappearnce issue: Benjamin Tribbett
posts
"The calm sea is the Absolute; the same sea in waves is Divine Mother. She is time, space, and causation. God is Mother and has two natures, the conditioned and the unconditioned. As the former, She is God, nature, and soul (humanity). As the latter, She is unknown and unknowable. Out of the Unconditioned came the trinity god, nature, and soul, the triangle of existence...
A bit of Mother, a drop, was Krishna, another was Buddha, another was Christ. The worship of even one spark of Mother in our earthly mother leads to greatness. Worship Her if you want love and wisdom." — Swami Vivekananda, Inspired Talks, July, 1895
A bit of Mother, a drop, was Krishna, another was Buddha, another was Christ. The worship of even one spark of Mother in our earthly mother leads to greatness. Worship Her if you want love and wisdom." — Swami Vivekananda, Inspired Talks, July, 1895
This I accept, save for two differences. What I believe is that both natures are unconditioned...being natures of One Spirit. I also believe that there is something knowable about the Absolute, and that whatever it is we souls are given to know about the Absolute at any given moment...it will always be limited but will also always be sufficient.
mentally ill scapegoated re gun control, truthout/buzz
PREHISTORY
GUN DEBATE
"Mexican officials and analysts have long said that the U.S. should curb the consumption of drugs within its own borders, and the flow of high caliber guns from the U.S. to the traffickers in Mexico. Plan Mexico would do neither of these things. Instead, it would simply give military equipment to the very Mexican forces that have so long been implicated in drug trafficking and human rights violations without first addressing the U.S.’s active role in drug violence by providing the market place for the drugs and the guns."
http://www.globalexchange.org/news/plan-mexico-and-peru-nafta-expansion-guns-and-money
"Though denigrated by much of the national news media, Webb’s Contra/cocaine series prompted internal investigations by the Central Intelligence Agency and the Justice Department, probes that confirmed that scores of Contra units and Contra-connected individuals were implicated in the drug trade."
from "America's Debt to Gary Webb: Punished for reporting the truth while those who covered it up thrived" By Robert Parry 3/1/05
http://fair.org/extra-online-articles/americas-debt-to-gary-webb/
For some reason Oliver North's "neat idea" concept is coming to mind.
"Mexican officials and analysts have long said that the U.S. should curb the consumption of drugs within its own borders, and the flow of high caliber guns from the U.S. to the traffickers in Mexico. Plan Mexico would do neither of these things. Instead, it would simply give military equipment to the very Mexican forces that have so long been implicated in drug trafficking and human rights violations without first addressing the U.S.’s active role in drug violence by providing the market place for the drugs and the guns."
http://www.globalexchange.org/news/plan-mexico-and-peru-nafta-expansion-guns-and-money
"Project Gunrunner is also part of the Department of Justice’s broader Southwest Border Initiative, which seeks to reduce cross-border drug and firearms trafficking and the high level of violence associated with these activities on both sides of the border."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Gunrunner
So the DOJ initiated this due to an ideological predisposition against guns, gun manufacturers, and the NRA? Or are you gonna tell me they were aiming to arm the Sinola cartel? There were IMO such ops by North et al in the 80s, but whole agencies I don't think were, through and through, 100% copisetic (maybe one was close at a particular point in time). The "Enterprise" was rogue. The precedent was real [though comparatively I suppose more indirect], so I'll give a link.
"Though denigrated by much of the national news media, Webb’s Contra/cocaine series prompted internal investigations by the Central Intelligence Agency and the Justice Department, probes that confirmed that scores of Contra units and Contra-connected individuals were implicated in the drug trade."
from "America's Debt to Gary Webb: Punished for reporting the truth while those who covered it up thrived" By Robert Parry 3/1/05
http://fair.org/extra-online-articles/americas-debt-to-gary-webb/
By the time of the sting ops the whole impetus wasn't IMO some clandestine design to support Contra equivalents; it was <i>intended</i> to draw down the arms trafficking. True, it does seem our gov in general didn't realize to what extent the Mexican authorities it armed were tied in with narcotics elements. But apart from any arms siphoned from Fast & Furious, there were obviously separate trafficking outfits. Again, by the time in question [Project Gunrunner] violence on both sides of the border was a REAL concern vs the Sandinista windmills. All anyone reading here has to do to find out <i>why</i> it was a concern is watch that segment from TRNN I linked above.
BTW, anyone just beginning to read comments here can find a number of alternate takes below on psycopathy in the land actually being an element germane to recent shootings.
http://www.juancole.com/2014/05/conservatives-likely-sociopaths.html
http://www.halcyon.com/jmashmun/npd/traits.html
thunder storm cloud Rio Negro
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/67086821
nba on ferguson moyers page
The great blind spot is economics. Everyone's tried to defend Obama's approach, and I can understand the feelings behind such attempts. Paul Ryan's program would wind us up in the third world status ash can in no time flat. Ever since Reagan the press has had to do this: Look at how Clinton paid down the debt! Yeah, but look at what he did to welfare and food stamps.
Fact is we are exporting nothing but war tech, raw materials, and refined raw materials (fracked oil)...AND the Wall Street hegemony has to pretend that the greatest economy on Earth is still bringing in enough dough to justify INCREASING their salaries. And to make their pretend world come to life, they have to bring in mo money from somewhere. And, to bring in mo money, they're taking it from the folks on the bottom. Canabalism? Call it what you like.
How will we teach economics to our fellow and sister Americans and the talking heads? I'd recommend begin reading or listening to: Mark Weisbrot, Michael-Hudson dot com, and Robert Kuttner (American Prospect).
If you talk to people about a "full employment economy," you know what they're thinking: at least start with affirmative action. But affirmative action won't do it; just promotes brain drain. If you put folks ahead in a decrepit system they're just getting more money for a "better" spot in...a decrepit system. Have mercy, if it was only that simple.
I'm at least a couple novels behind, so John might have caught up. But, right around the time I began needing to work more and read less, in one way I sort of regretted he hadn't gotten more into the cyber realm (a wee bit by the time of Constant Gardner, but that's when I had to let up). It's the logic, Grove, and who could help better than le Carre readers? It's the technique (or logic) of impersonating in the cyber world, IOW posing on the net. So here we are communicating on the net about modern subterfuge as mirrored in a very great writer's novels, but are we interested in the phenomena of impersonating itself? You tell me. If you're stealing you come across as a mere key or code. If you're trying to influence humans, though, via the cyber world...then the example I think of is "Mary Murphy"/Novartis (Bt corn pollen/contamination issue; Google with "Monbiot" if necessary). What I'm thinking of is not an exact instance of the latter kind of impersonating.
OK, I have assumed that Disqus is pretty apolitical for some time. Something's happened in the past two days, though, that's caused me to hypothesize that partisan elements could be staging comments in order to associate an ideology (of said comments) with folks prone to read [have interest in, endorse] an article. Part two of my hypothesis is that the stagers (whoever they are) are able to block posts that credibly deconstruct the ideology filling up the space under whatever article. If it's deconstructed, fewer will pile on (for the initial staged comments represent little of the labor invested). The actual article that gave rise to my theory here was followed by a slew of truthers arguing their minutiae...not really germane to the subject. In my hypothesis this would taint the impression a newcomer might get of the kind of readers interested in the actual POV of the article's author. It would seem it could be just as likely that the hacker or hackers might NOT be those commenting but simply parties waiting for an opportunity to meddle. In all of this above I am not taking for granted that trutherism can be "easily" discounted. According to my perception, however, THERE ARE substantive objections that can be raised.
When it comes to censorship and the net you'd think neocons would try to block hard economic data and the over-zealous libs would be obstructing Obama critics. As perhaps no one wishes to give themselves away though, what actually happens may be more inscrutable.
What I am addressing here is simply altering (slanting) a dialogue that should have happened. Not as much on the subj as I would have hoped, but on this page for instance I'm thinking the truth may lie somewhere between Dark714's statement and AK's response. http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/01/are-comments-being-censored.html
mentioned "blueprint." It's occurred to me lately that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is deeply archetypal. Whatever faith or school of enlightment
mentioned "blueprint." It's occurred to me lately that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is deeply archetypal. Whatever faith or school of enlightment, you have those who come to emphasize the written record of the beginnings. Actually in that sense the written record of the revelation or the covenant can become more finite than the associated traditions. When the finite, or legalistic, aspects become paramount...I wonder if there's any hope for the traditions at all. There's history, which one can study; or one can put ones focus on political philosophers, and develop ones entire notion of viable politics from Plato or Locke or Ayn Rand or whomever (ignoring the history and going this route to me means legalism...making a god of some blueprint). The "rules" of whatever institution...gov, church, education...are conceived by those who've learned them as a hard weight to bear...that is the learning they conceive as arduous. And then there is a trend of knowing a certain sphere of the rules, and believing the whole institution rests on the given sphere. But as time goes on with democracy there should develop a means to recognize, on the part of everyone, that there are arduous chores in other sectors besides the knowledge sectors (the rule-knowing-sectors). Other than the John Galt sectors. The rules don't tell us everything. Plato's Republic doesn't tell us everything. Sometimes we need to "wait" for the knowledge of what the right thing to do is.
comment
The underpaid and outsourced in America could try something like this (in his state Walker calls folks partially aiming for it "terrorists"). It might have happened somewhat if The Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 and The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 had managed to pull off what they were designed to do [Have mercy, what happened to all that??]. But then you have the question regarding: What's the economy gonna <i>do</i> afterwards...what kind of policy is gonna create what kinds of jobs? If it focused on "fixing" infrastructure, that alone would be equivalent to a whole'nother FDR type New Deal. If it focused on solar tech manufacturing and deployment, that alone would be equivalent to a whole'nother FDR type New Deal. If it focused on human needs [retiring boomers, vets, rehab for the incarcerated, rehab for addicts, healthcare in general]...again, that alone would be equivalent to a whole'nother FDR type New Deal. If it focused on bringing our thus-far-warehoused-student-populations up to speed, that would be equivalent I'd guess to about a tenth of an FDR type New Deal. These projects would require <i>massive</i> funding as any one of'em by itself wouldn't make sense without the others. With a truly pragmatic approach there'd be little left for subsidizing the financial instruments "industry." Possibly gov could designate some kind of new concept bond...like maybe "Real Recovery Bonds" or something. But Americans would have to <i>know</i> that the money was going <i>straight and immediately to <b>all</b> of the above</i> without suspicion of any siphoning-off. You'd need a bureaucracy with a work ethic, which would in turn require a thorough society-wide hashing-out of some issues.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_and_Economic_Recovery_Act_of_2008
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Recovery_and_Reinvestment_Act_of_2009
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=13320
I don't think it's talking to me, cause I believe I'm on the weak end of the smug spectrum. And I believe there are many Alternet readers similar. On prison the article's correct, cause we aren't working hard enough to reform that part of the system. Omission of acting is a form of acting. But not one of these points deals with economic discrimination...discrimination encompassing determinants beside race. This is a bigger phenomenon than prison, though Homan (in Chicago) demonstrates they could be equal in terms of net gross injustice. I'll bracket out college for the moment, cause the meritocratic-austerity economy isn't providing paying jobs for degree earners anyway. Might that have anything to do with a problem not derived from race issues?
Rehab'd prisoners face a HUGE hurdle re employment. But the meritocratic-austerity economy will scapegoat folks other than blacks and ex-cons. And likely the set of all "smug" Americans would join right in in scapegoat'n every single one of'em. Our role models have become too trivial due to media, and too few in number. Everyone's emulating just a little corral of personalities. And the slightest deviation gets you scapegoated. I don't think it's a big mix. I think there are sort of minimalist attitudes spanning the great so-called pluralistic variety. One has to adopt them. Speak out, yeah (like here), but don't stretch anyone's brain with any real stabs at analysis. Share a Chomsky interview and how many likes do you get? One must pledge allegiance to hopelessness and to there-is-no-answer. We set aside the scapegoat because in our insane scramble for too few jobs any weakness or any non-conformity is twice as dangerous as it was before. It's like leprosy.
Keep believing race is the only basis of scapegoating, keep ignoring the 43 students out and out disappeared cause they opposed more drilling leases in Mexico, keep ignoring economics, and one day when BRICS has made a Greece of us...the writer of the title will be say'n whaaaaa...?
Great southern hemisphere photo. Does the Milky Way arc more "down" there? I never noticed such a curve here in the northern hemisphere. Do they have the center cross exactly where it needs to be? If so, it's so far away that it pales before groups more local! From what you write I'm presuming in the southern hemisphere you can see the "dense bulge," or see a general greater brightness in Sagitarius? I have big, big doubts I'll be able to handle the cold Chilean waves by the time I can plan/manage such a trip!
The solar and lunar path tradition (related in the Gospel of Ramakrishna somewhere) correspond to me to reincarnating again (lunar), or going with the Ground Luminosity (solar); though reincarnations aren't always like heavens [I know Ramana Marharshi said we don't even know if we reincarnate at all].
"Another related belief was that the Milky Way was the pathway traveled by the spirits of the dead, with its countless stars representing the souls of the dead."
I meant the soul of our sun, and the soul of each star. If the sun were one's body, it would be a big responsibility. If you were in closer communion with the Great Spirit, then it might be different than I'd imagine...I imagine it lonely.
The traditions seem to be wrong re the Milky Way was linear. Maybe you could spiral in toward the center, or live sojourns closer and closer to the center. What you're theorizing about gets more plausible with the Quiche tradition, as they point to what we know is the center. But suppose the dead go through the big wormhole there [if such a thing exists]; you'd also need one to get there (without a black hole). Possibly in the center one "strong" enough could be created to place you anywhere propitious for your next sojourn. To me that seems un-ecological (just as to me a multiverse seems un-ecological). Why go all that distance? Maybe you go there when you get off the wheel, but a principle like souls-nearer-the-center-are-more-enlightened seems too anthropomorphic, or too alchemical...or too something!
The Great Attractor and galaxy clusters in general make me wonder, while some galaxies are indeed moving away from each other, if before things get too spread out all galaxies will be attracted to some group...and eventually end up in black holes.
There's a depiction here with galaxies moving away from us (red) and galaxies getting closer (blue). All of them mysteriously in the same vicinity...granted a huge "vicinity," and the closest vicinity!
http://www.vox.com/.../map-galaxy-supercluster-laniakea...
Dave: The Milky Way arches straight above our heads during the winter months in the southern hemisphere i.e. June-July. The Galactic Center remains hidden behind dense clouds of interstellar dust. However, the milky way band is much brighter in general, and many more stars can be seen.
Regarding the solar and lunar paths, the Hindu tradition says that the six months of increasing sunlight leads a soul to the heaven of the gods, while the six months of decreasing sunlight leads a soul to the land of the ancestors. So, there was a natural desire in the ancient times to die during the six months of increasing sunlight.
I would think that self-realized souls, which are manifested as the suns, are given greater responsibility to maintain cosmic harmony, and they are perfectly adapted to handle such responsibilities. I wouldn't think they would feel lonely at all, just happy to radiate their uncondition love and light across the universe.
The journey of the soul across the galaxy or across the universe may very well take place aong the long filamentary structures which make up the cosmic web of the universe. Our galaxy too has many of these gaseous filaments extending from the galactic center. I would suspect that the black hole is a point of entry into the spiritual realms. It serves a checkpoint, where ceratin souls are accepted or rejected, and as a sort of "interstate highway" through which everyone must pass in order to reach the alternate realms.
I might get myself unliked, but I can't help but say something about two things. One, high tech prior to 4000 BC. Two, that Rupert Sheldrake has not gone too far, though the distance he's gone, in terms of the forward movement of discovery in our time, makes him a relative Galileo.
Artifacts in "limestone": limestone dust in mines solidifies relatively quick if you add moisture.
Artifacts and "walls" in coal: I'd have to discover these myself!
Cayce's daemon (not a "bad" designation): Read the readings. The voice (source) was adrift. There's an idea in my head that's a radical notion: the collective unconscious spans experiences on other planets...and that in IT are contained the "Akashic Records." When I think of the collective in this sense, it seems to open up a dimension, or dimensions, akin to Sheldrake's "morphic fields." So, if it spans experiences of other humans on other planets, could it be Atlantis happened somewhere else...perhaps many times (look at England's rise & fall)? My thinking lately, Bibhu, is that you are right about Egyptians having reached South America. The "sinking" I have conjectured might have been propaganda to keep others from attempting the voyage. Expeditions wax and wane with the viscissitudes of changing politics and regimes.
Or it could be that frequently occurring paradigms...like powerful island kingdoms heavy into trade (exemplified by England & perhaps Cyprus)...actually come to shape myth in general...IOW "archetypal" paradigms shape myths about geographically specific sagas, which are then accepted as having been real. So, where do archetypes come from...from specifics having occurred light yrs away from us...over and over?
Suppose you feel strongly that gay marriage is wrong. Suppose you feel strongly that abortion is wrong. Should you involve yourself in campaigns to irradicate them? What if there are things more wrong? What if focusing on the "more wrong" things would benefit more people (saving more lives eg), and what if there was a greater probability that more folks would join campaigns that benefited more people? So that you were contributing to a movement with some potential of momentum, versus a stalemated issue. And what if you discover that many individuals were in a position to benefit much more directly via the former...as a direct consequence of whatever limited contributions you could make to such a former, in terms of time and money, than say to campaigns you had previously felt were of utmost importance?
The above predicaments seem to me to sort of define a triage situation. If one overestimates the impacts of ones contributions to standard issues and causes of ones particular political or religious group, then there is no delimma in terms of thinking out who stands to gain most from ones contributions. Ones inflated sense of how much good one is doing obviates all such thinking. But imagine that you're walking to the subway on your way home from work, and have in mind working on some anti-abortion flyers once you get there. Along the way, though, you notice right in front of you someone lying on the sidewalk having been mugged and bleeding. So what's more important, the flyers or the person on the sidewalk? It's easy to imagine such delimmas for Libertarians, especially the ones verging on anarchist leanings. Such a person wants the most minimal government possible but 1)is confronted with a situation where private healthcare is forcing folks into bankruptcy left and right, and 2)a situation where a large government apparatus exercises some small controls on the greed of HMOs. So what position does such a libertarian take? Of course, there are his/her theoretical principles that big goverment is bad; but there is as well <i>the reality of the moment</i> wherein government policy is the only tool around to circumvent the particular era's privatized nightmare and deliver some healthcare to many, many people. So, in some cases for some Libertarians, the theoretical principles have to be put aside (ignored for as long as other concerns dictate), and there is an opting for focus on the greatest good for the greatest number.
What's an education for? It's to assess generalities. It's to look at people's lives as demographic entities, and form some cause and effect idea of how such groups influence one another [granted, sort of a mechanical picture...always ending up it seems too mechanical]. We're deluged with the word-pictures of scholars...especially the "scholars" of neoliberalism (which, as you probably know, does not = liberal). OTOH, the upshot of what we've researched and attempted to speak has few or no credentials behind it. We didn't derive what we think about governance and policing from a specialty field germane...cause we didn't have either the money or the faith to go on after that PhD in political science or sociology. We have to go through all this stuff, and then speak our solutions without the weighty credentials backing us up. And we have to come up with something more solid than they have while we're trying to eek out survival IN THE MIDST of a neoliberal economy! All my life, though, I have believed this is possible.
That Counterpunch link I put in up there describes a situation that will render our already bad economy unfathomably worse...which means the inequality'll be worse, and there'll mysteriously be little recognition of the outcry in whatever demonstrations. If I were to, say as a "scholar," look at lives in the U.S. as demographic entities honestly...I'd have to admit that racism has been countered significantly. True, as many would reply...these are just numbers, and there are still these young Afro-Americans getting killed for WHAT??? And I would reply...it's over generalizing NOT to look at some progress we've made...this my friend was the hallmark of "meritocracy."
But meritocracy was the problem. Forget all this lip service to "Christian-nation"; the pro meritocracy folks really believed all the standards to observe (and, observing, to succeed) were completely in place here in the brass tacks world apart from any spiritual dimension [Colin Powell, Barak Obama, etc--proof].
More appealing than reading that Counterpunch thing perhaps would be listening to its author talk. If you do it, Townsend, tell me what you think. I'd like to know how just one rap defender reacts to a true picture of the real forces that are ultimately bring'n down the violence. Here's Hudson talking http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content...
Sure, there's rap I can't help but "move" to.
More relevant stuff...
"BILL MOYERS: You say that casino capitalist, zombie politics views competition as a form of social combat, celebrates war as an extension of politics and legitimates a ruthless social Darwinism.
HENRY GIROUX: Oh, I mean, it is truly ruthless. I mean, imagine yourself on a reality TV program called “The Survivor”, you and I, we're all that's left. The ideology that drives that program is only one of us is going to win. I don't have any respect for you. I mean, all I'm trying to do is beat you. I just want to be the one that's left. I want to win the big prize." http://billmoyers.com/.../henry-giroux-on-zombie-politics/
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/27832-state-terrorism-and-racist-violence-in-the-age-of-disposability-from-emmett-till-to-eric-garner
It's a great experience to read what's new from Giroux wherever and whenever. It could be, though, that I am reading him incorrectly (or incompletely) and am seeing something I differ with him on...which however might be something, ribeekah, which jives with what you have written.
It seems I may differ with Giroux on the relative importance of "symbolic violence" [mentioned in essay linked at end of this para]. Yes, the disinformation machine may crush remembering, agency, ethics, and collective resistance. But to me it seems there's a violence in envy. The envy is in regard to relative success at imitating "social" idols. The envy is with respect to significance and "being" (media idols or political idols having more being). It's not just something the state or corporations perpetrate; to me it's a violence we average folks participate in as well. This is evident on Black Fridays when folks entangle to acquire <i>what they believe the idols or model-people desire.</i> As René Girard says, they want to desire what the imitated desire. This, ribeekah, I think is especially the case in regard to "smart" technology...computers, iPads, MP3 tech, and phones. These items don't just access sales wherever. They access information and positions on scandals...significance [and 'celebrated analysts' of course]. But in as much as the items that channel such are extremely limited in nature (cyber stuff), there does seem to be that intense conformity crescendoing...something [if, say, I'm right in seeing it in this instance] which Girard points out occurs in either a war of all against all, or prior & right up to the sacrificing of a scapegoat (to me it seems we have both at once going on; we sacrifice the demographics Giroux mentions and whole neighborhoods).
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/11/24/neoliberal-violence-in-the-age-of-orwellian-nightmares/
You are probably right regarding too much dwelling on 'celebrity analysts,' or at least on the watered down ones (for example, Edward S. Herman commenting on Krugman). Giroux is interviewed by Moyers, but that doesn't make him a celebrity. He's not interviewed enough elsewhere to make him such [actually Moyers isn't quoted enough in MSM to make him a celebrity]. Some of us are gonna continue reading mildly-celebrated-analysts because we can't <i>afford</i> to be at the demonstrations. Maybe it's because, due to working our butts off, we can't afford to eliminate the rest time or down time. It's also hard work to find the analysts that motivate one, and to stick with'em. Almost as hard as returning to "a job" once the teach-outs or teach-ins have achieved whatever specific goal...if one keeps searching both diligently and with enough moderation that is. Keep'n the keel even is what's hard. Maybe there are scads of workers who, perhaps like the striking nurses in CA eg, suspect something that would blow the minds of three quarters of the activist-theorists out there...that if we doubled our investment in the "social safety net"...or cut the size of the gaps in half...still, due to no-empathy-in-the-land-solidarity, there may not be enough caring and seasoned workers around to utilize the bucks. But you are right IMO that ultimately we will have to engage with fellow or sister activists face to face...to get anything accomplished. More about Arab Spring type media
let-downs below.
I have jumped in here, but I would definitely like to thank <b>James Estrada-Scaminaci III</b> for his input, 12 hrs ago at this point.
"The drug war has cemented new relationships between the state and shadow powers, with complex alliances between security forces, a greater number of criminal groups and economic interests." This Laura Carlsen says is true of Mexico, and I believe it. http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/12/04/mexicos-youth-under-siege/
It is funny how all this firepower isn't being deployed in confrontations with those possessing similar. This was ultimately the big excuse for the upgrade (militarizing, this and the onset of some blowback back in 2001)...the great War on Drugs. But it looks as though the means (the war) has become the end <i>here in this country as well.</i> To me it seems our society has adopted a number of intersecting and mutually symbiotic rituals. Huge rituals. As I wrote last night in another place...yes, the word "inertia" does indeed come to mind. The system brings in prisoner bucks for Prisons Inc. With no legalization, it benefits the cartels. It stifles the voice of minorities. It stimulates manufacture of war paraphrenalia. It steals property and turns it over to corporations. A whole lot of positive feedback loops dependent on one another. It's an inertia of pawns moving in loops. A crazy version of something like the Krebbs Cycle.
<i>Concepts</i> have an influence on actions. And concepts accrue in collages. For any individual they don't deliver omniscience. The Dems were as stupid as hell right up to the day of the midterms, and yet apparently some were influential in opposing the craziness, for instance, we're attempting to perpetrate down in Venezuela; possibly there was decisive opposition from the prez himself. So, human leaders act imperfectly according to imperfect concepts.
One of the biggest nightmares in starting over [James wrote that it's time to do so] is that that perfect four years as an undergrad where you're supposed to <i>get</i> your concepts...isn't gonna come. And <i>when</i> you land in college...that it isn't coming. What I had to do in terms of getting a relevant education civics-wise on my own is what so many others are going to have to do. And, on this account, I feel dread and pity for them. The money they've shelled out for their 4 yrs in this era may make the nightmare even worse. But then there are other dreams these sojourns of ours must teach us are illusions too.
Compared to what we had hoped for (the vast knowledge), what's useful ends up as virtually things one picks up on the fly. You won't be there in your graduation gown with all the tools and life's big program all laid out. But we begin this brief and crammed education with the truths we read; and, have mercy, they <i>do</i> actually lay a foundation for similar truths that follow. Actually, they're well spaced; it's just our presumption that assumes everything will come in some package at the beginning.
We begin with concepts that describe where we are, just like the ones Giroux has laid out here. Maybe we don't know enough about real life individual narcissism cases or sadism, but if one doesn't act fast on such things...one will carry ones ignorance to ones grave, and will have to reconcile with it. I think, though, we pick up <i>some</i> kind of working sense of such things anyway.
One big mistake we could make at this point in history, is thinking social media makes each one of us profound...each one a leader. No, each one of us is just a dialoguer who must confront fellow/sister humans either hopefully or honestly or mindfully or prayerfully. That way we as group <i>will</i> come to trust someone else to represent us. Cause we all aren't gonna end up representers. And.....if you're going into some action, ya gotta cooly analyze (count) the cost. Doing it cooly is exasperating, but that's life. Ya gotta sleep on it like John Heider the Taoist psychologist said [you, yes <b>you,</b> might end up more productive utilizing valuable concepts...knocking on doors or doing surveys carrying some clipboard]. Don't think you're <i>riding</i> a wave. No, realize you're creating the wave. You're carrying into whatever movement the sane kid in yourself. If no one seems to be recognizing that respectful, open, and understanding kid...respect him or her yourself! No matter what your impressions are, it's likely there is no "wave" that's gonna deal successfully with the overt violence in this land <i><b>and</b> change everyone's consciousness to your liking at your college or in your future job setting</i>. Our various media for sure can play a role, but there are approaches and elements they're not gonna remind us to employ (something evidently was missing in the Arab Spring). No, likely no "wave" that's automatically gonna grant you a ride or a role. No, but put your most patient, attentive, and humane self into the thing. Keep a schedule and value your sleep...just as you value your ocean waves. What's positive in the unconscious is allowed "out" in both modalities. I suppose, with control, shadow elements can also actually contribute something "constructive"...vocally.
Memo to tunnel vision sufferers:
Writers who join issues are not whacked out. Wall Street and the MIC are selling us items that are real dangerous [propaganda & ideologies]. If Ralph Nader sounds to you all like he's talking gibberish, maybe that's because you haven't given much thought to these items. Nader believes candidates shouldn't be dictating what voters will get if they vote Democrat, and he's right. Voters who vote Democrat should be telling those running for office what policies they want enacted.
If/when I take the possibility seriously (in regard to Virginia, my mother) I do things differently. Recently on the way to work early I had the thought that there is only one direction toward being with her again, and in that exact instant the biggest setting moon I'd seen for yrs popped into view [morning prior to eclipse morning]. The association for me was the feminine side of the Great Spirit, a theological/cosmological perspective fully endorsed by mom. I don't know if, when we meet again, we'll remember things from our shared collection of yrs that intersected these two centuries; but I fully believe we will be cognizant of a deep connection via a deep love, whether we're aware of chapters of our linkage back on Earth or not. Maybe only good memories will be retained. If not many tacit particulars are retained, then maybe the instant love'll be sort of mysterious. But that'll be OK. Can't see any reason the "tangled hierarchy" phenomenon wouldn't apply to souls as well as particles.
I think it's always been true that different individuals apprehend different truths about society. But suppose an individual had the option of taking some potion that would open the doors of perception, not to "stoned thoughts," but to more such truths. Maybe it would be the "red pill" (as in The Matrix). Maybe it would do something along the lines of what some believe DMT does. This is just hypothetical. But what would such a drug reveal? One of the first things I think it would reveal is that the politically conservative "Christian" mindset (call it C.C.M.) has actually [at least at the time of and since Christopher Lasch's writings] been greatly influenced by what is otherwise thought of as "liberal" rationalism...or IOW a huge stress on meritocratic intelligence. IOW they IMITATED us. Some think the CCM dwells inordinately on evolution and abortion, and you might argue that since it does rationalism has had no impact on it at all. Personally, though, I'd conjecture the magical drug would tell you different. It's fine to say we imitate Hollywood actors, and that's true. But, behind everything, as Ellul and some old social critics pointed out, has remained a hyper-rationalism [also termed an overly "deterministic" frame, and arguably by Ken Wilber as "aperspectival madness" though news deliverers aren't completely I don't think into imitating ALL the affectations of aperspectival madness yet]. What I mean is the hyper rationalism (which is not "rational") has kept a kind of schtick of appearing rational. So, where some would say we imitate actors or singers or roles in dramas...for me I'd conjecture that this is just sort of "on the weekend" [or as Ellul wrote about it in the old days...we BECOME the hero when in the theater]. This demographic isn't composed of individuals being warriors on the weekend; it's composed of individuals being warriors on the weekDAYS. On weekdays, so to speak, the CCM returns to "duty." Consider Limbaugh; consider the INFORMATION he's shuffling on his desk. Yes, it's exagerrated in humour, but...on another level? Yes, "duty" is concerned with what's ostensibly rational, and what the CCM focuses on by default, or when it gets down to business, is an arcane convoluted rationalism...for all patriotic explanations of why adventurism is required are "involved." So it is thought. People accept involvedness as necessarily coming across as opaqueness. This is what they accept, Doublethink. And who can define what kind of dishonest and dysfunctional mind games newscasters are promulgating in their basically opaque deliveries? Remember, common folks since the days of Reagan have had little time to give deep matters much thought. Yes, when delivering their "slants" the talking heads are retaining only an appearance of the rational. There are different theatrical components to this kind of APPEARANCE of the rational, one being an avant garde (daring, foreward moving) element. That's why we see all the legs on Fox...while Fox all the while upholds some of the most ancient and ridiculous balony notions out of the "Chicago school" ever dreamed up [I don't pay for TV but I see it from time to time in places away from home, and clips cited online by Media Matters & F.A.I.R.].
I mentioned Limbaugh's desk. What the CCM has inherited from liberals is accepting the paramount desire of aiming for the "desk jockey" role in life. There are no other roles or functions; the most merit goes to those who accept the computer as boss (and the world of its required near-ritualistic obeseisance, keeping up with changes in software and OSes, etc). At the moment I don't have time to fish out the best segments...sorry about that. Maybe latter. If you look around, you might also find access to Ellul's "The Humiliation of the Word."http://brandon.multics.org/.../Chris.../lasch1994revolt.html
http://www.alternet.org/comments/culture/10-reasons-millennials-are-screwed-generation#disqus_thread
I take ajax's comments to GK below as relevant.
If the discussion was left open long enough, eventually general remarks about mindsets might crop up; Ogie's comment here earlier-on saw this coming (I may have missed others). In Alternet's recent share of the Guardian's "Has Neoliberalism Turned Us All Into Psychopaths?"...the commenter Anglyn went into thorough documentation re how boomers fell into inaction and where it left millenials (the last comments appear fairly far back amidst earlier comments...as the last digressed a ways from an earlier post).
http://www.alternet.org/comments/economy/has-neoliberalism-turned-us-all-psychopaths
Well, my thoughts on the matter keep coming. They're [<b>warning</b>] a bit tangential, but I'll relate'm in a spirit of keeping hope alive when it feels like your generation's capitulated. I don't <i>want</i> millenials to experience this (true, if they end up experiencing it, humans might have failed mightily on this planet), but if things do end up this way...
Each generation has to deal with a zeitgeist it was born into. When it's <i>your</i> particular inheritance it seems you assess the thing [or one assesses the thing] as maximally horrendous, obsequious (perhaps totalitarian), and challenging. The frame I ended up using to break down (explain) what my generation encountered was Jacques Ellul's...which he termed <i>technique</i> (for at least the past decade, though, I've found Rene Girard's frame expands the latter and adds more powerful explanation...at least in regard to phenomena on which I seem to need it). In terms of the phenomenon of Nazism, Ellul laid some stress on the development of electronic communication in conjunction with propaganda. Certainly in the next generation (boomers) this aspect was greatly magnified...Postman, McCluhan, etc, and even Vance Packard.
At present there are interesting reflections on this aspect too, including Astra Taylor's.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/08/29/gadgets-turning-me-into-an-idiot/
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2014/08/intersection-social-liberalism-and-social-media-brutal
It's struck me recently how young many writers have been by the time they made their mark. Rambeau for example. Even Gary Webb. I can't think of them all. Seems generations are like this too. I suppose the more <i>alienating</i> or dissapating a culture or zeitgeist is...the quicker even its best student(s) will age and acquiesce. Everything Anglyn said about boomers acquiescing (beginning at some point in the 70s) was true, and it's true about the war generation too...as both were impacted by the same cultural elements or forces. One book that describes it well IMO is quoted at this url
http://brandon.multics.org/library/Christopher%20Lasch/lasch1994revolt.html
One comes to ask oneself, though: what is the progressive element that remains, or who exactly are the progressives that remain...and what is it that makes them progressive? From the war generation, from the boomers, from the Xers, from the millenials...they're out there for sure. I'll admit that due to my faith I was prone to take, relatively speaking, a lot of stock in the "random acts of kindness" thing. Daily acts...lifestyles...it seems can add up or synch up across a <i>vast</i> panoply of perceptions [the set of all of'em...of all humans on earth] constituting a series of our world's "actual occasions," and we can end up effecting change together.
Arlo Guthrie seemed to me to say it all on Sept 13th.
"Most of the time the work to keep the good spirit alive is done individually, but once in a while it transforms into a group effort."
PS Re whether or not all-humans-on-earth together...collectively...experience Whitehead's "actual occasions"...I dunno if he believed this. I'm not an endorser of all of Whitehead's contentions, but apparently his philosophy was a valiant attempt at a viewpoint which acknowledges the vast number of inputs involved as one generation morphs into the next.
[alternate PS] PS In my opinion when we get a glimpse of the spiritual realm, that glimpse must often necessarily crowd out its connection with our four dimensional frame. Analogous is dark matter; not knowing what it is...it seems in another dimension. Also the transpersonal or the so-called morphic field. Both seem to operate in <i>other</i> dimensional planes (and qualitatively IMO it can be said with some veracity that they do). Seems we aren't equipped in every case to comprehend an apparent plane's connections to our own every day setting.
Does humanity as a whole experience 'occasion[s] of experience'? I don't know. Haven't read enough Whitehead [might have bearing on groupthink or propaganda]. I don't believe such occasions are more real than souls [which makes me sort of a panentheist or qualified non-dualist], but Whitehead's ideas seem an interesting try at a viewpoint which acknowledges the vast number of inputs involved as one generation morphs into the next. This is not my site http://www.bmeacham.com/whatswhat/TaoTeChingOntology.html
Any generation of humans can get wrought up with some cultural paradigm. The Romans switched from wheat to corn (for horses/cavalry), and got into corn futures speculation. It could be tulips. It could be novel reading (lampooned by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra). It could be automobiles. It could be Jung, Krishnamurti, and the doors of perception. The latter we got into. But we opted to go down sort of a pragmatic road and dwell on politics, specifically the Vietnam War. The guides for that road were Gandhi and King. It was a triage choice, just like Verhaighe is suggesting ending neoliberalism now as a triage choice (and gaining sanity). And what was left of the road to enlightment and "individuation" when the US finally pulled out of Vietnam? Did the absence of the great evil allow the consciousness movement to plow ahead? Certainly not as much as we'd hoped. The same old Ayn Rand competition characteristic of industrial consumerism was simply waiting for us, as we faced the demands of making a living. To some extent the consciousness movement had been for us non-geniuses a pie in the sky cutural thing...carrying an exhuberance really akin to any <i>belief</i> in any zeitgeist. Like the zeigeist of stocks in Aug 1928 or that of corn futures for a Roman entrepreneural demographic. In other words <i>we believed it was a wave we would ride, not one we would have to make</i>. In all such crazes or paradigms, when they get over inflated, there inevitably comes amongst believers (desirers) an unbearable conformity...to my mind unconsciously unbearable. Mimetic theory tells you what happens next.
The intellectual dissent capable of challenging cold war politics I believe has to delve a little into human nature. And it's not enough to have read Jung and Ram Das (though Ram Das is pretty insightful IMO). One needs to get down to the nitty gritty of psychopathy. If you look at the whole spectrum of boomer dissent, you'll find one road at least capable of pretty astonishing analysis. In my situation I was exposed to Gordon Cosby (served in WWII, not a boomer; but he was <i>with</i> the boomer trek). Cosby got into Rene Girard. And Rene Girard's works will tell you (with reference to my last paragraph) what happens next. I consider it a total revolution in anthropology and in sociology...for me the heaviest intellectual dissent the world has yet produced. Beyond the linguists, beyond the reconstructivists.
GIRARD IN HUFFPO
"According to Girard, in periods of collective crisis the phenomenon of scapegoating flourishes: specific groups of people (as a rule minorities) or even (marginal) individuals are identified, judged/condemned and persecuted as dangerous subjects, responsible for society's potential or actual disintegration; majority or authorities accuse, expel, or even eliminate them (morally or physically), in an attempt to 'remedy' the 'miasma,' which is supposed to have contaminated the previously immaculate community, and to reverse crisis." Panagiotis Roilos
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/panagiotis-roilos/european-animal-farm_b_1511619.html
I should note also that Chomsky and Vandana Shiva went beyond the paradigms of their respective fields and got down to humanity's hard work. Both endorsed somewhat by boomers.
re Gordon Cosby
http://www.npr.org/2013/04/14/177218091/pastor-mentor-and-social-activist-remembering-gordon-cosby
Was it boomers who recruited Gestopo alumni?
<i>Doomed to defeat by the superior Allied forces, it was thought that the forces of fascism had been routed and that the world was safe for democracy. The irony is that the intelligence apparatus of the U.S. government saved many of the most hardened Nazi war criminals from a certain execution in order to recruit them as scientists, spies and guerrilla warriors in the anticipated war with the Soviet Union. And this had dire effects on our country's democracy.
Many Americans may not be aware of this wide spread recruitment of SS and Gestapo alumni into our intelligence agencies but it has had a profound effect on the shaping of our domestic and foreign policy, often with ruinous consequences. The legacy of this incorporation of Nazis into the CIA and U.S. military has been a half a century of support for fascist regimes, juntas, death squads, torture and the overthrow of democratically elected governments around the world.
This policy of adopting Nazis into our intelligence agencies did not consciously begin as some conspiracy to protect fascists. It was pragmatic. The use of Nazis and their collaborators was looked upon much the same way police use confidential informants. They could be given immunity from prosecution and granted special favors for their assistance in the war against the Soviets. However, the program became perverted. Agencies set up to investigate Nazi war criminals ended up as programs to subvert communism -- with the help of those same Nazis. And many of elements of their fascistic philosophy were adopted by the U.S.</i>
http://archive.democrats.com/view.cfm?id=9099
Dulles bros (well, anyway there was hope we'd seen the light).
"In President Obama’s big turn in the Middle East — that is, in the refusal to bomb Syria and the warming contacts with Iran — is it too much to see that the Dulleses’ open and covert Cold War ways of waging world dominance are coming apart even as we speak?"
http://radioopensource.org/stephen-kinzer-are-the-dulles-brothers-finally-out-of-power/
You're looking for scapegoats (people to blame). Many here are interested in antecdent sociological conditions germane. Take Jung. Do you know his theory about what made that era of Germans suceptible to Nazism? It's interesting.
There are also mindsets worth looking at. Jacques Ellul described a certain "solidarity" [as it's translated] in time of war...that virtually no one escapes. The ongoing cold war/interventions throughout the period in question here are, like, to you not worth commenting on in terms of their impact on the psychology of the population. Maybe I'm wrong, but it appears that if neoliberalism has rendered us psychopathic, then at a certain point the psychopathy became just as important as the economic philosophy.
I've read that Girard has maintained a lot of witch burning type physical violence has been translated in our more modern societies into intellectual or legal violence (the latter say in courts). If you read the second chap of "Revolt of the Elites" by Lasch, that's the impression he gave too. He didn't state it outright, but the "liberal" opinions of upper middle liberals are sort of given the lie (paraphrased by me) by <i>attitude</i> displayed when confronted with opposite political opinions. By the time he wrote this in '92 there were many, many boomers in that category; but there were also older liberals in it, and let's not forget a good portion of the politicians themselves (not boomer) who sort of set the won't-deign-to-debate-me-trip role from Congress all the way down to state delegates. Nader, for instance, makes such a complaint re Sanders (apparently Nader's work isn't a noteworthy "body of work" in your opinion). Anyway, in terms of Lasch's frame...and Girard's...that activism has morphed into opinion bombast (violence going over into trading snide self-imagined-articulate opinions), but you've succumbed to this just as much as we have.
Our "body of work" is spread out all over the place. Takes a little <i>labor</i> to keep track of it.
"Ukraine: the Enemy of Your Enemy is Not Always Your Friend" by Zoltan Grossman
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/03/11/ukraine-the-enemy-of-your-enemy-is-not-always-your-friend/
http://www.alternet.org/comments/economy/has-neoliberalism-turned-us-all-psychopaths
Maybe I made the point in my first response as if it was some kind of digression. If so, sorry! The way I see it is...we gave and the IMF gave. But when the IMF loaned they tied pledges of austerity to the thing. Which is the world gonna remember? That's the tragedy. The world won't know jack about we the people and our intentions. Maybe if we the people had a say re the terms of outflow (loans), maybe just maybe we'd end up with a little better karma here in the homeland. The big outflows & inflows obviate all our intentions. The cheap inflows (goods) should be controlled to protect our jobs, but all trade deals in the works favor corporate designs (maximization of THEIR profits). Controls on inflow in terms of sanctions are not according to the will of the people but according to the "chessboard" concept of the DC foreign policy makers...which seem to want enemies to stay enemies for Lockheed Martin's sake. Just one little example: Cuba offered to send a slew of doctors to N.O. after Katrina. Please check each of these 3 links...to find out whether or not I'm off on some tangential rant!
http://www.motherjones.com/.../ebola-budget-cuts-sequester
http://michael-hudson.com/.../imf-loans-for-ukraines.../
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/10929
"The Lies We Believed" Moyers fb share
The dissenting folks (reporters & pols at that time) need to be enumerated too.
Seems, if you're looking up media-suckerdom (of course not that word) re the 2003 war, Google strangely these days turns up scant from the best liberal sites. It did manage to find me this.
Buying the War
http://billmoyers.com/content/buying-the-war/
Funny, but when I tried to comment under this above linked page (Disqus), the moderation time never ended and the post in reality never went up. Had the same problem with the Moyers "here's-what-u-need-2-know" discussion the other day too. I'm going to try again with the latter, making the comment as on-point as possible, and reduce it to one simple F.A.I.R. link [under one poster's comment on network coverage], and see if that works. Nader and Kevin Drum (MoJo) make a real salient point about nichification and a LACK OF CROSS-ISSUE COMING TOGETHER [emphasis not shouting]. Could be piggybackers interferring, though, and not narrowness on the part Moyers-dot-com discussion hosts/prefects.
Always'a happen'n, Also in regard to Ukraine.
http://www.fair.org/blog/2014/03/07/denying-the-far-right-role-in-the-ukrainian-revolution/
I'll link an oldie but goodie Moyers 2007 link relevant at the bottom of this. To tell you the truth [especially to tell you, Bill, the truth] I'm a little worried about pc-ness here in the comment section. Whether Disqus, site-staff, The Ministry of Truth, or troll-bots I dunno; but I tried to post a mere 100 word comment below the content at this link (Buying the War), and it was gone in an hour.
Buying the War
http://billmoyers.com/content/buying-the-war/
My friend JC issued me the Gratitude/Positivity Challenge, which essentially asks me to name 3 things which made me thankful today.
1. "The heart has its reasons." IOW the soul or Higher Self has its reasons. The flesh gets weaker but those reasons get more reasonable with each day. Like Richard Rohr says, old bothersome 1st-half-of-life-questions slough off (whew!). Real answers roll'n in a mile a minute. First half's done gone, but still plenty of opportunities to "fall upwards" [again Rohr] via my vocation.
2. East side. Had the day off (come to think of it, 10 days off thanks to a right on Team Leader). Looked North down Witchduck toward ODC. Suddenly I was very young; I dug the trees, I dug the church, I loved my family. Though we had our moments, we were breathing love each for the other every day. It was real country, but we had a village next door on Sunday (Old Donation Church); I dug it. All those souls (and the option to reach out to a number of same TODAY and have'm hear me, and/or read me). Hey, and today...a soul that loved me in person today! The dinner at Logans we had together.
3. West side. The boulevard's a drab strip, but for me...it isn't [case in point of what Taoist psychologist John Heider said about PARADOX, this particular c.i.p. being especially mind expanding...for which I am thankful]. For me for miles...a load of memories. Olive Garden with mom (good God'ta mighty, it's still there!). "Minute Lunch" at Janaf when I was 8 with mom, John, and Uncle Willie (the Russian-speaking artist Lt Commander USN). The rap-downs at Wills Auto Upholstery with Jr and Sr, and the museum it was (and no doubt is becoming again after the fire). Mom commenting on the trees at the Witchduck intersect. On down a ways, my great GP, and then...memories of Dr N's walk-in clinic. A certain healing growing into oneness with all the other wait-ers. Memories of taking Mom to Dr R and again sitting in the waiting room, coming out with solutions. Coming out with another load of Grace, mom smiling.
Always'a happen'n. I'll link an oldie but goodie Moyers 2007 page relevant at the bottom of this. To tell you the truth [especially to tell you, Bill, the truth] I'm a little worried about pc-ness here in the comment section. Whether Disqus, site-staff, The Ministry of Truth, or troll-bots I dunno; but I tried to post a mere 100 word comment below the content at this link, and it was gone in an hour. I'll grant it was a little general and a little heavy and a little philosophical, but it was in no way obscene. And there had been a comment shared there 3 mo back.
Buying the War
http://billmoyers.com/content/...
http://billmoyers.com/2014/09/11/obama-declared-war-on-isis-heres-what-you-need-to-know/
Why was it bought [the argument for war]? Perhaps because the selling of the thing was part of a near archetypal process. The buying from the sources enabled media's selling of the thing. And the selling of the thing by media enabled...the war. The war was a scapegoating of a man far away. In the "process" just mentioned a scapegoat resolves a tension preceded by an intense conformity in the group (according to René Girard if I have it right). So, what was the conformity? Was the conformity a strict preoccupation with media's debates (their framing of such)...and the pros & cons of media's scandals purveyed to us? Was this world which appeared so wide and varied to us in reality very confined?
Sort of circular, but if this is the underlying reality of the situation then Bill Moyers' concern with this topic was sure'nuff on target.
http://billmoyers.com/content/buying-the-war/
"In 1987 Astronomer R. Brent Tully of the University of Hawaii's Institute of Astronomy identified what he called the Pisces-Cetus Supercluster Complex, a structure one billion light years long and 150 million light years across in which, he claimed, the Local Supercluster was embedded..."https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe...
I wish folks (youtubes at least) would stick simply to straight light yr quantities when it comes to distance in the universe. You have to deduce L's maximum length from this tube [which I apparently did twice incorrectly without other references; evidently Laniakea is 100 X "bigger" than "our" prior-thought supercluster Virgo, but only 3.4 times "longer" than Pisces-Cetus] With respect to the Pisces-Cetus supercluster, numbers of light yrs for the length & breadth of it ARE given in the above Wikipedia statement. So, FOR MY THIRD ATTEMPT at an estimate of the distances involved...traveling the length of Pisces-Cetus at 10 X the speed of light would take, after all, a mere 15 million yrs According to this next Wikipedia url I'm citing, ..."The Laniakea Supercluster encompasses 100,000 galaxies stretched out over 160 megaparsecs (520 megalight-years)" So, given this latter figure...to traverse the length of Laniakea going 10 X the speed of light would require 52 million years.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laniakea_Supercluster
"...and that the observable universe is 93 billion light years across..." (Wikipedia "Large Numbers"; maybe this excludes stars and galaxies detectable with radio astronomy?)
You might wonder like I did: OK, put all these super-clusters end to end as they exist out there...and how did they have time to get strung on out there so far so fast if it's only been 15 billion yrs since the big bang? This below explains it (according to current models), especially the last sentence.
"The metric expansion of space is the increase of the distance between two distant parts of the universe with time. It is an intrinsic expansion whereby the scale of space itself changes. This is different from other examples of expansions and explosions in that, as far as observations can ascertain, it is a property of the entirety of the universe rather than a phenomenon that can be contained and observed from the outside...
"..According to measurements, the universe's expansion rate was decelerating until about 5 billion years ago due to the gravitational attraction of the matter content of the universe, after which time the expansion began accelerating. In order to explain the acceleration physicists have postulated the existence of dark energy which appears in the simplest theoretical models as a cosmological constant. According to the simplest extrapolation of the currently-favored cosmological model (known as "ΛCDM"), this acceleration becomes more dominant into the future.
"While special relativity constrains objects in the universe from moving faster than light with respect to each other when they are in a local, dynamical relationship, it places no theoretical constraint on the relative motion between two objects that are globally separated and out of causal contact. It is thus possible for two objects to become separated in space by more than the distance light could have travelled, which means that, if the expansion remains constant, the two objects will never come into causal contact. For example, galaxies that are more than approximately 4.5 gigaparsecs away from us are expanding away from us faster than light."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_expansion_of_space
see also "Large Numbers" at Wikipedia
"In 1987 Astronomer R. Brent Tully of the University of Hawaii's Institute of Astronomy identified what he called the Pisces-Cetus Supercluster Complex, a structure one billion light years long and 150 million light years across in which, he claimed, the Local Supercluster was embedded..."https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe...
I wish folks (youtubes at least) would stick simply to straight light yr quantities when it comes to distance in the universe. You have to deduce L's maximum length from this tube [which I apparently did twice incorrectly without other references; evidently Laniakea is 100 X "bigger" than "our" prior-thought supercluster Virgo, but only 3.4 times "longer" than Pisces-Cetus] With respect to the Pisces-Cetus supercluster, numbers of light yrs for the length & breadth of it ARE given in the above Wikipedia statement. So, FOR MY THIRD ATTEMPT at an estimate of the distances involved...traveling the length of Pisces-Cetus at 10 X the speed of light would take, after all, a mere 15 million yrs According to this next Wikipedia url I'm citing, ..."The Laniakea Supercluster encompasses 100,000 galaxies stretched out over 160 megaparsecs (520 megalight-years)" So, given this latter figure...to traverse the length of Laniakea going 10 X the speed of light would require 52 million years.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laniakea_Supercluster
"...and that the observable universe is 93 billion light years across..." (Wikipedia "Large Numbers"; maybe this excludes stars and galaxies detectable with radio astronomy?)
You might wonder like I did: OK, put all these super-clusters end to end as they exist out there...and how did they have time to get strung on out there so far so fast if it's only been 15 billion yrs since the big bang? This below explains it (according to current models), especially the last sentence.
"The metric expansion of space is the increase of the distance between two distant parts of the universe with time. It is an intrinsic expansion whereby the scale of space itself changes. This is different from other examples of expansions and explosions in that, as far as observations can ascertain, it is a property of the entirety of the universe rather than a phenomenon that can be contained and observed from the outside...
"..According to measurements, the universe's expansion rate was decelerating until about 5 billion years ago due to the gravitational attraction of the matter content of the universe, after which time the expansion began accelerating. In order to explain the acceleration physicists have postulated the existence of dark energy which appears in the simplest theoretical models as a cosmological constant. According to the simplest extrapolation of the currently-favored cosmological model (known as "ΛCDM"), this acceleration becomes more dominant into the future.
"While special relativity constrains objects in the universe from moving faster than light with respect to each other when they are in a local, dynamical relationship, it places no theoretical constraint on the relative motion between two objects that are globally separated and out of causal contact. It is thus possible for two objects to become separated in space by more than the distance light could have travelled, which means that, if the expansion remains constant, the two objects will never come into causal contact. For example, galaxies that are more than approximately 4.5 gigaparsecs away from us are expanding away from us faster than light."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_expansion_of_space
see also "Large Numbers" at Wikipedia
Time is required for academic issues. There's a contention, however, that academic issues can be dealt with solely in the head...which makes them tempting even if there's little time.
Many folks have what they deem reasons for their views. Many believe their views are derived from reason alone. Amidst the intelligentsia (such as it has become) perspectives change fast. Schools of thought come and go quickly, economic philosophies (including their political angles) for example.
It was claimed that the internet would provide more information to help facilitate wise endorsement of one or another policy, but the economic situation isn't allowing a lot of people time to go over the information. This is sort of raining on the "meritocracy" parade. In our meritocracy here in the West people who had the information and who could develop the information were supposed to end up listened to. Well, there are speakers out there who innundate us. And we, going on faith, believe they are relatively doing what was anticipated. In the meritocracy of today, these people are the ones we imitate. What they preach, I guess on sort of a subliminal level, is that informed opinion solves everything. We want to be like them, and have such informed opinions. We want to desire what they desire (or purport to desire). I try to think for myself (and watch no MSM television at home), but if I ask myself how I am becoming like them...sometimes it occurs to me that many of the ways are probably beyond my perception.
Forming up such opinions (which we think of as engaging the world) remains an ongoing process though...and the work of fixing the world via finding the right solutions ends up isolating us from the world. We know economic pressures are limiting our time to read and reflect (and even to talk politics), but that just makes us more determined to sound like the talking heads. And one more important thing...it makes us determined to be, on our own, more right than the talking heads. There are a lot of thinkers/readers who are in this position. In a way, they are all doing the same thing. They take the media they're given and fashion their solutions...that no one else can fathom. They each have a universal solution; for, after all, they embrace the whole of humanity (in theory in their minds). But really, as I just wrote, they're isolated.
They're isolated...each with the best answer...and in this they are all alike in their isolation. Whether rightly or wrongly, I have come to think of participation in this state or condition as constituting the most significant sameness or conformity nowadays, IOW our current globalized society's version of an intense conformity René Girard stipulates as coming prior to a tribe or nation's need of a scapegoat. It's all a head trip..."intelligence" deified by meritocracy. It's too intense, and destroying the scapegoat ends up eliminating the intensity. No, the facts so far have not improved matters on every level, have not ushered us peacefully to a peaceful and rational solidarity re a manifestly enlightened vision. Yep, my penchant is Girard's take.
"'...How mainstream journalists suspended skepticism and scrutiny remains an issue of significance that the media has not satisfactorily explored,' says Moyers. 'How the administration marketed the war to the American people has been well covered, but critical questions remain: How and why did the press buy it, and what does it say about the role of journalists in helping the public sort out fact from propaganda?' ”
http://billmoyers.com/content/...
Internet Encyclopdedia of Philosophy on René Girard
http://www.iep.utm.edu/girard/
Don't be put off by Girard's religious orientation. His break downs are discussed across a very wide spectrum of knowledgeable folks (see end of text on this page)
http://citation.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/3/6/0/7/7/pages360776/p360776-12.php
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2014/08/intersection-social-liberalism-and-social-media-brutal
Sorry for ranting(Fox was real down on ranters and that's the word he used); this is all I'm gonna say. Two tendencies. In olden times (60s/70s) to be a Renaissance Man [sorry ladies] ones alternate personas had to be DEVELOPED. Yet each model of each of the alternate selves (we can see in hindsight) were actually pretty rigid. When wars of all against all take off in societies, the stereotypes folks emulate can be one in number; in most cases IMO they simply become too limited in number & variety (unlike in maximum pluralistic phases). If one's overly concerned with wearing a few "hats" and wearing them RIGHT, then you have St. Augustine's problem with 'multiplicity' (many models are OK if one respects the integrity of ones own soul and doesn't try to appropriate more "being" from some other). If the tendency in a society becomes for individuals to emulate only one model or hero (pro-war, anti-war, long-hair, short-hair, rich-wannabe, Rush-wannabe, flaunter, nerd), then of course ones model template is REALLY minimalist. A minimalist persona dictates ones words in a strict fashion, and ones words define ones views. This latter is where I feel our society is now. We've all eaten of the fruit of being informed, so we need to compute instantly. No sleeping on a question as John Heider advised. Judge Judy IMO doesn't seem to pause much. No "waiting." You'd think if all the people had their own particular models there'd be a wild mix (pluralism). But in this situation, in our time, actually I believe the role models are very restricted in number. Fewer and fewer have an idea of how individuals become perturbations of their goals (the state of our economy may end up changing this). Whether their perturbations actually guide them to their individual purposes or steer them away is not for us to judge. But free movement along these paths has to be anticipated if each is going to be respected for following her/his own leading...or allowed to. Good book, "Our Many Selves" by Elizabeth O Connor [had to leave out apostrophe for technical reasons]
Questions like this issue on boards just like this typify a perspective I've been entertaining lately. I can relate (I think) to how Chomsky imagines the Owl of Minerva's perceiving things right about now.
In terms of the question here, yes I can imagine one or a few Belgians digging around in the dust bins. I don't have time for some real digging on my own...to prove how they did their digging. Don't relish settling just for conjecture, but I do note the mass societal phenomenon of a heck of a lot of folks doing so. Time is required for academic issues. There's a contention, however, that academic issues can be dealt with solely in the head...which makes them tempting even if there's little time.
Many folks have reasons for their views. Many. Many believe their views are derived fromreason alone. Amidst the intelligentsia (such as it has become) perspectives change fast. Schools of thought come and go quickly, economic philosophies (political viewpoints) for example.
It was claimed that the internet would provide more information to help facilitate wise endorsement of one or another policy, but the economic situation isn't allowing a lot of people time to go over the information. This is sort of raining on the meritocracy parade. In our "meritocracy" here in the West people who had the information and who could develop the information were supposed to end up listened to. Well, there are speakers out there who innundate us. And we, going on faith, believe they are relatively doing what was anticipated. In the "meritocracy" of today, these people are the ones we imitate. What they preach, I guess on sort of a subliminal level, is that informed opinion solves everything. We want to be like them, and have such informed opinions. We want to desire what they desire (or purport to desire). I try to think for myself (and watch no MSM television at home), but if I ask myself how I am becoming like them, actually it's probably something beyond my perception.
Forming up such opinions, however, remains an ongoing process...and the work of fixing the world, in fact, isolates us from the world. We know economic pressures are limiting our time to read and reflect (and even to talk politics), but that just makes us more determined to sound like the talking heads. And one more important thing...it makes us determined to be, on our own, more right than the talking heads. There are a lot of thinkers/readers who are in this position. In a way, they are all doing the same thing. They take the media they're given and fashion their solutions...that no one else can fathom. They each have a universal solution; for, after all, they embrace the whole of humanity (in theory in their minds). But really, as I just wrote, they're isolated.
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2014/08/intersection-social-liberalism-and-social-media-brutal
They're isolated...each with the best answer...and in this they are all alike in their isolation. Whether rightly or wrongly, I have come to think of participation in this state or condition as constituting the most significant sameness or conformity nowadays, IOW the current globalized society's version of an intense conformity René Girard stipulates as coming prior to a tribe or nation needing a scapegoat. It's all a head trip..."intelligence" deified by meritocracy. It's too intense, and destroying the scapegoat ends up eliminating the intensity.
http://billmoyers.com/content/buying-the-war
Yeah, Pascal managed to allude to that in a way such that his writings survived the church's clampdown.
Here's the weird thing with me and the evidence. Natural selection hit me hard around 7th grade cause I just hadn't thought about it obviating God prior. Hadn't thought about it period. But I sure'nuff bought in, as much as any of these religion blamers out there. But in around nine years I came across an article about Norman Macbeth in Harpers. Norman Macbeth destroyed it as the sole mechanism...and all runners-up (speculating nothing in their place). I dunno when I came across Rupert Sheldrake's material...many years later for sure...but that stuff finished it off as far as I was concerned (I accepted his morphic field hypothesis as valid I think when he was still referring to it as "theory," which he still sort of does a bit). So, we're in a weird spot...or should be if we had our eyes open. It's the same thing with the double-slit experiment (and, on an admittedly theoretical level, the extra dimensions required by string theory and dark matter). People haven't grasped how either shake up the old paradigms. The "spot" means to me that the "evidence" has sort of equilibrated. But Pascal said the heart has its reasons, and I believe those are the bigger ones. The heart (or soul) also has its discernments...of synchronicity for instance.
Right now I see things as: Nature was [the classic] "clock set ticking." I don't, like lora120, see the Great Spirit as sadistic, and have no inclination to speculate on a demiurge type being. I see choices influencing evolution. Edgar Cayce's readings had a version of this, but even though they were supposed to be from Something indubitable...to me they sound a little like there was an unconscious on some level doing a little backwards extrapolation (myth making). They "compute" I guess for me, though, in so far as I can see natures chosen, or paths chosen, or dispositions chosen...as influencing evolutionary directions...say an appetitive nature would have made its contribution to a morphological template (in the "morphological field") that would have yielded an adaptation for an increased predatory capacity. Something like that. And then, all these templates, having evolved on planets across the universe prior to Earth's life, were non-locally at hand when Earth was ready. Implying by guestimate, I suppose, a lot of planets never made it farther than bacteria (this assumes there were no templates around from prior bangs having gone forth and finally collapsed back, etc., etc.).
Anyway, re some psychology germane
http://citation.allacademic.co...
[link is same as one given for post below]
The MD John Goffman wrote an anti-nuclear book entitled "Irrevy." I had it. I liked it.
By the time a nation or empire gets too puffed up, it's saga has become "sacred" and weighty. I think of it as too stiff or rigid to move in. It would seem better to me to be born into some other period of whatever nation. I'd look at the period you described as hard pressed (McCarthy era eg) instead as somewhat an example of the former.
The exceptions to your statement about leaders of state religions might actually demonstrate your own point better. In a way they live on. Had Hitler conquered the world, no doubt he would have lived on.
"Note that not only the lower classes had to rely on the Pharaoh’s favor, but also the noble classes. They believed that when he died, the pharaoh became a type of god, who could bestow upon certain individuals the ability to have an afterlife. This belief existed from the predynastic period through the Old Kingdom."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...
That's a thousand years. There might have been this kind of thing with the Ceasars, the Sumerians, and with "Shangdi" in China as well (the primordial emperor, a God however...not to our knowledge associated with a specific historical figure). But re that thousand years in Egypt, maybe that's what some believers and all activist atheists really fear. Maybe it's back there in the collective unconscious like some horror. Somewhat like this set up, there was sort of a 1984ish element in Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale." Not one empire ruling the earth, but two fighting each other forever. I've forgotten what the West's foes were like, but I remember how heavily ritualized we had become in that story.
Anyway, this is where Jacques Ellul's preference for the word "faith" over "religion," I think, had/has a lot of bearing.
As for King, it seems like he must have reconciled himself to possible death on a number of those marches. Re Gandhi, what's the longest you've fasted?
http://www.alternet.org/comments/belief/why-do-atheists-abandon-reason-and-science-theyre-so-proud-slightest-whiff-terrorism#disqus_thread
It was just the era. All the evidence flowed in. I had faith. The paradigm stepped on it. Then I witnessed, from Norman Macbeth to Rupert Sheldrake to What the Bleep Do We Know, that paradigm begin approaching its last chapter. But I got the best of the old paradigm too.
Speak out for the truth, and folks think you're a spoiled liberal. They think this, and they never know that some pastor of German descent 30 miles west of Philadelphia poured the original ethos of this land America right into my soul...farm work, metal work, wood working. It would be correct to say he was Episcopalian
As Ellul wrote, a synthesis is not something magically different. It contains both prior thesis AND prior antithesis. It is merely more complex. Thus, in the huge anti-war marches you had the folks anticipating they'd ride a great nirvana wave/era and those who realized they'd have to create the wave. At that time I was mostly of the former. Hey, but I got through it, thanks Father/Mother God.
Understanding that souls are indeed fearfully and wonderfully made. What all the souls I encountered gave me. They seemed special, and they were special. Ones that helped me. Souls also that reflected back my own dominant enneagram number...representing some traits which I suppose needed to get kneaded a bit. Nature and karma wove the right souls together, as they always do. Now I see it, thank the Great Spirit. No father or guru convinced me early on to have faith about this, but
Nader's been really good lately IMO on working together politically.
http://ralphnaderradiohour.libsyn.com/
Sat, 14 June 2014, 25:48
Those growing up are learning unpleasant facts about the world. Many may really do what they think is a lot of reading or Googling to land on a solution. If students are like I was, they go for something abstruse they barely grasp (it's gotta sound deep). But then, it has to be something with broad significance. In my day, for me it was Popper. Plato's Academy was totalitarian, and everything's modeled after that, so we're all on the wrong road. There was Marcuse too, "libidinal rationality."
In those days more students had more reading discipline; so, in the first place, for today's students to land on something that has ANY connection to reality...it's not as easy. It wasn't easy for us. And how far did we get before we left classes "on strike"? Not far.
Where I think we've gone way wrong is meritocracy's "intelligence" measuring stick. "Nerds" may feel left out, but actually there's a respectable place in the counter culture for'em today. People are valuing "doctrines." Few politicians or activists that have really made it started out valuing efforts to help individuals...like Obama and Nader (yes their efforts were tied into bigger ideas but they HAD TO WORK with individuals). No, they're into doctrines. Due to myriad encounters with all kinds of seminars, retreats, convincing website graphics, and Community College courses, they fancy themselves <b>SMART</b>. Clinton was scholastically and philosophically...SMART (what happened when he went for Welfare Reform I dunno). He was constantly mixing up ideas in the early days to his credit, but they hadn't come together enough to help him make REAL headway against the austerity freaks. All these guys are practiced speakers and ALL of'em have their ANSWERS (their doctrine down pat). You think in these little old country towns in Georgia everyone's speaking with a drawal? Think again. The yuppies have moved in. The accents are fading. EVERYTHING'S knowledge. And it could have been worse, but the bad part about it Christopher Lasch was on to. In former times you had to deal with a variety of PEOPLE. Now the ad folks can sing you a song about a learning/training "trajectory," and according to that song...you can just stay with books for some yrs and then pop out ready for some new chapter of an equally cloistered life.
I believe it's good for the young to know points on which the establishment is dead wrong. It <i>should</i> indicate to them how much work they've got cut out. I remember raising my hand in psych class, and saying something like, "What about Skinner's statement 'The goal of science is the destruction of mystery'? With a statement like that we had'em. We had those determinists for the closed minded zealots they were. But we wouldn't even have known about that statement if there hadn't been for the Jung/Freud rift. So, our self-guided education rode along on a bit of the sensational. Over the years, however, I came to see that without knowing Freud's personality types, one can't just build on Jung's dissent. Youth will get into this refutation thing...as Ortega y Gassett described it. Our job I suppose is to slow'em down and to help'em realize lots and lots of people grab on to solutions based on the fact that they're too lazy to examine the critiques of whatever solutions they think they've found. Writers' styles always in the past always sort of made the critiques difficult, hence the grabbing more desirable. But there is change on that score with things like Wikipedia.
Right now we're sort of at a wall in terms of proving anything revolutionary. We can't prove string theory. We can't prove any "multiverse." And the proofs look many, many, many centuries away on these items. There are revolutionary aspects of subatomic particles that look VERY likely, which do shake common perceptions about Nature up a bit...the double slit experiment for example. For me, this seems quite a big shake up. But as far as the universe being re-born enough times to enable a human to live exactly the life you're living now...there's nothing that indicates dead suns and dead planets won't just keep speeding out into bigger and bigger aloneness (unless impacted by influences from a realm built on more than 4 dimensions). Einstein's notion about what amounts IMO to predestination...I can wiggle around, even if psychics predict thus and such. There are revolutionary ideas in biology, but these are ideas progressives are ESPECIALLY close minded on (proving better than anything that your thesis here, Kevin). Weird, huh? I'm speaking of Rupert Sheldrake's ideas.
The heaviest critiques around of our overall mindset actually are proving quite dull to today's progressives. They're not as convoluted as various linguists. For a while people were reading Christopher Lasch, but Lasch's general ideas IMO entailed further looking into narcissism as it manifests in individuals; and, though there did develop some interest in this, it seems no writer has gotten real popular linking such phenomena with large scale solutions. I'll give a link, though, to a chapter in Lasch's "Revolt of the Elites."
http://brandon.multics.org/library/Christopher%20Lasch/lasch1994revolt.html
More violations of my "smarts over-emphasized" argument...probably near the top of comments here
https://www.facebook.com/AlterNetNews/posts/10152293864842507
Yes, I had that thought last night re "inverted totalitarianism." We know conquerers of yore had delusions of grandeur. They over extended. What I was asking myself last night was what happens when instead of one personal force pumping up conquering armies, there's sort of a coterie of plutocratic neocon "warrior intellectuals"? A meritocracy is supposed to be too smart to over extend. The American National Security Council and the Dept of State are supposed to weigh evidence, a lot of evidence. And they are supposed to have access to a multitude of expert opnions. But suppose the warrior intellectuals let power go to their heads, and rather than stay grounded in defensive modalities...begin to think in terms of more economic satellites? Suppose they conspire to oust parties or rulers in nations not amenable to becoming the kind of trading partners they like (the kind the neocons like)? And then suppose their designs entail more heavy handedness abroad than they've let on to the populace at home. And then suppose further that the people influenced by this heavy handedness come to resent it greatly. If a so called "meritocracy" goes this far, then it must have gotten away from any kind of balanced forum weighing options. I'm tempted to say at that point you couldn't call it a meritocracy any longer. It would seem the neocon "gang" has come to act like one autocratic power tripping mind.
DĂ©jĂ vu except the world's a good bit more burnt out. If you don't want the U.S. economy geared mainly to KBR/Haliburton, $120 million jets that don't work, and weapons for slaughter, then I recommend a little reflection re hopes that another Clinton in the White House will make any difference. Americans on the home front were buffered in the past against war blowback, but now our economic policy has whipped up blowback in the economic sphere. So this time we'll have to deal with both. Upshot? Work on both elements.
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=12180
Our press isn't conveying any reality re what's happened in Ukraine. Who orchestrated the ousting of Ukranian President Viktor Yanukovych, in Feb? Virginia Nuland? Yanukovych was in there fair & square (though like all the other candidates no saint). The guy we wanted in after the fact favored a loan from the EU vs a loan from Russia. A bunch of 90%-Nazi groups were on hand for our team to make use of during the coup. Ukrainians in the south & east didn't appreciate the change (Russian speakers). The Crimeans wanted a referendum on entering into a federation with Russia, as they believed the gov of the "revolution" to be illegitimate and the product of a coup. IIRC Putin told them to forget the referendum. Later Russia did intervene to grab back Crimea (small portion of Ukraine), a Russian Naval port. He didn't want to sweep in for the rest of Ukraine. Later when the separatists took up arms, he told them to put down the weapons and negotiate. http://consortiumnews.com/2014/02/27/a-shadow-us-foreign-policy/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Ukrainian_revolution
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_pro-Russian_unrest_in_Ukraine
"Supreme Council of Crimea considered the ousting of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in the 2014 Ukrainian revolution as a coup and the new interim government in Kiev as illegitimate and stated that the referendum is a response to these developments."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_status_referendum,_2014
"Distorting Russia: How the American media misrepresent Putin, Sochi and Ukraine." by Stephen F. Cohen
http://www.thenation.com/article/178344/distorting-russia
"What the US Media Won't Tell You About Ukraine" by Ted Rall (that's right, Rall the cartoonist)
https://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/03/04-0
"Putin or Kerry: Who's Delusional?" by Robert Parry http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/03/06-3
Yeah, but to what extent has media become an obstacle? That question demands an answer I think. One thing for sure, while Jon Stewart's great at times, I'm not paying for cable television.
The ubiquitous nature of media...cell phones, entertainment, etc...can't be overstated these days. There seem to be forces set in motion by failed economic policy that force folks to clutch this stuff like lifelines. The "forces," or factors, or contingencies...are many, and keep multiplying. They intermingle and crisscross and reinforce one another in their sweep of Earth's terrain...driving all of us nuts! Or should I say...making us more depressed and hopeless? Folks then reach for the inspiration. Before the phones and Spotify, we had to reach far. Even now, with Google searching and Youtube's search, one has to dig a little. A long lost Etta James number. A 45 min Tommy Emanuel concert in LA you knew nothing about when it happened two years ago. Shoot, I know cause I do it myself!
But whatever we couldn't access before entertainment-wise which we can now...cannot demonstrate who we are. Cannot demonstrate how I...yes, how my own particular tastes are enlightened. My loud Android phone can't demonstrate my enlightened tastes anymore than if I were playing the same stuff on a boombox...on the subway. But we've come to think it does.Even if we're using earphones, we're privately believing we've meritocratically made the best choice to protect our own sanity with the hippest messages or music. Actually, I believe if one got right down to the real bedrock technique, one would find that the right earphones are sold via a message which hypes the contention that others desire them, not that they perform so well the cost is justified. Can't go much into it here, but mimesis is indeed one of the above mentioned "forces," or contingencies.
None of this stuff can convey our individuality, or the contribution we individually have to make to the world. Yes, I hold to real individuality...and, I guess as a "qualified non-dualist," I hold to souls. Surprise, surprise...dark matter's out there and cannot be seen. Surprise, surprise...Rupert Sheldrake critques what's imputed to natural selection, and gives us a more plausible theory...a theory requring something real but also something "invisible." Finally, information's providing something that challenges the determinism behind Ayn Rand's philosophy, the Chicago School, shock doctrine, and the whole worn out ball of crap wax. Yeah, well it's out there; and if this article is claiming media purveyors haven't chosen to purvey what's relevant, then IMO it sure as heck is correct.
Regarding having to dig for the pertinent information, I was just lucky I heard Nader mentioning Iron Dome needing to be tested. I was just lucky I heard Jack Rasmus mention the natural gas off the Gaza coast. I was just lucky Robert Parry was born into this era, and has the interest and courage to explain what's going down in Ukraine. But then, to the extent the forces and contingencies comprise sort of a large puzzle...I did have to exert a little effort throughout my years finding reliable writers who simply could help me recognize the pieces. Guess that particular kind of project has been neglected totally by recent corporate-influenced trends in America's educational system.
I know what you'll say. You'll say, if the Platonic form for justice is real, why doesn't it prevail? If a justice archetype is real, why is it so minor in what's thought of as the four dimensional arena? If there's a justice template in some morphic field, why isn't it effecting humans here on Earth a little more? All I can hypothesize is that "the watchmaker theory" is correct, but then I propose a corollary. It's sort of a twist on Aurobindo's notions. Nature can take care of itself in marvelous ways, but humans had to have a place in it to address its mistakes. To even out the lives that somehow ended up marginalized from opportunities to experience the good things. Like freedom from oppresion for one. We do have veterinarians that help wild animals. This link looks interesting http://www.unigaia-brasil.org/...
Sorry for the undeveloped (and rantlike) mode of expressing things in this; but both the economy and the philosophizers of economics seem to have pushed me into a corner. How bout you?
http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/technology-has-brought-the-world-closer-but-it-hasn-t-stopped-war-and-killing
on truthout's facebk share of above article 7/25
People undoubtedly flash around their media in attempts to demonstrate that THEY (above the horde) live in a truer likeness to heroes worth imitating (I'm applying Rene Girard's ideas here). This includes the particular entertainment streaming. One can see heroes or models on the right aren't a real varied lot, so their imitators are becoming less varied themselves. Actually, the zeitgeist is meritocratically emphasizing smartness on both sides..."smart" phones eg. Principles of peace or ethics of peace or peaceful "intuition"getting sidelined by the creeping hype of a sort of Machiavellian intelligence or intellect factor. Reality shows and all that crap (goes along well with austerity economic policies). As the imitators strive to imitate the exceptional...but become more alike...resentment builds. And violence. Most of the info that flows has nothing to do with advancing an understanding of the world we live in or causes of war. Recommend reading about Rene Girard at the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Girard has IMO revolutionized what I call anthropology. There are atheist/agnostic "Girardians" too.
Families & divided houses. One finds on given geopolitical issues, that New Agers are ignorant. One finds with the very learned in terms of Realpolitik across the planet, that they write off guys like Rupert Sheldrake and Aurobindo with too much phony "realism." Of two such, I'd stress Sheldrake. Sheldrake represents hard science, but when he has theories he CALLS them "theories." They're extremely creative. But hip realists keep glorying in "refuting" one another, just as Jose Ortega y Gasset explained. The biggest things we've lost are hopes: eg 1)the hope of promoting appreciation of a variety of cultures 2)the hope of sifting common themes or greater truths from the "truths" of the past. Christopher Lasch explained in the 90s how the elites were abandoning the practice of philanthropy...that previously, for example, had supported both 1 & 2.
The young born into such lacks...or dearths...are greatly cheated. And they are tempted to try to remake society and laws in a desperate fashion...trying techniques that they believe might make up for the progressive institutions and creeds that went missing (they have to, as the resulting stupid polity accepts whole heartedly the craziest justifications for absurd governmental policies and war). It is the same with individuals whose fathers stepped out of their lives (as happened in mine; actually he made his choices such that my mother had no option but to boot him out of mine). But at the time when these cheated ones come to believe in whatever techniques or solutions...it is often, developmentally, an inauspicious time to do so. As the standard psychological model can make clear, "changing the world" at that point in life coincides with a pattern of rejecting the father's ways anyway (ineluctably and often without much recourse to reason). And then, years later, just like Dylan, we end up reflecting, "Ah but I was so much older then; I'm younger than that now." Well, the learned elites disappeared just like our fathers. Then, whether rightly or wrongly [ultimately probably both] on some days in some moments it seems our solutions panned out jackleg solutions.
When Jefferson had his hopes of opening up space in America for many in terms of gaining knowledge, IMO this early-on-guy was already a little too "realist" (in the sense I've described it above, for sure though I would have voted for him then). Determinism via Darwin reinforced this zeitgeist. Now some of us can plainly see that Darwin, for example, didn't have ALL the answers; but we have to watch our fellow and sister progressives continue waving the Darwin flag...like if you can't accept that "natural selection" explains everything you're a basket case which "progress" will dump into the big tank when entering Utopian Future Campground. We have a lot more information and evidence for a lot of things, true. But we've ended up not just without elites that know what to do with it, but without "intellectual" elites who know what to do with it as well.
Interpretations of the world we've inherited should be much, much more wide open. The educated Americans that were hoped to materialize would have made it so.
To whoever reminds me to pray I am grateful.
on truthout's facebk share of above article 7/25
People undoubtedly flash around their media in attempts to demonstrate that THEY (above the horde) live in a truer likeness to heroes worth imitating (I'm applying Rene Girard's ideas here). This includes the particular entertainment streaming. One can see heroes or models on the right aren't a real varied lot, so their imitators are becoming less varied themselves. Actually, the zeitgeist is meritocratically emphasizing smartness on both sides..."smart" phones eg. Principles of peace or ethics of peace or peaceful "intuition"getting sidelined by the creeping hype of a sort of Machiavellian intelligence or intellect factor. Reality shows and all that crap (goes along well with austerity economic policies). As the imitators strive to imitate the exceptional...but become more alike...resentment builds. And violence. Most of the info that flows has nothing to do with advancing an understanding of the world we live in or causes of war. Recommend reading about Rene Girard at the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Girard has IMO revolutionized what I call anthropology. There are atheist/agnostic "Girardians" too.
Families & divided houses. One finds on given geopolitical issues, that New Agers are ignorant. One finds with the very learned in terms of Realpolitik across the planet, that they write off guys like Rupert Sheldrake and Aurobindo with too much phony "realism." Of two such, I'd stress Sheldrake. Sheldrake represents hard science, but when he has theories he CALLS them "theories." They're extremely creative. But hip realists keep glorying in "refuting" one another, just as Jose Ortega y Gasset explained. The biggest things we've lost are hopes: eg 1)the hope of promoting appreciation of a variety of cultures 2)the hope of sifting common themes or greater truths from the "truths" of the past. Christopher Lasch explained in the 90s how the elites were abandoning the practice of philanthropy...that previously, for example, had supported both 1 & 2.
The young born into such lacks...or dearths...are greatly cheated. And they are tempted to try to remake society and laws in a desperate fashion...trying techniques that they believe might make up for the progressive institutions and creeds that went missing (they have to, as the resulting stupid polity accepts whole heartedly the craziest justifications for absurd governmental policies and war). It is the same with individuals whose fathers stepped out of their lives (as happened in mine; actually he made his choices such that my mother had no option but to boot him out of mine). But at the time when these cheated ones come to believe in whatever techniques or solutions...it is often, developmentally, an inauspicious time to do so. As the standard psychological model can make clear, "changing the world" at that point in life coincides with a pattern of rejecting the father's ways anyway (ineluctably and often without much recourse to reason). And then, years later, just like Dylan, we end up reflecting, "Ah but I was so much older then; I'm younger than that now." Well, the learned elites disappeared just like our fathers. Then, whether rightly or wrongly [ultimately probably both] on some days in some moments it seems our solutions panned out jackleg solutions.
When Jefferson had his hopes of opening up space in America for many in terms of gaining knowledge, IMO this early-on-guy was already a little too "realist" (in the sense I've described it above, for sure though I would have voted for him then). Determinism via Darwin reinforced this zeitgeist. Now some of us can plainly see that Darwin, for example, didn't have ALL the answers; but we have to watch our fellow and sister progressives continue waving the Darwin flag...like if you can't accept that "natural selection" explains everything you're a basket case which "progress" will dump into the big tank when entering Utopian Future Campground. We have a lot more information and evidence for a lot of things, true. But we've ended up not just without elites that know what to do with it, but without "intellectual" elites who know what to do with it as well.
Interpretations of the world we've inherited should be much, much more wide open. The educated Americans that were hoped to materialize would have made it so.
To whoever reminds me to pray I am grateful.
"The transition that needs to take place in those countries, but also in the United States, is to shift more towards domestic economy led growth, that is, wage-led growth that is rising wages, rising capacity of ordinary people to buy things within each economy. And that can be a new engine of growth." Robert Pollin
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=11951#.U8MUxeukmOU.facebook
http://www.alternet.org/comments/economy/world-financial-cup#disqus_thread
beyond george orwell's worst nightmare (facebook July 12th) https://www.facebook.com/AlterNetNews
http://www.alternet.org/culture/our-world-far-beyond-george-orwells-worst-nightmare
Sagan quote
https://www.facebook.com/Mediamatters/photos/a.10150313151781167.336053.26595441166/10151827354361167/?type=1&theater
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2004/08/how-soccer-explains-world
http://www.alternet.org/comments/civil-liberties/we-people-are-violent-and-filled-rage-nation-spinning-apart#disqus_thread
Resonate with your perspective. Makes a lot of sense, so thanks for putting it up. This is essentially, though, my 2 cents for everyone after Mackie's comment above.
"The term Realpolitik is sometimes used pejoratively to imply politics that are coercive, amoral, or Machiavellian." (Wikipedia)
Beyond meta-narratives (even if one endorses one), perhaps we could agree to carry on the critique (shake that finger) in regard to 1)global Realpolitik and 2)evidence of psychopathy on the part of our public servants caving to Wall Street, and on Wall Street itself.
Wasn't born "brilliant" as a scholar. Philosophy career didn't materialize. I returned to a few meta-narratives probably due to a memory of mom & dad's books on their shelves. Sort of hippies in their day, our living room lined with'em. I think Mackie is right about "spiritual condition," but how to talk about it in places like this?
"We are all conditioned, even (perhaps, especially) those of us who are trying to wake up." SuZieCoyote
Jacques Ellul said especially us too, I believe in 1948.
In the/a "war of all against all" [google with "Rene Girard"] there happens to be some real violence in regard to ones opinions, which carry the fruits of our information-journeys. Which is all we have to show for our struggles at the meritocratic universities. Christopher Lasch more or less said same about our warring ideological predilections (meta-narratives) in "The Revolt of the Elites." Yeah, you may say I'm stretching here, but it boils down to the same thing.
Experience and later years do astounding things to meta-narratives. Details they can't explain begin to jump out at you. I could wax long (and as much in Heraclitus-style as anyone) on how a couple went crashing in my life...experiences I could (if I let'em) allow me to endorse what Ken Wilber called aperspectival madness. They could allow me to fully embrace my friend's statements in regard to truth always being contextual. But regarding both poetry and pragmatism...neither will allow me to let go of the "spiritual" (sounds contradictory in regard to "pragmatism," I know). Wilber seems not to have found anything that got traction. Tolle said space is nothing, and turns out he's wrong on that. For all the breadth and genius of Aurobindo's mind, one source I came across related he smoked tremendous amounts of weed, an old source when it didn't matter [I don't oppose the option to do so].
Meta-narratives seem to fall down on integrating details, just like TOEs with respect to the finite 4-dimensional realm (or 10). But all the thinking the age has made available to us...and all the witnessing to whatever...I can't believe should go for naught. The fact is "spiritual" is entangled with "psychological"...Jung and Fromm for instance. We're letting insights of the latter two slip away, and it's not helping us. And I'm not here to hype my narrative; but I am here to hype branching out a bit with respect to commentators all of us may have a tough time pursuing, or even remembering...per E.F. Shumacher's "divergent thinking." A mob can go real wrong, as Fromm pointed out with respect to narcissistic traits (group narcissism); but in spite of how meta-narratives amazingly evaporate in time, there is no one who can convince me there isn't an evolution of same. That in a given era into which a soul lands a group of folks can't move into a little truer apprehension of things. Towards a little darshan (darśana). Towards what end the greater light is taking us, apparently we must go on without knowing.
"For instance, Americans are a frazzled, violent people not because they fail to read Jefferson or Emerson or wax poetic about Nathan Hale. Examine, for instance, the lack of leisure time of Americans (time off from work) or the job markets which cause people to move repeatedly which rends communities and families." Lord Dude
Yeah, this observation can't be stressed enough. The economic screws augment ignorance, and the ignorance in turn supports the prevailing economic paradigm (more austerity, shock doctrine, structural re-adjustment, plutocracy, corptocracy, corporate fascism). But how are the screws working once we've moved and things look good (for a while)? They're still turning, and I think Fromm and Girard could help us describe some of the psychological violence in the workplace. Yeah, all the shares re strikes sort of say it, but we could use a little more light on the matter. Let the blather roll.
"Marx was not right, it's not the material conditions it's the spiritual conditions." Mackie
We could address the conditions as psychological; that IMO would help. But we need something that describes the grass roots' trips as well.
"Dark Triad: Right wing Conservatives far more likely to be Sociopaths" by Juan Cole
http://www.juancole.com/2014/0...
This discussion, as it has gone down past Mackie's comment, strikes me as pretty insightful. Personally, I'd like for it to go on somewhere, whereas I know Alternet will wind it up relatively soon. Though it's already a bit "old" [and for all I know everyone's said all they wish to say], the subject's dire; so I ask, hosts, that you let it stay a while.
https://www.facebook.com/bendthearc/photos/a.335998593152420.77649.232404126845201/661291187289824/?type=1&theater
How do we know HMO's just wanna slide except where they're invested in hedgefunds with bets on, say, Viagra (covered)? Larger worries?---> "Some Congressional members like to point out that medical bankruptcies have been eliminated by the ACA/Obamacare, and that's just not true. Being sick while having shit insurance still means bill will accumulate and go unpaid, and people will still go bankrupt while swimming in debt and facing serious illness." shared on Michael Moore's page yesterday [A happy day-after-birthday to you, Carey!] http://donnasicko.blogspot.com/2014/07/freedom-from-what-my-post-sicko-musings.html
Is it any wonder? Saint Nick lived in the 4th century. Iron was expensive, wood burned, and bodies...into the Tiber. Yes, as always there's the "talk" icon/critique (upper left), but the article's got a passage from "The Annals." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacitus_on_Christ
My search: https://www.google.com/search?as_q=tacitus+crucifixtion&as_epq=&as_oq=annals+nero+gardens+gaius+horti+agrippinae+crucifixtion+crucifixtions+crucified&as_eq=media&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&lr=&cr=&as_qdr=all&as_sitesearch=&as_occt=any&safe=images&tbs=&as_filetype=&as_rights=&gws_rd=ssl
"The Sunni radicals are not a conventional army. There are no lines for the US to bomb, few convoys or other obvious targets. To the extent that their advance is a series of urban revolts against the government of PM Nouri al-Maliki, the US would end up bombing ordinary city folk." http://www.juancole.com/2014/06/myths-radical-advance.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook
scapegoaters anon
It's great you've offered your book in this format. Here in the states I was working hard to begin with, but now there are what ultimately amount to privatization pressures as well, not to mention "budget" pressures. Thus, sorry to say, reading time for me is limited. I can't go with non-dualism as far as many in what used to be known as the New Age movement. Ultimately, as Ramakrishna always said, Brahman and Shakti are one. With my cultural background, though, it's sometimes hard for example to see that God is a Mother as well as a Father. My self-educated mother could see this [how blessed I was to have had her], and I am seeing it gradually. The absolute non-dualists talk a great talk, but they overlook I think how, on some levels, there is difference between Brahman and Shakti (or Brahman & Kali); though, of course, for them it's a matter of maintaining there is no difference ultimately between elements like Yin phenomena and Yang phenomena. But there are levels on which they are not the same. I believe one can come to understand how important this is when one comes to see how pop [so to speak] non-dualism diverted many from studying basic psychological realities re ego and super-ego. I scanned down to your mention of Heidegger; though I started out with a philosophy degree, I am now a "working stiff," and there are some sutras owing to time constraints I must choose to leave completely alone. In that I guess I do take a Zen attitude, and the reason for me in regard to Heidegger's is what he did to Husserl. Didn't Heidegger have a relationship with Arendt? To me her writings seem more relevant!
Tynan made a good point prior to yours. If you don't think net land has turned a little sour, listen to this Jack Rasmus rundown on how the cyber-lords wanna turn all of America's education into THEIR OWN monopoly. http://prn.fm/category/archives/alternative-visions/#axzz26ySyu8Fl
Both camps blew up the great promises. Mainly those promises helped folks go into denial about the ramifications of off-shoring manufacturing (and merger layoffs)--we could all go into financial services. When the world clamoured for and bought our "instruments" they would improve their situation and we would stay on top. So many believed all this stuff that now the truth is gonna sound like it's from Mars.
Robert Pollin: "So we aren't seeing any significant growth throughout Europe, and therefore that export market is going to be weak. The Chinese economy, the Indian economy, the Brazilian economy, the stars of economic growth over the previous decade, have also slowed down. Those economies had grown largely on the basis of exports.
So there's only so many exports that every country can sell. The transition that needs to take place in those countries, but also in the United States, is to shift more towards domestic economy led growth, that is, wage-led growth that is rising wages, rising capacity of ordinary people to buy things within each economy. And that can be a new engine of growth." http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=11951
Coming into consciousness are recent cyber-sphere mutations, and Jack's June 14 show (at top this week) is IMO very to-the-point on this regard. Thanks, doc! http://prn.fm/category/archives/alternative-visions/#axzz26ySyu8Fl
How bout let's call the IMF to account (since they're hypocritically warning about inequality) and the whole globalized trade hegemony? If we demand shared resources and shared security, maybe we should demand a shift towards domestic economy led "growth" (in and for all nations)...wage-led growth.
Robert Pollin: "So there's only so many exports that every country can sell. The transition that needs to take place in those countries, but also in the United States, is to shift more towards domestic economy led growth, that is, wage-led growth that is rising wages, rising capacity of ordinary people to buy things within each economy. And that can be a new engine of growth."
fuller quote "So we aren't seeing any significant growth throughout Europe, and therefore that export market is going to be weak. The Chinese economy, the Indian economy, the Brazilian economy, the stars of economic growth over the previous decade, have also slowed down. Those economies had grown largely on the basis of exports.
So there's only so many exports that every country can sell. The transition that needs to take place in those countries, but also in the United States, is to shift more towards domestic economy led growth, that is, wage-led growth that is rising wages, rising capacity of ordinary people to buy things within each economy. And that can be a new engine of growth."
I'd guess the warrior intellectuals would like to cast us in a star role of the defeat, a defeat BRIC could eventually bring to bear. And make some bucks. No panacea, though, cause all trading blocs tend to end up murder. Less shipping is more economical as Schumacher maintained. "The Sunni radicals are not a conventional army. There are no lines for the US to bomb, few convoys or other obvious targets. To the extent that their advance is a series of urban revolts against the government of PM Nouri al-Maliki, the US would end up bombing ordinary city folk." http://www.juancole.com/2014/06/myths-radical-advance.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook
"So we aren't seeing any significant growth throughout Europe, and therefore that export market is going to be weak. The Chinese economy, the Indian economy, the Brazilian economy, the stars of economic growth over the previous decade, have also slowed down. Those economies had grown largely on the basis of exports. So there's only so many exports that every country can sell. The transition that needs to take place in those countries, but also in the United States, is to shift more towards domestic economy led growth, that is, wage-led growth that is rising wages, rising capacity of ordinary people to buy things within each economy. And that can be a new engine of growth." http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=11951
Yep, , I too vote we do the labor-instensive-thing again!
If we go back to Lasch we can figure out what happened. Symbolic analysts don't wanna work away from a desk. If lots more folks were doing practical things for civilization (a good goal as Gandhi pointed out), however, the lives of those currently working NOT at a desk would improve quite a bit quality-wise. It's frick'n tyranny. Dogma. Failed dogma. Al Gore is saying it. Astra Taylor is saying it. And today Andrew Leonard on Alternet is saying it (all the cyber utopians weren't libertarians though; to check Leonard's article see my second link).
"Indeed, Hopkins' initiative and ambition should be a model for our response to today's Great Recession. Hopkins' program, the Civil Works Administration (CWA), began operating on Nov. 9. He summoned governors and mayors to meet with him in Washington on Nov. 15 and submit proposals to put people to work. As the proposals came in, he approved them: 122 on Nov. 20, 109 on Nov. 21. By Nov. 26, he had approved 920 projects for Indiana alone, and 48,500 Indianans were already on the job, on the CWA's payroll, by that day.
'Ickes was concerned about the return on the taxpayers' investment,' Robert Sherwood writes in his 1948 biography Roosevelt and Hopkins. 'Hopkins did not give a damn about the return; his approach was that of a social worker who was interested only in getting relief to the miserable and getting it there quickly.'
By Christmas, the CWA was employing 2.6 million Americans. A few weeks later, Congress appropriated an additional $950 million, funding the expansion of the program to encompass a total of 4,264,000 workers. Thirteen million Americans had been unemployed at the start of November; by early February, that figure had dropped to 9 million." Harold Meyerson http://prospect.org/article/work-history-0
http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/death-libertarian-fantasy-why-dreams-digital-utopia-are-rapidly-fading-away
at Alternet
In Rene Girard's break down people imitate "model" persons. They actually want to appropriate for themselves the same desires of the laudible models, the same passion. But then he maintains a thing can happen wherein the models' similiarity to one another increases, and the group's behavior follows and becomes more homogeneous [I may be adding something here; he may maintain the models are limited in the first place, and imitation of them merely becomes increasingly better accomplished by people]. As <i>everyone</i> accomplishes this goal they are aiming for more completely, it can lead to rivalry of everyone against everyone.
What if this epidemic narcissism...or just mild traits of same...are causing us not to admire ourselves, but to admire how our "selves" reflect the likeness of such models, these...such archetypes, as it were? If that were true, then I have a guess in regard to the unconscious: It's our personal unconsciouses that intuit the unstated but growing same-qualities (traits) amongst all models...trendy micro-behaviors.
Mounting problems in society send us straight to the talking-heads, and the talking heads never devote enough time to the issues they purport to analyze. Thus the way they dialogue is very much "talking at." The whole personality modality of these talking heads would not be what it is at all without this "talking at" feature. So, mimesis (imitation) in our particular era goes counter to reasoning out issues, an essential process in democracy?
http://www.alternet.org/comments/education/results-are-america-dumb-and-road-getting-dumber#disqus_thread
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/24300-the-dark-money-machine-that-beat-eric-cantor
Appreciate your responses, mumblebrain & oneski, to vallehombre prior to mine (below).
Many spheres in American life are becoming more like American highways, places where it seems the morphic-field-template for hypervigilance exerts a powerful dominance. One has to look out for the crazies. The crazies seem to have a surplus of anxiety, and seem as though they are out to punish others (for same) in ways they do not consciously realize they are bringing to bear. Hypervigilance is now a palpable thing, and the great pretense of media is that nothing like this has arrived. It brings on a lack of civility. It brings on paranoia, and elicits hatred from every "progressive" demographic of the so-called meritocracy (even more than before).
If I haven't read Hedges in a while, I do a Google Advanced Search for the most recent Youtube. Found myself on shaky ground the other day, questioning one of his points somewhat. "We don't need another critique..." (but action instead, etc). Personally, I wouldn't give up on any that were right-on. Anything ancillary these days can't hurt. To me social criticism hasn't lately really produced much in the sense of a Fromm wave or Vance Packard wave (I know, the sourcers are now influenced more by ideological prejudice). Of course, Hedges has his own wave, which AFAIC is very right-on. But I think some really influential stuff from "social criticism" doesn't make it to the hard left limelight or the hard right limelight, writings by Tolle for example, or John Bradshaw. Probably I wouldn't write here at all if I hadn't found at least some little seed of same in the recent past "Dark Triad: Right wing Conservatives far more likely to be Sociopaths" http://www.juancole.com/2014/0...
Also suspect "The Tao of Leadership" is pretty heavy...and the contributions of some Rene Girard break-downers.
social criticism in general
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Reporting for duty (I think). Just discovered this blog. Looks heavy and promising.
I see Ian said on 5/30 "Either our bodies produce consciousness or they do not."
As a pretty dyed in the wool Sheldrakian, I can veiw stem cells, for instance, as antennas. From there, one can infer a lot I guess. Yes, when one's thought a bit about Rupert Sheldrake's hypotheses, one can align somewhat with "evidence from design." Throughout the years I've taken my main evidence from <i>getting through trials</i>...trials when the concern of another showed up...others. But I have an old habit of noting how design supports this other more interventionary evidence.
Recently, out of everything I've heard or read, Amit Goswami talking on the "tangled hierarchy" keeps coming back to mind. Yes, lately I've been deeming this concept just about the most profound thing around, outside the heart's reasons (which have always been around, Pascal). This is because someone who was in my life has gone on. Actually, we both saw "What the Bleep" together. Now praying to saints makes sense to me. What seems to be especially important to me personally, though, are the breeches, or the distance (some might consider me tied up with too many shades of dualism). Mark Woodhouse's "energy monism" makes some sense to me, as it acknowledges the distance by degrees. Be interested in hearing anyone's thoughts on this.
Don't know the real extent of the debate, but just searching today I found someone's pretty eloquent summation of the view out there that's opposite mine.
"How he [Godel] gets there I don't yet fully understand but his conclusion seems to be that our individual consciousness is not exclusive to us, and that bits of our consciousness also reside in the brains of others whom we know. Conversely, bits of their consciousness reside in our own brain, perhaps as influences* on our thinking (my interpretation). If we extend this concept to the current thread, I suppose you could argue that we live on through the minds of others whom we know."
http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showthread.php?p=63977946
I can believe the "bits" may reside in other's fields, and/or that given cells or neuron arrays can access such. Guess from the POV of another tradition, you could look at these "bits" as fragments or "samskara"s, but that these are all that's left of us further along doesn't tally up with writings that have impressed me. Aurobindo's idea, for example, of the "psychic body" (soul) returning as a "seed" makes sense to me, and (combined with Sheldrake's ideas on morphological development) how it re-develops [grows] in each sojourn. "Monad" in a way lends too much simplicity to the reality of what a soul is, but in another sense (don't ask me which) it seems appropriate. My sense is that care of my soul seems to mean insuring that it continues travelling where it is supposed to go. Burn up as much karma as possible to get there (to that end, even walking into a bonfire too big demonstrates good intentions). Burn up enough so your perception isn't clouded when the Ground Luminosity appears. If the bonfire's a shortcut...alright by me.
So, we are watching the open carry movement's footage? Here's my two cents. Like a lot of people, I guess, I struggle with the "why."
"Girard also considers that prior to the scapegoating mechanism, communities go through a process he calls a ‘crisis of differences’. Mimetic desire eventually makes every member resemble each other, and this lack of differentiation generates chaos." http://www.iep.utm.edu/girard/
How are we becoming alike? Each camp is losing faith in the civility of the other. Each camp has incomplete knowledge of what the other has experienced. Each camp emulates promulgators of doctrine...the party position (talking heads). For both camps, the promulgators are heard in short clips. The clips or youtubes don't provide enough time for a developed argument. For this we can blame media.
What we don't know about each other's experience has to do, I believe, with doubting the other knows anything about the economic hardship "my family" has experienced. This is the thing at root. Sure, there are threats in various locales, and some liberals in the burbs may not yet have come to see this. But each camp has its generalities about what's to blame for the economic hardship (which is experienced as cruelty). We each have our "doctrines" or "theory," and each has their spouters of their camp's theory. But the theories on both sides are not well developed. The conservatives blame unions and lazy workers which forced outsourcing jobs of work. And gov squandering resources, which, for instance, vets are discovering gov can do. Anyway, conservatives have their preachers of the aforementioned blame assignings, who are lame. Liberals blame greed, but liberals have gone to sleep and do not see, for instance, how defense contractors have influenced "news" such that interventions everywhere under the sun seem natural. They haven't seen how conservative forces have crept in. Thus, the "duopoly" as Nader calls it. Citizens have laid off studying matters. In many, many, many cases they haven't had the time wherein their minds were collected, as work atmospheres (attributable to corporations minimizing costs) have burned them out. Liberal talking heads went hand over fist supporting this screwball meddling in Ukraine. It seems to me when either side wants to flesh out a talking head's doctrine...they are imitating models, and the models are becoming more alike. Nobody who wants to bomb Assad...or refrain from bombing the dude...can develop reasons in a few minutes. Yet our talking heads have developed styles of doing so (or ways of appearing as if they are doing so). There's sort of a rhythmic little banter if there's a any semblance of point counterpoint, and everyone laughs at the end as if life is merry even if no argument can be demonstrated as superior. There are trappings of knowing everything, and being humorous in all situations. Actually, the wonk trip was one liberals should have noticed getting a little weird 20 yrs ago when Christopher Lasch began examining the myth they accepted whole hog regarding jobs outsourcing...."financial services" would take manufacturing's place.
posted 5-30 ROSource
Not one like? There, for sure, go pearls before the distracted (where are they off to I wonder?). ROS remains relevant because of input like this. That's its value. Thus, ROS is, AFAICS, one of the few sites that's doing what Thrun talks about doing...online.
Thank you, hilde45, for challenging those assumptions.
Yes, and thank you too, Sebastian Thrun, for the time.
The weird thing is there's enough computing power around the world to plan and implement suggestions like the ones here http://www.dollarsandsense.org...
So why keep on with a world based on something like an endless Chinese Civil Service Exam...and its bilking purveyors? While the entire system of which it is a part never shows a single sign of moving things in a more labor-intensive direction (save McDonalds), never a sign that there will be more jobs that can utilize ones talents in the production of something necessary...why not? Why not depart from this elaborate ritual of delusion, and set a course for sustainable economy, meaningful jobs without guaranteed wage and benefit decreases (given rising prices), and have done with this you-retrain-according-to-our-next-bubble-obsession economy? A "New U," for example, could develop a software program that allocates energy resources based on Schumacher's appropriateness. First generally for the world, then work it out to smaller locales [imagine it would rule out shipping American LNG to the Ukraine in a very short interval of time]. Find a state, province, county or town that's willing to try it out. The program would assess local labor resources and labor needs, compute how many more nurses, teachers, and vet counselors are needed (and the cost of their training)...and that is what its public servants would arrange payment for, probably not too many more strip malls and/or horse racing subsidies. Oh yes, "planning," that subversive word. Fact of the matter is, though, that keeping on with redundancy via "competition" will keep on with maximum planet wastage. Big problems need big solutions; gotta do a little planning. Even with a lot of planning we'd still be heading for crisis.
"In other words, the economy's imperative toward efficiency is more important than the 'horizontal' need for a world of teachers and students, learning together."
So well said. I think there is quite a rising tide of folks that do indeed reject this notion of efficiency. As for growth, I'm pretty sure that we in this rising tide view the old sense of the numbers germane not relevant to a habitable world.
College is time for philosphy. The opposite is a brainwashing system that can punish dissidents with automated spys on Windows 8 and IBM servers. Entrenched. This time there has to be a New U that gears ones philosophy for the long haul. All kinds of relentless reason and compromise, less stress on demands. There's a place for demanding, but students have the time and resources to learn how to do the other thing. All would-be scholars with half a brain today would like to know one thing for sure...how sociopath corporate raiders and hedge fund managers can hypnotize the masses and make them believe it's their philosophy that's enlightened. Students today IMO (and I stress in my opinion on this) have the advantage of what I will call ananthropology or an anthropological frame on the scene to break it down. A "New U" could put it to use.
If there are impediments to compromise, they need to be examined. Liberal blind spots need to be discovered. If privilege bestows a blind spot, it needs to be examined, just as Christopher Lasch examined such. For me, media's hype of the new conceptual world quantum mechanics has brought us remains almost 100% hypocrisy. Why, you ask? So-called liberal media doesn't know enough science to face squarely the challenges Rupert Sheldrake, for instance, has posed. And this isn't rocket science, isn't quantum mechanics. It's biology. If we listened to Sheldrake, and ended up talking a little more humbly, maybe we'd be standing on the kind of less omniscient ground many conservatives stand on (who do not claim to know how the Great Spirit created what S/He created). Yes, many "liberals" will try to "balance" criticism of GMOs. Many went gung ho behind bombing Serbia, and to this day have no earthy idea what someone like Ramsey Clark had to say about the thing. We have blind spots too.
One of my profs recommended Popper to me. For years I felt some guilt that I could have been a better activist if I'd read more of the dude. It was my fault I didn't keep up with that prof, look him up and rap down, among other things...some Popper. Was there really time for such reading though? Dunno for sure now. I wasn't the model student. Not the model achiever. The times extolled "thinking"...philosophy. And I could, like Dylan I thought, pursue philosophy on my own if I got weary of the hallowed halls and dropped out for spells framing houses.
Such a short time we have. But when we're young and strong we think we can recoup and retrain after whatever trajectories that don't pan out. This generation faces the same hard challenge mine did. It must become conservative enough to realize that an economy that insists on selling texts for re-training too often is gonna end up an existential threat to the quality of ones life. Cut loose in a whirlwind of desires, potentials and possibilities (by default education and default media), the young, who hardly can achieve focus beyond the fog of our amusement zeitgeist, must, when they have no confidence derived from struggling yrs to earn...from somewhere find the confidence to anticipate where they can fit in...plus begin activating pronto for some homeostasis in the economy without which they will fit nowhere. Sustainable, rational homeostasis.
Anyway, regarding career decisions, "New U" IMO should require all students at the beginning of each year to listen to the late John Heider's words on interpreting signs of what constitutes an "emergency" (in which one has to act yesterday in response to some perception, or all hell well break loose in your life).http://www.humanmedia.org/cata...
Of course, while students have some years to determine what they're going to do, the world generally is experiencing an emergency. Students have some time and some strength, and, as we are in a global crisis, perhaps a New U could stress "sunlight," and support students in more fully comprehending whatever it lands on. We're in July 1929, folks, and a New U would be hip to the fact.
If students know how things like the following work (which we don't)...with a little sunlight...perhaps they can oppose them more resolutely [yeah, I'll quote Rasmus just as I did over in the Picketty discussion]:
Manipulation "of global financial assets and speculative financial trading, on the one hand. That is, from return on capital from global stock & bond trading, foreign exchange speculation, interest, real estate, commodity futures, structured finance and derivatives in myriad proliferating forms, rents, and so forth—to mention just a short list. This is just money making money and doesn’t involve..."
OK, many of us are in a rush these days and possibly end up only going through what's not clipped and stuck in curled up "see more" dimensions. One could get opposite impressions re who is championing exactly what. For instance, nothing at all wrong with the way you wrote it, but if you Steve had put your last paragraph first, I would have known you weren't barking up some defense of the system 24 days ago (in disbelief that comments have stopped I had to go over things here a little more thoroughly). The Disqus format here, Kunal, is none too shabby; but, likewise, the order of posts combined with posts omitted can end up confusing [don't ask me how to change it; the lack of exact times and dates <i>does</i> mean less clutter]. An example is how it appears above [or it may end up below!] you were responding to comments I made about <i>my</i> mother's investments.
My particular bias is that many common assumptions re what our economy functions to accomplish are mistaken, my notion of the "truth" being that almost all facets of it have been stamped or overlaid with some kind of hegemonic technique...or tribute system (tantamount to mafia protection fees). You could assume the big incentives, for instance, have relevance somewhere...say, in catering to or "serving" the wealthy [like selling'em tulips in the midst of a tulip craze]; but actually, <i>whomever</i> whatever CEO is serving, if some potential for profit is detected...it's assumed under the Trump-Ayn-Rand frame that that means you plop some tribute-hegemony on top the thing. Coach's salaries (whom are they "serving"?). HMO profits. Monsanto. And on and on. That every economic phenomenon in our system is overlaid with this tribute thing goes back I think to Jack Ramus' sort of summary remarks I quoted above/earlier (they're summary in nature, while citizens need a more detailed understanding of how the extractive mechanisms work):
Manipulation <i>'of global financial assets and speculative financial trading, on the one hand. That is, from returns on capital from global stock & bond trading, foreign exchange speculation, interest, real estate, commodity futures, structured finance and derivatives in myriad proliferating forms, rents, and so forth—to mention just a short list. This is just money making money and doesn’t involve...'</i>
Writers are <i>definitely serving someone</i> who keep circling around this thing to get a better picture...
"Economics Professor Costas Lapavitsas says that capitalists have learned how to make huge profits without producing anything useful" http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/23942-the-financialization-of-big-business
IMO there are WAY too few pieces written along these lines today. When I ran into "The Hidden Persuaders" whatever number of generations ago, I guess I thought...everything would be explained. Can't blame New Agers for focusing on the "right" states of mind or consciousness, but that focus ended up on a very large field of phenomena. Then, surprise, I found myself the old fogey that still desired things to be explained in terms of psychology. Really, I don't find much out there with Google's "Advanced Search," but I did find this recently. Below is a segment of said doc I found in sort of rough draft format, though somehow a lot of its pages, such as they are, ended up at this site (there are a number of pages, and they strike me as potentially real insightful).
"Malignant aggression or violence does not arise out of the defense of life. It arises out of the many pathological character orientations: narcissistic character, necrophilic character, or incestuous character. It is compensatory violence arising from unlived life, stifled and frustrated human growth, and regressive orientations. It arises out of a narcissistic disconnection with others, narcissistic rage or vengeance, an anal-sadistic drive to control, humiliate or destroy, or a fascination with force. Although he does not explain violence in these simplistic terms, the following scenario arises from Fromm’s analysis: Pathological leaders and organizations with regressive syndromes often pull in populations of normal people into the violence. Fromm describes Hitler as having a classic, pathological narcissistic, necrophilic and incestuous orientation. Hitler had a fascination for corpses, was a pathological narcissist and had an incestuous orientation to nation and race. Hitler and other pathological leaders pulled the entire nation into the worst forms of violence of the 20 th century." http://citation.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/3/6/0/7/7/pages360776/p360776-12.php
Everyone is writing a TV or movie script. Call it schlock if you like; nevertheless Fox, soaps, and "reality shows" are sourcing THE ritual of our age.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10154133344325296&set=a.259991295295.300314.69761195295&type=1&theater
Appreciate your style, especially digressions/unpackings of terms/phrases. Interviews with Michael Hudson seem not to have time for this [though they're great]. Same with Mark Blyth. The Piketty tome got my hopes up, but, as usual…waiting for something to happen doesn’t get it. To talk about economics with anyone, one first has to go over media’s generalizations (blarney) to retain familiarity, and also to go over ones own frame. Your PRN archives help with both, as my frame seems close to where you would like to go. I could develop my own frame I guess simply with refutations of media’s generalizations. Seems to be all there’s energy for. The big moloch’s got us all…Casino Nation motif touched on by Jackson Browne and…you. We all got intelligent with the Silicon Valley gizmos, and allowed in big hopes in the days of that boost (I personally never believed financial services could replace industry). So we all became mini-wonks, and things got too competitive. Later, austere to boot (which I guess could have been a natural following phase according to Girard…mid-warring or post war). In the austere milieu there’s not much energy for boning up. Had to look up Capitalist Reproduction; before the net used to listen to Radio Havana Cuba, but was never a true blue Marxist. IMO shock doctrine’s gonna have to be overthrown by informed people. REAL knowledge appeals, and I believe we CAN disseminate it. A certain “freeness,” though, like yours, is gonna have to characterize it…as academe has bowed down to the quants for too long.
Recommend actually reading the following article first, but below I offer my outline of same, unfortunately not quite finished. "ECONOMISTS DISCOVER INEQUALITY" BY JACK RASMUS 5/13
http://prn.fm/economists-discover-inequality-jack-rasmus/
Everything emboldened in this outline was emboldened by me. Things in italics indicate my own immediate, less-studied, and/or non-professional counter opinions.
"Explaining inequality—not just reporting it—requires an analysis of how these various ‘forms of wages’ have been reduced in recent decades and especially since 2009. That deeper analysis leads to explanations of trends of destruction of unions and thus the higher union wage, the growing trend of outright ‘wage theft’ by businesses, the avoidance of paying overtime pay by reclassifying millions of workers as ‘exempt’ instead of hourly paid, the atrophying of the real minimum wage, the wage reduction effects of free trade, the shift to contingent labor, and all the reasons why the total unemployed (in and out of the labor force) are rising steadily and are chronically longer term jobless."
"The tax system changes are but one of a ‘three legged stool’ of income inequality forces at work."
<u>The Three Legs</u>
1. Wage reduction
2. Increased "income" generated by wealthiest households
3. Changes in the tax system
<i>I would emphasize, in addition, two other factors
4. Removing (off shoring) large sectors of production, enhancing profit margins...removing wage earning opportunities
5. Failure to anticipate appropriate & profitable products
6. Psychology-wise or zeitgeist-wise. In the "casino nation" ethos, lady luck replaces even the infamous abundant living doctrine, and somehow bestows "merit" (on, among all imitators out there, the worthiest...those willing to gamble).</i>
Saez focused a little on trends with respect to trends in senior executive pay in business. Such trends, however, "represent more an internal transfer of potential capital income’s rising share from stockholders and bondholders of a corporation to active CEO and senior management" versus focusing on "how the overall share of incomes from Capital in general is rising at the expense of workers’ earned incomes, i.e. wages and salary incomes—and especially the sub-category of hourly wages and weekly earnings for the roughly 110 million production and non-supervisory workers in the U.S."
Rasmus notes Saez and Picketty have elucidated the fact that the top 20 have been doing better continuously through the "half dozen or so" recessions since 1980 while the bottom 80% "working class households are stagnating at best, or actually declining in terms of real wages, real earnings, and real disposable income...getting poorer over the longer term."
<u>2 ways the 20%'s increasing income is generated</u>
1. Manipulation "of global financial assets and speculative financial trading, on the one hand. That is, from returns on capital from global stock & bond trading, foreign exchange speculation, interest, real estate, commodity futures, structured finance and derivatives in myriad proliferating forms, rents, and so forth—to mention just a short list. This is just ‘money making money’ and doesn’t involve..."
2. "...shifting income from workers by reducing their real wages, cutting their health care and retirement benefits, stealing all their productivity gains, and the many other ways their corporations shift income from the working class to themselves."
</b>Refuting the Happy Recovery-trend Hype.</b> "Government data reporting on ‘wages and compensation’ in general include salaries and benefits for CEOs and senior managers, whose ‘wage’ and salary increases may be significant and thus ‘bias upward’ the total average for wages and benefits in general."
1. "...deferred wages previously paid in the form of workers’ pensions and healthcare contributions that are reclaimed and taken back."
2. future wages "reduced by means of issuance of credit and debt to workers"
3. Social wages reduced in ones "account." "Workers pay into the social security fund in expectation of a claim on that payment when retired. A reduction in social security monthly benefits and/or a rise in co-pays by retirees for Physician or Prescription drug coverage represents a reclaiming of part of the social wage previous paid."
4. Inflation. "US government inflation indices have been ‘smoothed out’ over recent decades by introducing statistical estimation techniques that reduce the volatility of price inflation."
<u>Causes in accelerating corporate profits</u>
1. "...manipulation of financial asset prices by investors, by creating new forms of money and credit, and recycling money capital to create still more money capital where nothing is actually being produced except for money capital."
2. Profits from making goods and providing non-financial services. "Here profits grow by either selling more goods, raising prices of the goods sold, or reducing costs of producing those goods—especially labor costs. Since the June 2009 recession, the data show profits from production quickly escalated to record levels in the US, exceeding the historic high pre-recession 2007 levels. But this profits escalation has not primarily resulted from selling more output or at higher prices. Today’s record pre-tax corporate profits are primarily the outcome of the growth of ‘profit margins’; that is, profits generated from reduction of operating costs, in particular labor costs and therefore by raising productivity and/or reducing wages and compensation."
I came here by way of acoarecovery.wordpress.com.
“Ego is the way by which Spirit perceives reality from one place and one moment. Ego is how Spirit has uniqueness of experience. Ego is also how Spirit expresses in a particular way that is unlike any other.”
IMO you have really put an astute POV in very direct and understandable words. What I was thinking recently was that some mammalian brains seem to have ended up as sort of focusing appendages for soul entities (and these brains, along with their associated bodies, could not survive without each one supporting an ego). As to “why” Spirit needs to focus…or needs uniqueness…weirdly for me it’s only relatively offbeat sources that seem to make any sense. To be real brief about it: Origen plus Edgar Cayce’s version of Aurobindo’s “involution.” I should qualify that, to me, Cayce and the voice that came through him seemed to constitute a dynamic that had its own set of inherent “communication problems.” Another thing about the “why” of it–I sense this biggest question is finally the place in my whole long life where I probably should stop speculating. At any rate, I don’t think I’ll ever end up inclined to believe “bodies” had to be created for Spirit to obtain this uniqueness…due to “cosmic boredom.”
It may be true that we can attain more wealth if we desire it, but at this point the only way I see it possible is if more of us call our public servants to account, such that they put controls on the narcissists who have gained so much influence in determining the course of our economy. Another ego chore I guess.
It’s staring you straight in the face. It’s another Wall Street, and the people themselves (like Elizabeth Warren) are telling you on this one...don’t keep delivering more trappings of poverty to more Americans. Don’t keep driving in that inequality wedge. They’ll remember it if tiering’s allowed, just as they remember America’s demise with mortgaged backed securities and AIG. Just as the money egregiously CREATED (dollars created) by private banks ostensibly to add to our economy the assets of new homes ended up only “building” bonuses & soaking tax payers (and inflating our dollars)...so added fees for what’s default now...will be adding expense for NO NEW VALUE added to the American economy. Don’t bow to Verizon and Comcast. The legacy will be remembered if you do, and will not be a feather in your cap when it’s reform time.
facebook 4/24
"We are able to relax into the idea that there are aspects of our becoming that belong to a higher power. We have no control over them and we leave them to God. This is not a stance of passivity, but of peace. We belong to God in life and in death." from "come out and unbind: lazarus, new life, and the easter story" by Brittany Deininger
Mom would say, "Look at the green!" Today I realized: wherever I could stand near a deciduous "beauty strip" in spring, all such places would be the same place.
Thanks for your answer below, Kunal. Anticipating your next answer down there too.
Looking forward to rest of the Listen. Sounds, Chris, like you know how to pronounce the name! Looks like the book and all the talk could lead to proliferation of some important information, and to something positive. There's some agreement amidst some astute comments below...encouraging. Don't mean to hog space, but there are some general unschooled impressions I carry around that I'm feeling bout ready to unload. Probably already realized by most here commenting, but I'm ready anyway.
I don't earn that much, and I'm not a prof. But I have done some reading and, in this era...listening.
An MIC does it's true does create jobs. But an MIC whipping up blowback is incurring costs (future costs). If gov allocates money for thus and such, and hires contractors...that creates jobs. But if the state of FL pays a contractor firm millions for software to purge felons and ex-felons from voter registries...whilst it payed its own employees thousands for same just prior...well, one can see the multiplied costs to wage earners, and in the case we know about...to democracy itself. If our Fed gov is paying contractors over $500 a day to destroy hard drives in Iraq...same deal. If it's paying a contractor to build vinyl emergency trailers, when it should be contracting for tents and solar powered fans...same deal. I believe James Galbraith has written about this.
What I've been convinced of is that merely redistributing the one percent's scam income, or the taxes that should be derived from same...wouldn't fix all our problems. I also sort of believe that there aren't enough infrastructure repair jobs to adequately address our unemployment problem. I do think, though, that when gov tries to move the nation generally towards "growth" with stimuli and/or allocations...that a principle of observable product should be brought to bear, and that some sunlight up front be allowed right where ye olde sweet heart contractor deals are likely to go down. Even if infrastructure repair wouldn't provide enough jobs, there'd be a product. There'd be value added to the economy. If the state of PA takes 1.5 billion from schools and at the same time givessaid amount to race horse owners...then there is very small yield associated in terms of product (value added to the economy, which in turn adds, AFAICS, value to our currency) and small yield in terms of creating jobs as well, not to mention the immediate valuable services to students and families of students subtracted from the overall economy.
It may seem crazy to write this, but manual work in fields (organic fields) would add value to the economy, and would add many, many jobs. It would be a good thing IMO if labor advocates in theory and environment advocates in theory...come someday to re-evaluate "symbolic analyst" professions in terms of they're being the only ones with any meaning. If you're for single payer, then you should be equally for increased Social Security. If there's adequate (and I mean real adequate) Social Security, and there's single payer...and affordable housing also [the latter presupposing adequate controls on banks], then actually a great deal of honor could be bestowed once again on the kind of work this country was founded on to a big extent (no, not to suggest all the cotton early on was produced by small family farms). I also recognize the fact that while hands-on care giving isn't a super "observable" product, it is beyond a shadow of a doubt a product that adds value to the overall economy. Yes, some "service" jobs do add value, but our wonks seem to have lost track of which ones.
Looking forward to rest of the Listen. Sounds, Chris, like you know how to pronounce the name!
Already discussion of the book's led me...ultimately...to some Saez graphs too. Looks like all the talk could lead to proliferation of some important information, and to something positive. There's some agreement amidst some astute comments over at the "Piketty Primer"...encouraging.
I don't earn that much, and I'm not a prof. But I have done some reading. I'd like to try to share just some general conditions/situations I'm aware of.
An MIC does it's true does create jobs. But an MIC whipping up blowback is incurring costs (future costs). If gov allocates money for thus and such, and hires contractors...that creates jobs. But if the state of FL pays a contractor firm millions for software to purge felons and ex-felons from voter registries...whilst it payed its own employees thousands for same just prior...well, one can see the multiplied costs to wage earners, and in the case we know about...to democracy itself. If our Fed gov is paying contractors over $500 a day to destroy hard drives in Iraq...same deal. If it's paying a contractor to build vinyl emergency trailers, when it should be contracting for tents and solar powered fans...same deal. I believe James Galbraith has written about this.
What I've been convinced of is that merely redistributing the one percent's scam income, or the taxes that <i>should</i> be derived from same...wouldn't fix all our problems. I also sort of believe that there aren't enough infrastructure repair jobs to adequately address our unemployment problem. I do think, though, that when gov tries to move the nation generally towards "growth" with allocations...that a principle of observable product should come to bear, and that some sunlight up front be allowed right where ye olde sweet heart contractor deals are likely to go down. Even if infrastructure repair wouldn't provide enough jobs, there'd be a product. There'd be value added to the economy. If the state of PA takes 1.5 billion from schools and at the same time <i>gives</i> said amount to race horse owners...then there is very small yield associated in terms of product (value added to the economy, which in turn adds, AFAICS, value to our currency) and small yield in terms of creating jobs as well, not to mention the immediate valuable services to students and families of students <i>subtracted</i> from the economy.
It may seem crazy to write this, but manual work in fields (organic fields) would add value to the economy, and would add many, many jobs. It would be a good thing IMO if labor advocates in theory and environment advocates in theory...come someday to relinquish their conditioned sense of entitlement to "symbolic analyst" roles in our society. If you're for single payer, then you should be equally for <i>increased</i> Social Security. If there's adequate (and I mean real adequate) Social Security...and affordable housing [the latter presupposing adequate controls on banks], then actually a great deal of honor could be bestowed once again on the kind of work this country was founded on to a big extent. I also recognize the fact that while hands-on care giving isn't a super "observable" product, it is beyond a shadow of a doubt a product that adds value to the overall economy. Yes, some "service" jobs do add value, but our wonks seem to have lost track of which ones.
Wow, that last thing I sent you needed re- editing. The thoughts were still overppowering me. Here it is again-->
On the way to work yesterday (in the dark without many cars on the road at the stoplight) I found myself thankful for the place in which I grew up. I don't know how I earned...or ended up needing...such a place. In this setting I remember some big mistakes. No doubt some of those mistakes taught me something about keeping a lid on things springing up out of the unconscious. And no doubt, others cumulatively racked up reasons for the place of my next sojourn (unless by some miracle I get off the wheel). Directions towards such places have commenced more than once, for better and for worse. "For worse" directions have been altered, I know. Yes, such embarkings have begun before in this sojourn, and have thankfully ended up re-directed. Such embarkings can be altered if whatever momentum toward whatever place becomes...unbound. Yet some directions remain bound. And these latter combined vectors may push me to another place where what I valued this time around...will be harder to re-crystalize as soon...in other places. Or so it would seem. Because the most valuable truths were always possible in a "house" built out of truths seen prior. If there's one counterfeit "truism" that successfully distracts, then a setting must be found to unlearn (or unbind) that counterfeit "truism." If a real truth had remained supplanting it, that real one may have been the necessary ridge pole for the house in which a VERY GREAT truth may have been born. At any rate, regarding all REAL truths...all such real truths having come prior in ones life remain inherent in the new child-truth born amidst them. So, in the case of distraction...the re-re-crystalizing is put off for a time. All through our life the re-crystalizings are waiting to happen. And distractions postpone them. Or so it would seem.
Just like the place in which I am in this sojourn but may not be in the next...so I found myself thankful for THIS MIND. I do not know how much of its workings are accomplished by neurons, or which of its functions are most greatly assisted by neurons. I do not know how much of its workings are accomplished in an "aura" inhabitating perhaps a dimension close in nature to that of the "morphic field." Yet the neurons are temporary. The mind-aura too may be a temporary construct. The combination of both with its unique take on things (somewhat unique, ever leaning to the universal however) are a temporary team too. Yet some more permanent part of me gives thanks for these present appendages.
"Tell me what is the soul of a man...As far as I can see ain't nothing but a burnin light" Blind Willie Johnson
"For in Him we live and move and have our being." Paul the apostle
When I put these two remarks together, I question how dependent that light is on the Great Spirit. At the stoplight I realized there will be no dissecting of Paul's statement that's final. Not in my life. Something about it, though, hit me as real. There is indeed some kind of divine natural gas the burnin light's dependent on. I guess you might call it the divine "ether," which however photon/waves are not in need of in terms of a medium. But the burnin light's in need of it evidently.
On the way to work yesterday (in the dark without many cars on the road at the stoplight) I found myself thankful for the place in which I grew up. I don't know how I earned...or ending up needing...such a place. In this setting I remember some big mistakes. No doubt some of those mistakes taught me something about keeping a lid on things springing up out of the unconscious. And no doubt, others cumulatively racked up reasons for the place of my next sojourn (unless by some miracle I get off the wheel). Directions towards such places have commenced more than once, for better and for worse. "For worse" directions have been altered, I know. Yes, such embarkings have begun before in this sojourn, and have thankfully ended up re-directed. Such embarkings can be altered if whatever momentum toward whatever place becomes...unbound. Yet some directions remain bound. And these combined vectors may push me to another place where what I valued here...will be harder to re-crystalize...than in other places. Because the most valuable truths were always possible in a "house" built out of truths seen prior. If there's one false truth that successfully distracts, then a setting must be found to unlearn (or unbind) that false truth. If a real truth had remained supplanting it, that real one may have been the necessary ridge pole for the house in which a VERY GREAT truth might have been born. At any rate, regarding all REAL truths...all such real truths having come prior in ones life remain inherent in the new child-truth born amidst them. So, in the case of distraction...the re-re-crystalizing is put off for a time. All through our life the re-crystalizings are waiting to happen. And distractions postpone them.
Just like the place in which I am in this sojourn but may not be in the next...so I found myself thankful for THIS MIND. I do not know how much of its workings are accompished by neurons, or which of its functions are most greatly assisted by neurons. I do not know how much of its workings are accomplished in an "aura" inhabitating perhaps a dimension close in nature to that of the "morphic field." Yet the neurons are temporary. The mind-aura too may be a temporary construct. The combination of both with the combination's unique take on things (somewhat unique, ever leaning to the universal however) are a temporary team too. Yet some more permanent part of me gives thanks for these present appendages.
In my last comment when I accused talking heads of attempting to speak Greenspanese on their own (and some economists), I didn't mean a guy like Ross Perot hadn't been <i>too hopeful</i> in terms of what he thought he could get across in the "language of the people." The language of the people is the medium in which I want to hear the message, but it's gotta be forged a little over the'ol anvil (some effort required).
For sure, if there's not a degree of digression, subtlety, and the anecdotal, then those of us who've read a little aren't gonna believe we're dealing with someone who's done likewise [although thankfully the anti-fracking movement and the anti-GMO movement are demonstrating populisms wherein folks without degrees can be pretty hip to what's happen'n].
Judging by this Huff Po youtube I'm linking here, Piketty, thus far, impresses me as an economist <i>fully</i> backed by the data. So, his "scientificness," one would think, shouldn't be subject to too much ridicule...ridicule that will endure anyway [some graphs included]. Yeah, and his discourse includes those elements I just mentioned, the kind you expect with that French acumen that comes along with its gifted bearers. Regarding that after-the-wall-Russian-experience I mentioned in my last comment, around 15:32 you have to listen carefully to what Piketty is saying. To his credit he talks about "markets" like a scientist of economics. He begins talking as though the event exploded possibilites, but what that leads into is an implication about unwarranted idealism. For me, there could have been a bit more direct allusion to the chaos, anarchy, and looting that went on, but...oh well. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XC_SdUvMBUc
I would hope that he's also researched data to justify what kind of "growth" is appropriate in the situation in which we find ourselves today. Of course, such would cross over into environmental data a bit. So far, Thom Hartmann is the only guy I've come across who is mentioning another CCC. Some may disagree, but IMO <i>we just aren't going to find or create what's appropriate in terms of more jobs..."approprate technology" in the Schmacharian sense...by resorting to the shunt-to-the-dark-satanic-cubes/warehouses model.</i> Weird irony we want to deport the folks who could best adjust to the vast numbers of jobs we need to create. In terms of the cyber generation, though, Piketty could be a sign of it shifting its attention (and its considerable potential) from hard tech (and hard tech's diversions) over to the real world. A natural development IMO. If the FCC's gonna enable targeting of blogs, however, I would underscore that we completely abandon the superstar thing. We need right now to give voice to as wide a range of critics with real insight as are out there [will stick by the names in my first comment]. There are enough so that no superstar who gets tailed or bribed or distracted will end up crashing hopes. In a truly pluralistic or democratic academia none of us should ever have made one guy the be all and end all. But the academia we have lived with recently has been caught up with the same "merit" crap our two-bit cable talking head philosphers are so fond of spewing. Like: so and so was just born with all the merit. So bogus. If our learning finds something, then it's the <i>something</i> that matters, not some giant. Not some hero.
I hope and pray we can overcome any lingering suspicions that the mandates expressed in “Shared Security” will disadvantage us. That they would advantage us I think is helpful knowledge when we’re presenting our case.
3/28 “However, the drama that is under way is none other than the shifting fault-lines of the contemporary imperial system in which we live and the relative power-shift in Eurasia in which powers like China, Russia and India, at least economically, are beginning to persuade people that they represent the new, rising powers, whereas the west represents the declining ones.” http://www.opendemocracy.net/can-europe-make-it/vassilis-k-fouskas/ukraine-and-eurasias-imperial-faultlines
Persuade people. That means our progress with issues like quality of life (wages), environment, slave labor, human trafiking, and free education/healthcare. Exactly what Shared Security has defined as the appropriate focus of all national governments.
Amazing to think how more military aid to moderate Sunni elements might actually eliminate alQaeda in Syria (IMO Obama & Israel are right re carnage in the process). But when one sees it, one begins to think in terms of such extremists as reservoirs of justification for our MIC. Are MIC interests stalling “solutions” that would obviate extemists? Three of the articles I’m linking here portray imperial powers as the only powers on earth worthy of note. Cole’s reveals the interum carnage factor I just referred to. Cole’s also seems to hint at a Saudi design that could form up a third bloc beyond just the-Nato-afflicated and BRIC. I lack knowledge re whether Pakistan would be sought after in this; at the moment I believe they still belong to the Shanghai Cooperative Organization. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Cooperation_Organisation
3/3
“Is the Era of Imperial Global Powers Over?” http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/03/us-global-power-imperialism-foreign-policy
“Is the Era of Imperial Global Powers Over?” http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/03/us-global-power-imperialism-foreign-policy
3/29
“Saudi King channels John McCain, demands Obama Take Hard Line on Iran, Syria, Muslim Brotherhood”
http://www.juancole.com/2014/03/channels-demands-brotherhood.html
“Saudi King channels John McCain, demands Obama Take Hard Line on Iran, Syria, Muslim Brotherhood”
http://www.juancole.com/2014/03/channels-demands-brotherhood.html
“The west did not entrench itself in Europe after the collapse of communism: quite the opposite.” Hard to see how Fouskas can use these words given what he also says about post-wall shock therapy applied to Russia (Vassilis Fouskas at first “Open Democracy” link above). But Fouskas moves along at clip in this piece, and it’s a very informative article.
http://www.alternet.org/comments/i-hate-my-job-truth-about-work#disqus_thread
closed before these could be posted
First, some clarification. Then to you, nylene (thanks for the response).
When I say "we," I mean...we participate in this system as <i>customers</i> too, even if we are fortunate enough not to be on the side of the road juggling a pizza or tax sign. Even if one is fortunate enough to have saner, more meaningful work.
There are no longer principles to guide one in discerning character in another. As we have come to "extreme post modernism" on this IMO [Ken Wilber's phrase in relation to university teaching, not in relation to all principles on the part of everyone]; everything is left to intuition (it's never stated outright that this is the case). The whole paradigm is typified by the "reality" show. It's not even of enough interest to watch how a <i>team</i> will accomplish a goal...within a set of rules. Actually, it is only of interest to intuit which individual will prevail utilizing whatever myriad set of deceit techniques. Which member of a screwed up couple will prevail in court. Which cut throat on the deserted island will emerge the oligarch. And I fear such dramas (un-media-tized dramas) on a hundred million smaller scales have become the things we bet on in our minds at work. Our <i>interest</i> these days is not reading about workaholism by social critics, but rather <i>it is</i> unofficial betting (in our minds or unofficially amongst a small circle) on which gladiator will be the victor...which Mandingo fighter will render his opponent incapacitated. Personally I haven't read as much about sadism as I have about narcissism; nevertheless, I <i>would</i> call this orientation sadistic.
"page three" http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=mesn&fileName=162/mesn162.db&recNum=41&tempFile=./temp/~ammem_suM0&filecode=mesn&next_filecode=mesn&itemnum=1&ndocs=100
Yes, nylene, I've surfed. I like to think I can go anytime, but right now there's a problem with expensive racks fitting my "old" car. There's also a tendon and arthritis problem in one foot which, on good days, can be compensated for. Yeah, surfing helped in keeping my mind un-pickled. But surfing just plunges one into love of the ocean...which only intensifes ones attempt to understand a global economic system that's damaging this portion of our planet. That entails understanding its psychological <i>techniques</i> to boot.
Sort of ashamed to say it, but facebook's become one of my newspapers. Easy to see how it helped crystalize the Arab Spring, not to say it all "just happened" as a free speech phenomenon...I don't believe that for one minute. But suddenly, without any cost, one <i>can</i> hear what many enlightened organizations are saying...in the moment. Then it's left for "the people" to put it all together. I write here out of the hope that "the people" can put it together. We still have many, many paid writers who are worth their pay. Who are leading us. But once one is paid for opinionating, there's sort of a "symbolic analyst" tendency to stick to one's frame...which almost <i>has to</i> remain a little oblivious to what the serfs out there are experiencing. There are a lot of serfs...a lot of experiences. A lot of folks leaving the middle class via the "back door." It's almost too traumatic to admit or write about, that "the dream"s disappearing for sure. Paid writers are gonna hang on to their particular formulas of hope. Alternet (which thank God is doing its part in "leading") approaches the matter at times "divergent"ly...which is a valid approach that was promoted by E.F. Schumacher. Divergently like the phenomenon of boredom at work. My particular concern is that the insight of a few frames under "social criticism" are being left behind (these are secular frames). The trend is to nichefy, but there are some senate races in November numbering 33. Lemmie tell ya, prior to these races I do see the need for unity amidst the progressive grass roots' account of what is happening. I'm not ashamed to put my little unschooled perception of this need down in writing and put it up. Folks say unity is emerging, but the divide-and-conquer forces are still at work. There are gifted writers and there are colleges, but it's up to we readers out here...we folks in the progressive grass roots...to synthesize all the inputs and unite in solidarity on some account of things. There are centrifigal forces in digital culture. Amazon wipes Rebecca Solnit's Kindle clean, and suddenly she's promoting real/hard books as the way to go. More power to her--I agree. But, as a serf, I could only deal with so many machines that crash at a time. I couldn't launch into Kindles for this reason. The thing crashes and I'm out money. My particular concern (as I write here) is to join anyone who'll ask these writers of ours: <i>Hey, have we forgotten the DSM-IV or even the DSM-5...? How indeed is the whole system narcissistic? How is the whole system sadistic? Re these "real" books we should be buying, should any of'em be by Lasch, Wilson-Schaef, or Rene Girard?</i>
Very right on, Thomas.
You don't need to have read all of Rosseau to grasp the fact that work got crazy during and after the industrial revolution [yeah, yeah, there were slaves way on back too]. Buckminster Fuller pointed out jobs had become cybernated, meaning in a way arbitrary (since the industrial revolution IMO for sure). Prior to that there was our basic work ethos handed down through history, and, while we had the strength when young...when that ethos was still around...the phenomenon of obtaining sufficient techniques to do the workwas something that sort of flowed right into your veins (say in America's characteristic agrarian sphere, where a great many stayed a lap ahead'o the dark satanic mills for quite some time). I think of that ethos as sort of in a "close" morphic field. There weren't a huge whole lot of trips one had to contend with in picking up "how" to do the work. Now I see one has to learn how to drain off tension due to the meaninglessness of the thing, or from the pressure to do X number of chores involving folks on up the chain beset with even more meaninglessness.
There's a lot of garden work we could do today that Roundup does for us, but having done hay in the field, I can tell you that, with the seasons what they are now, yall have your work cut out. It was challenge enough then. And building shelters then in the summer was challenge enough too. I wanted to do it when I saw those long hairs building the Woodstock stage in the documentary. If you wanna learn it, you can learn it. In my day (in the south) you had to struggle along with conservatives, but today if you learn from Latinos you might avoid that. I've been in the cubes and in hospitals, and now have something fairly meaningful to do for work. Thomas Milligan is right that today's work deadens, but it's not just the toxic transactions that deaden; it's the inappropriateness too ("appropriate technology" E.F. Schumacher; or "good work" also see E.F. Schumacher). Deadened souls are what they want out there among the masses? I won't go that far [though within the system the deadening works real well]. It is true that the powers that be are woefully ignorant re the human need for meaningful work, and woefully in denial re the "warehousing" experience so many Amerian workers have stepped into...doing jobs, in the last analysis, propping up non-sustainable and/or useless institutions...or merely facades of institutions. Perhaps the one-percenters, our public servants (Ha), the poor-but-rich-in-their-dreams tea naggers...plus all the privileged "symbolic analysts" out there...are just bigoted when it comes to adjusting things to the times (like shifting "work" over to something pertinent to the survival of humans).
I give you this easy-to-remember-formula: mimesis or meritocracy. Take "idle" talk at work. One, it can be friendly. Two, it can be spectacle oriented: "I know what twisted is, and so & so's twisted" (mimesis: we imitate the correct models of behavior and scapegoat the stupid and twisted who are taking our society to hell in a hand basket). Three, there is "proper" talk. If you talk proper talk (devoid of cynicism), that's meritocracy. You are immersed in the group who are a grade above many others, by virtue of your own "merit" of course. It's practiced. It's chipper. Man, if it's not in your genes...you'rededicated anyway to being that entrepreneur, to being that builder, that program writer. You're gonna innovate. You're gonna contribute. You caught hold of the dream, and you want to do what they did. Most likely it's your intelligence, genes, or destiny (the mythology of three is intertwined with the mythology of two). Just remember: Mimesis - Girard. Meritocracy - Lasch.
closed before these could be posted
First, some clarification. Then to you, nylene (thanks for the response).
When I say "we," I mean...we participate in this system as <i>customers</i> too, even if we are fortunate enough not to be on the side of the road juggling a pizza or tax sign. Even if one is fortunate enough to have saner, more meaningful work.
There are no longer principles to guide one in discerning character in another. As we have come to "extreme post modernism" on this IMO [Ken Wilber's phrase in relation to university teaching, not in relation to all principles on the part of everyone]; everything is left to intuition (it's never stated outright that this is the case). The whole paradigm is typified by the "reality" show. It's not even of enough interest to watch how a <i>team</i> will accomplish a goal...within a set of rules. Actually, it is only of interest to intuit which individual will prevail utilizing whatever myriad set of deceit techniques. Which member of a screwed up couple will prevail in court. Which cut throat on the deserted island will emerge the oligarch. And I fear such dramas (un-media-tized dramas) on a hundred million smaller scales have become the things we bet on in our minds at work. Our <i>interest</i> these days is not reading about workaholism by social critics, but rather <i>it is</i> unofficial betting (in our minds or unofficially amongst a small circle) on which gladiator will be the victor...which Mandingo fighter will render his opponent incapacitated. Personally I haven't read as much about sadism as I have about narcissism; nevertheless, I <i>would</i> call this orientation sadistic.
"page three" http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=mesn&fileName=162/mesn162.db&recNum=41&tempFile=./temp/~ammem_suM0&filecode=mesn&next_filecode=mesn&itemnum=1&ndocs=100
Yes, nylene, I've surfed. I like to think I can go anytime, but right now there's a problem with expensive racks fitting my "old" car. There's also a tendon and arthritis problem in one foot which, on good days, can be compensated for. Yeah, surfing helped in keeping my mind un-pickled. But surfing just plunges one into love of the ocean...which only intensifes ones attempt to understand a global economic system that's damaging this portion of our planet. That entails understanding its psychological <i>techniques</i> to boot.
Sort of ashamed to say it, but facebook's become one of my newspapers. Easy to see how it helped crystalize the Arab Spring, not to say it all "just happened" as a free speech phenomenon...I don't believe that for one minute. But suddenly, without any cost, one <i>can</i> hear what many enlightened organizations are saying...in the moment. Then it's left for "the people" to put it all together. I write here out of the hope that "the people" can put it together. We still have many, many paid writers who are worth their pay. Who are leading us. But once one is paid for opinionating, there's sort of a "symbolic analyst" tendency to stick to one's frame...which almost <i>has to</i> remain a little oblivious to what the serfs out there are experiencing. There are a lot of serfs...a lot of experiences. A lot of folks leaving the middle class via the "back door." It's almost too traumatic to admit or write about, that "the dream"s disappearing for sure. Paid writers are gonna hang on to their particular formulas of hope. Alternet (which thank God is doing its part in "leading") approaches the matter at times "divergent"ly...which is a valid approach that was promoted by E.F. Schumacher. Divergently like the phenomenon of boredom at work. My particular concern is that the insight of a few frames under "social criticism" are being left behind (these are secular frames). The trend is to nichefy, but there are some senate races in November numbering 33. Lemmie tell ya, prior to these races I do see the need for unity amidst the progressive grass roots' account of what is happening. I'm not ashamed to put my little unschooled perception of this need down in writing and put it up. Folks say unity is emerging, but the divide-and-conquer forces are still at work. There are gifted writers and there are colleges, but it's up to we readers out here...we folks in the progressive grass roots...to synthesize all the inputs and unite in solidarity on some account of things. There are centrifigal forces in digital culture. Amazon wipes Rebecca Solnit's Kindle clean, and suddenly she's promoting real/hard books as the way to go. More power to her--I agree. But, as a serf, I could only deal with so many machines that crash at a time. I couldn't launch into Kindles for this reason. The thing crashes and I'm out money. My particular concern (as I write here) is to join anyone who'll ask these writers of ours: <i>Hey, have we forgotten the DSM-IV or even the DSM-5...? How indeed is the whole system narcissistic? How is the whole system sadistic? Re these "real" books we should be buying, should any of'em be by Lasch, Wilson-Schaef, or Rene Girard?</i>
http://www.alternet.org/comments/belief/why-atheists-dawkins-and-hitchens-are-dead-wrong#disqus_thread
Firstly, there's the issue of authenticity re the Luke thing. But re "...and his own life also..." there may be an issue in terms of: does it mean "life" or "soul"? On some outer branch of religious thought (apparently where I like to sit) it's not out of the question to view one's karmic baggage with regret. If it's authentic, I think it's a metaphorical injunction, like something outta the Zen koan tradition. We have, in fact, in our society a changing emphasis on the importance of one's cause, one's art, or one's career over and against other loves [though it's subject to question at present due to the nature of our economy - opposite to what EF Schumacher recommended]. If Jesus had been addressing a tiger or a snake, for instance, we humans could understand perhaps better what he meant.
Hard to see why you're opting to be such a literalist. Pretty sure the meaning Greek-wise can go both ways. Also, I suppose either meaning might be a turn off for one with your orientation.
For some there's a distinction between "soul" and, say, "Higher Self" (Higher Self arguably equated with Hinduism's "Atman"). It's a metaphysical distinction, so write it off if you like.
I've read some things by Michael Levine ("Deep Cover"), and listened to some of his interviews. Anyway, I remember him talking about some relation's suicide note, which I suppose gives an example of a point I'd like to make. "I couldn't take the drugs."
You may think this tradition is straight off the wall, but one can sift from many faiths the notion that soul does not equal spirit. I believe this was accepted by some in Jesus' time, just not spelled out in the manuscripts the King James was based on (not sure about Nag Hammadi scrolls). Soul has deep connections to body. Soul ends up wanting what body wants...often. Body's desires can become pesky, and concomitantly soul's as well. Thus, one can become negative about one's deep inner person...one's soul. If one gets fat. If one wants marriages to work out, and repeatedly they don't. Regarding this virtual "hatred," suicide is not the way out recommended by the teachings of faiths, but it's understandable one can get disillusioned with a very deep component of one's composite self. Most faiths advocate variants of the same alternative. In my mother's case, she gave up on men (actually on "life-partners"), which ended up including all relations usually conceived as preliminary to life-partnership. But she didn't end up a prude at all, or an unhappy person. Just the opposite.
"They that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." If your soul's tolerated some dysfunction that causes pain, then it might follow that you end up gravitating more toward the Higher Self, and giving up somewhat on the soul. The same goes for a segment of life there's a tendency to return to over and over...out of necessity or out of weakness. Say working in a diamond mine or working as a "picker" in one of Rio's dumps.
"The head of MI6 came back from a meeting in Washington and alleged that the intelligence was being fixed around the policy (of seeking a war)." 8/30/13 http://www.juancole.com/2013/08/british-parliament-defects.html
Juan Cole wrote this before the war began: <i>'It appears to be the case that Iraq simply has no nuclear weapons program. Al-Baradei of the IAE[A] has swept the country with Geiger counters and cannot find evidence of such a thing. The program once employed 12,000 scientists, so it could not easily be hidden if it existed. The evidence given last summer and fall by US officials, including President Bush, included: 1) satellite photos showing expansion of buildings at a site once used for the program; 2) documents showing Iraqi purchases of uranium from Niger; 3) Iraqi purchase of aluminum tubing that might be used in centrifuges for the enrichment of uranium. Al-Baradei visited the buildings and found that they were now devoted to some other use and their expansion had nothing to do with nukes. The Niger documents were closely examined and found to be forgeries. The aluminum tubing has the wrong specifications for use in a centrifuge and was purchased for making conventional missiles. The case for an Iraqi WMD program in the nuclear area has thus now completely collapsed. Since it was the nukes that were truly scary (rightwing commentators kept saying Saddam might give a suitcase bomb to al-Qaeda, never a likely scenario), not botulism or mustard gas, one wonders if the Congress would have authorized the President to go to war if it had known there were no nukes. The Niger documents turn out to be clumsy forgeries, raising questions about whether Bush, Cheney and others who depended on them were attempting to deceive US public opinion and that of the world.'</i> cited in 3/13/13 article http://www.juancole.com/2013/03/falsity-accusation-invasion.htm
Went over the Moyers transcript. Appreciated Andy's Thucydidies quote from '05 under the Lawrence Wilkerson show.
Our media? Our country? Our age? Good questions. Perhaps as a nation if we have less and less "being" we will have to come up with rituals as if we had loads. Same deal if facile meritocratic principles crowd out <i>all</i> others. Same with meaning itself in our lives.
<i>We live in a political world
Wisdom is thrown into jail
It rots in a cell, is misguided as hell
Leaving no one to pick up a trail</i>
http://www.bobdylan.com/us/songs/political-world
Behind everything must be Carl Jung's notion of individuation. And so, there is the assumption that a worthy [merit worthy] lifelong struggle to understand <i>must</i> yield that philosopher's stone...that enables, say, discernment re which politicians to takes sides with. A matter of <i>knowledge</i>. And what is of utmost importance is that one knows which of these dudes is gonna rightly condemn whoever's evil, whoever's standing in the way. Evil equals stupid, or lack of knowledge. Of course, oppression and/or mass killings don't go with individual rights, so democracy supporters understand that it is of the utmost danger to democracy...to initiate either. You can't blame them for getting their hackles up if either are occurring somewhere. But then, the other obsession that's pertinent comes into play which is phony/inflated cosmopolitanism...globalism, globalization, etc., etc., etc. [see Christopher Lasch's comments on 80s-90s infatuation with the "pacific rim"]. This is where the democracy supporter falls down; s/he often hasn't acquired an understanding that media operating only with fake cosmopolitanism aren't going to recognize sources of accurate info re cause & effect that have led or are leading to downturns, oppression, or mass killings. And aren't necessarily going to have sources capable of discerning symptoms of...or inroads to...either fascism or totalitarianism. We pride ourselves in this globalization mission and "global" knowledge, when the last thing in the world we know anything about is the world outside our borders. We're ingrown. This sort of amorphous globalization idea floating around in our heads (all nations desire to replicate the US in an <i>exact</i> fashion) is in fact just about the most inimical phenomena imaginable with respect to an understanding of the <i>globe</i>. No matter how vague, no matter how unconscious, just an atom of this doctrine can be as deleterious as one of Plutonium. Alas, it supplants meaning in our lives. Some philosophers might say supplants "being."
All this IMO comes, to a big extent, under "meritocracy." And extreme meritocracy <i><b>is</b></i> an irrational fixation...if, that is, the heart has any reason at all.
When the inveighing begins...look out! That's when the pride and the stiff necks and the self righteousness and presumption's gonna get its little "two minutes hate" release. That's when the sound & the fury's gonna erupt. The War Prayer sounding loud. Condemn the scapegoat. That's how we operate. We scapegoat our scapegoats with our brains. Fox does it every night. And if we were to attempt to give account of our capability to judge...ha, they would indeed be tales told by idiots! Vainity of vainities. All those yrs, and we individuated just about squat's worth. Did the whole thing happen so we could single out MIC critics? Single out the folks who put infrastructure and quality of life above beltway pork? Hey folks, it's called <i>projecting anxiety</i>.
Bringing this up to date, I really didn't know jack about Ukraine or Crimea or the Right Sector till I read something about'em at Common Dreams & Informed Comment...and listened TO Jack Rasmus [and guests]. Thank God I'd gleaned a little prior from Richard J. Barnet re how Communism became the devil in the 1920s.
Don't know how far you'll go, Mark, with this campaign, but if you want to have a campaign that matters or a tenure that matters, here's my advice. I know you value education, and I know from how you dealt with call-ins that you have a gift for educating yourself. In past posts I've referred to your realm of expertese as "domestic," which of course means economics (vs getting suckered into every interventionary escapde for which the "warrior intellectuals" fish up some excuse). As I've listened to these Jack Rasmus "shows," actually lectures, I've realized the standard liberal view on economics leaves out things. It's gotten complex (as cross border events MUST be brought into the discussion), and it's hard for any writer to cover all the bases with A VALID GENERAL TAKE OR OVERVIEW, say, in one article. There are so many assumptions we're wrong about. For instance, did you think China's been protective re their own rational production scene? Well, at least as recently as last yr [probably before, can't remember] our scams were allowed in (I think OUR OWN SCAMMERS), and now China is dealing with a very deleterious houseing bubble (and rents up 20%, just like in Vietnam when they entered the global thing). That in turn is hurting emerging markets. And then there's QE, all the phases of which NEVER get gone over for any readership. Nobody remembers them, and nobody tells truthfully anything about their impacts...or what in truth they were CONCEIVED to accomplish. Give me some feedback re your opinions on these scammers going hither & yon, and on QE, and then perhaps I'll click "like." Or, I might click it if you give an honest rundown of your opponents' platforms.
A good place for me to start was Alternative Visions 2/19 http://prn.fm/category/archives/alternative-visions/...
Sacks, age & wisdom, fb
Staudinger is right IMO in terms of awareness of family and one's era. But with people that are exceptionally tolerant, I do think it becomes for them, as years advance, more and more an "absolute" value. Funny thing, it never bothered me. Tolerance is empathy, and empathy is the most active thing there is. Empathy doesn't become so absolute that it isn't flexible. It's also the most flexible thing there is. One's tolerance in life sort of evolves into a "mission," or cause. It seems we indeed begin to see more and more patterns...re where mission principles in all kinds of cultures link up...and then even in all kinds of "movements" (IMO many principles come together, for example, in the 12 Step movement). If we were all in a small villages, I suppose this would mean seeing more and more how all the villagers were putting up laudible fights in their own struggles in the midst of what each in particular had inherited...to deal with. Sometimes I think in Hollywood the same old actors doing all the parts have sort of gotten folks in our culture in ruts (they can be young IMO and still generate the same strict mimesis far and wide)...to where they can't be flexible. Too often it's not a real "village" where it's convenient and unavoidable re running into real people, whereas personalities on the screen are, in the last analysis, NOT coming across as real people. Then I suppose when aging persons find that these personalities, which they have tried to adopt themselves (or adopted by osmosis), don't work so well in a changed ethos, or when one is no longer energetic enough to affect them, I suppose there could be depression and neurosis [the effects of our current emulated role models have IMO been insightfully discussed by both Christopher Lasch and Rene Girard, Girard writing more on characters in literary fiction involved in such emulation. Of course, in terms of sources, actors don't comprise the entire set]. I thought a rare, rare exception was Philomena. The "patterns" from her family, her history (and her own crystalizing mission)...seemed to be coming to her in a stronger and stronger flow of insights (as I witnessed with my own mother); and she invoked them with certitude and confidence, all the while in a flowing way. The Yang of mission and the Yin of patterns evidently have to balance. We may have a regimen re supporting x, y, and z organizations...but the mission does not proceed if, for example, we somehow fail to let INTUITION open our eyes when "sunlight" reveals retrograde aspects developing with respect to whichever organization, or what it's showing about other orgs that turn out to be addressing things more pressing vis a vis the BIG TRIAGE out there. I can imagine how aging union members must have felt as their hopes that unions would keep things decent had to face the realitiy that unions themselves were getting pushed back (not good, but one must be resilient, even with age, in discerning moments to "activate" along alternative courses (Ralph Nader case in pt)). One thing that was hard for my mother to deal with, even with Obama getting elected, was the other counter-movement at the same time brought on by Wall Street (or the exposure of such a spree). For her sake, I would have wished the nation more resolved across the board prior to deal progressively with matters. If you had gone through the depression, I guess in the fall of '08 you'd just have wished there wouldn't have been that counter element. When we don't get our national missions accomplished [we have a dream] it adds burdens on everyone. But perhaps it's the unique rhythms and unique overtones in the organic unfoldings of these individual "missions" of ours [as in from a mustard seed] that, if we're subject to reincarnation, get carried along .
Even in the ideal "village," folks, by my observation, don't generally appear to grow in wisdom with years, unless they're reaching beyond the determinism of our age...or, better, humbly "waiting" for what's beyond...to drop a hint. IMO opinion, though, there are certainly exceptions.
Even in the ideal "village," folks, by my observation, don't generally appear to grow in wisdom with years, unless they're reaching beyond the determinism of our age...or, better, humbly "waiting" for what's beyond...to drop a hint. IMO opinion, though, there are certainly exceptions.
Moyers
Believe Ryan D is right...billioniares. There must be some collusion between health care providers and HMOs. Someone correct or refine this: HMOs would not continue comprising entities with roles as lucrative or important as they are presently in portfolios & hedge funds...since payments under ACA might come in slower???? IOW the scrapped up cash from the poor under their old plans is more desirable cause no matter how slow the poor pay back what's not covered...they will be paying SOME cash to hospitals, giving hosps their cut of the action...AND the HMOs'll get their cut, which'll make the hedge funds happy???? The hedge funds and health service providers and HMOs (I suppose all in collusion) must like either scrapped-up cash from the poor, or the poor paying what they pay under their present plans...cause in the later case 1)the hospitals don't get the dough with that nasty nasty gov paperwork...and 2)the hedge funds get more play out of the HMO stock since the HMOs keep making the old huge profits (if the poor fork over their own dough more often with their old plans which covered less). Yep, then all the jefes are happy. Where I'm at they tried to present to us an option of subscribing to an HMO DIRECTLY connected to local hospitals via a web of ownership and management. Man, I can't figure out what it is they don't like about ACA or expanded Medicaid. Must be afraid too many of their little pawn worker bees'll get stay home notes when their medical issues are adequately addressed...the ones they acquired via the stress of yrs of bad working conditions, abuse from above, and trying to pay bills on inconscionable wages. I can see it out there plainly, though I've been relatively lucky.
ROS, Ukraine
I saw at the "Ukraine Crisis" article in Wikipedia a little colored map that would appear to put my views in an extreme minority if nations were the people on the earth. Funny thing, though, it left most nations in Africa grey...without any color designating where they stood on Russia defending the will of the Crimean folks against the professional insurrectionist crowd. And then I remembered, didn't I, that the African Union had maintained Yanukovych was in there legit. What's the deal with Wikipedia??? Wikipedia's not alone if I'm not mistaken; Google doesn't seem to be able to find anything on the AU's stand re this either.
You're fortunate to be in MA up their having McGovern for a Rep. But, Lord, I hate reading stuff from Ron Paul Inst that <i>sounds</i> like it's as in depth as Common Dreams. Downright scary.
Ok, DBT list (privatized incompetent pork barrel contract) scrubs 7000 names at least 54% of which were Afro American. I always wondered if the software knew a probability that same-names might = sons or nephews of felons.
http://www.gregpalast.com/floridas-flawed-voter-cleansing-program-saloncoms-politics-story-of-the-year/
Faith, hope, and love. I hope for the best. I hope I won’t ever resort to elenadolan‘s approach over some matter in my own life (or to some version a few degrees less extreme), but that is it. It’s all a matter of hope.
I thought I might add some thoughts while I had a chance, even though I haven’t been all the way through “Shared Security.” On a vacation, and the minute hand’s speeded up. Perhaps if I didn’t do it now, I’d miss the option to say anything at the outset and would procrastinate for weeks.
My concerns, or the ones I have come to focus on in my reading, are pretty well subsumed by the two middle principles in the FCNL letter’s list of four. Most of my reading time is devoted to transitioning from reliance on “sacrifice zones” to sustainable “industry” and more equitable labor/wage relationships [Hedges, Klein, Kuttner, Hudson, Galbraith, Hartmann, Albert, Alperovitz, Richard Barnet]. For me, this transition appears connected to issues such as: jobs offshoring, the bondage of commerce to stock dividend yields, regulation of Wall Street, over reliance on imports, integrity in “service” jobs, integrity in jobs related to agriculture and infrastructure repair, resources wasted on war and surveillance technology, wealth extraction by our healthcare system [fewer hands-on caregivers as well], and a host of other issues. In the future I see a need to delve into all associated questions; though I can imagine, sort of inchoately, a way around many of the problems germane.
Within my particular Quaker/Girardian frame of reference, I can agree that the empire’s zeitgeist is drifting, as Jeff Garrison said, to fear. It’s not IMO just when you get on some defense committee and become privy to a thousand threats you weren’t aware of before. It’s gone over the whole land, probably as it did in the Great Depression. To my understanding, this wasn’t the first phase. The first phase was a memesis or a “sameness” that occurred. This is where I could write for hours, but to keep it short I’ll just say that this sameness (broken down at length by Rene Girard) was also actually described a little by Christopher Lasch (pertinent to the particular era) in I think it was 1992. It was and is an odd sameness, as paradoxically this sameness consists in folks embracing pluralism, and all go merrily along in their niche/tribes…with too much faith that pluralism itself will take care of the political stewardship left aside when…they went merrily along. Another paradox is that most of the role models (across all political stripes) at the top of these niche-groups incorporate a “progressive” element in their schtick…wholly vicarious. A nominal progressiveness apprehended by the owner(s) as full-on crusader. Actually, the number of “tribes” [or sub-demograhics] are limited, and folks end up competing to be more like the archetypal personages at the “top” of each. During the tech bubble, for instance, folks had the means to “buy” their resemblance to these personages or models. Or buy parallel lives to these models. So the competition got overheated. The “divided house.” In Girardian terms, we approach “the war of all against all.” Of course, somewhere along the way we pick up the fear. In the ancient, universal, and nearly archetypal cycle Girard describes, this is solved by choosing a sacrifice, which quiets everything . In our day, it’s not like it was 20,000 yrs ago or even like it was in Salem. In our day it’s systematized. We have sacrifice “zones,” whole neighborhoods. And now whole towns. And yes, as Dom Elder Camara pointed out, outside our borders…
In my own terms, yes I could agree that fear causes us to forget to wait. To wait on the Christ within, the Inner Light, the Higher Self, Brahman, the Shakti force, Allah, or the Great Spirit.
What I wanted to do in posting here was simply to share two minor concerns.
1. Salvaging a literature that deals with the aforementioned sacrifice-seeking in our everyday lives…in the workplace, for instance, where most of us spend most of our time. And deals with how scapegoating synchs in with other dysfunctionalities. Anne Wilson Schaef’s work IMO represents the best of this lit, but I may be unaware of more. [There is abuse of domestic workers in Hong Kong. There is abuse here of fast food workers and immigrant workers (and their children). There is abuse of Olympic construction workers in Saudi Arabia. There are humans carrying 200 lb sacks of cocoa leaves from Bolivia into Argentina. And on and on.]
2. A concern with Rare Earths vis a vis a continued expanding network of teaching and communicating across the globe. It’ll be essential as decision making devolves more and more to the present 99.999%.
We all need a foundation when we encounter those who don’t see our part in having contributed to the mindset outside our borders which is anti-American. To lay it down right sometimes means mastering yet another whole realm of knowledge. So, here’s a my little contribution toward this end, if anyone can use it. The first is more homeland oriented, and links a chapter out of Lasch’s “The Revolt of the Elites.”
There’s another article at tomdispatch that cites the late Chalmers Johnson.
“The communists’ policies of secularization in turn provoked a violent response from devout Islamists. The anti-Communist revolt that began at Herat in western Afghanistan in March 1979 originated in a government initiative to teach girls to read. The fundamentalist Afghans opposed to this were supported by a triumvirate of nations — the U.S., Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia — with quite diverse motives, but the U.S. didn’t take these differences seriously until it was too late. By the time the Americans woke up, at the end of the 1990s, the radical Islamist Taliban had established its government in Kabul. Recognized only by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, it granted Osama bin Laden freedom of action and offered him protection from American efforts to capture or kill him.” Chalmers Johnsonhttp://www.tomdispatch.com/post/1984/
Tend to believe everything here, but am not quite enough of a scholar to vouch for everything.
http://www.iacenter.org/bosnia/yugo_rc.htm
http://www.iacenter.org/bosnia/yugo_rc.htm
WordPress is defaulting to my facebook moniker, so you get half the real me. Sorry for this but I have to think it through a bit.
This link gives that Bush win accusation a little ride in Wiamea shorebreak.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/12/06/1260721/-The-Nader-Myth#
I went with probability and did not vote Nader, but Democrats haven't wised up. It's my fault, your fault, and all our faults. All I have to do is listen to NPR to realize Ted Rall would make a better president than 95% of the Dem pols who've served in my lifetime. One can certainly find out how little that 95% knows via said org, cause the 95's shock doctrine is getting to be all it spouts (if they're disallowed to bring truth to bear on Ukraine, some of the hosts are still astute on other matters).
Clinton?
"Yugoslavia was deliberately dismantled. It continues to be further broken apart by U.S. and other foreign interests who want to divide and conquer the country economically. They want to exploit its resources, its people, its markets; and the consequences have been a human disaster from Slovenia to Macedonia." Ramsey Clark 10/6/00
http://www.iacenter.org/bosnia/yugo_rc.htm
The weirdest thing in the world is that John Kerry, of all people, WOULD END UP "DELUSIONAL" in regard to geopolitical matters. The devil's in the details, but they're only details when WaPo and NYT (sitting out there in the congregation) get all worked up with ye olde "war prayer" com'n down from the pulpit [what a prayer that other Mark (Twain) exposed for what it was!]. Anyway, there's a whole history that suddenly didn't happen.
Kerry was probably the only guy that could have remained fair enough and rational enough to broker the nuclear deal with Iran...and that the right respected enough (not much) to allow...to pull such a thing off. And the fact is he knows (or should remember) the whole universe of Russian history (post wall) that never got sufficient attention from their little tea pick'n minds. Anyone who began reading about the cocaine thing back in Iran Contra days [and didn't subsequently suppress the knowledge] knows about it. Why bake your campaign half way, Mark? Why go along with the "Democrat" acquiescer crowd? It's a small contingent of corporations who want war every time you turn around (big bucks though). The MIC or "warrior intellectuals" [doublethink rationalizers] have racked up enough blow back wrath for America, and there are more and more voters down here in the roots who don't want more of this stuff wreaked on their soil.
You oughtta have this on your history diagrams, Mark: we've had our own version of the king-pins and oligarchs that tore Russia apart after the fall of the wall, and too many of'em WERE EMPLOYED OFFICIALLY BY A GOVERNMENT SUPPOSEDLY "OF THE PEOPLE." My first two links here CAN INDEED catch you and your supporters up on some of the relevant background (the Rall & Parry pieces). I challenge you to read both and respond with any rebuttal that's cogent and that you feel should be voiced, or...whichever ones you think you can concoct that'll dispense with'em.
Oh, you're gonna "debate" on cable (that nobody watches), but on your page here it's gonna be whisked away? Equate my source [Common Dreams] with Pravda, THEN delete the share??? "...when the US media adopted Washington’s narrative that almost everything President Boris Yeltsin did was a 'transition from communism to democracy' and thus in America’s best interests. This included his economic 'shock therapy' and oligarchic looting of essential state assets, which destroyed tens of millions of Russian lives; armed destruction of a popularly elected Parliament and imposition of a 'presidential' Constitution, which dealt a crippling blow to democratization and now empowers Putin; brutal war in tiny Chechnya, which gave rise to terrorists in Russia’s North Caucasus; rigging of his own re-election in 1996; and leaving behind, in 1999, his approval ratings in single digits, a disintegrating country laden with weapons of mass destruction. Indeed, most American journalists still give the impression that Yeltsin was an ideal Russian leader." Stephen F. Cohen
link from Rall's page, also source of second article linked below
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10152281465480854&set=a.52126765853.61721.778780853&type=1&theater
"Distorting Russia: How the American media misrepresent Putin, Sochi and Ukraine." by Stephen F. Cohen
http://www.thenation.com/article/178344/distorting-russia
"What the US Media Won't Tell You About Ukraine" by Ted Rall (that's right, Rall the cartoonist)
https://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/03/04-0
"Putin or Kerry: Who's Delusional?" by Robert Parry http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/03/06-3
- It's happening in Venezuela, and...cumulatively all over the planet...while it might make interventionists happy their job is easier...all eventualities resulting from manufacturing uprisings (to augment "democracy") can't be predicted.
See what you're talking about now, Michael. Even if Obama were a robot dedicated to getting support to the brotherhood, it's not what our MIC wants or would allow one iota. At first I thought you meant the fact that we've cut some military aid to Egypt might lend support to this contention. But now I see after checking that this conspiracy theory somehow arose in Egypt.
Read a good article that sort of implied Morsi would have been better if he hadn't over reacted with the change in the constitution (can't remember the title). I tend to go along with writers who make this case in a believable manner. Like I say, those subject to oppression will rise up; and perhaps there is always a chance that such revolutions might provide something better. http://all4peacenow.com/brute-force-in-egypt-is-met-with.../
Good sources I find are: Informed Comment (Juan Cole) http://www.juancole.com/
and Open Democracy (many articles, picked this one without much real sifting through their stuff just now) http://www.opendemocracy.net/.../egypt-as-role-model...
Maybe the old Coptic thought more persecution would = more jewels in his crown, as the saying goes. Sadly, our world is full of this "levels" thing--which human rights violation is worse (?), etc. Mubarak's methods were gonna get him blowback, we can figure that much out. Your experence was to encounter an irrational manifestation of the blowback early on (as Mubarak was associated with the support of a Christian nation); but it usually IS irrational. If you take the entity of a state as something real, then probability would dictate that the population of a state subject to a strong-arm gov eventually would take on the general characteristic of disliking all supporters of their unjust rulers.
Read a good article that sort of implied Morsi would have been better if he hadn't over reacted with the change in the constitution (can't remember the title). I tend to go along with writers who make this case in a believable manner. Like I say, those subject to oppression will rise up; and perhaps there is always a chance that such revolutions might provide something better. http://all4peacenow.com/brute-force-in-egypt-is-met-with.../
Good sources I find are: Informed Comment (Juan Cole) http://www.juancole.com/
and Open Democracy (many articles, picked this one without much real sifting through their stuff just now) http://www.opendemocracy.net/.../egypt-as-role-model...
Maybe the old Coptic thought more persecution would = more jewels in his crown, as the saying goes. Sadly, our world is full of this "levels" thing--which human rights violation is worse (?), etc. Mubarak's methods were gonna get him blowback, we can figure that much out. Your experence was to encounter an irrational manifestation of the blowback early on (as Mubarak was associated with the support of a Christian nation); but it usually IS irrational. If you take the entity of a state as something real, then probability would dictate that the population of a state subject to a strong-arm gov eventually would take on the general characteristic of disliking all supporters of their unjust rulers.
Here's something that's dated but to the point: "Mubarak’s hand-picked Vice-President Omar Suleiman, long-time confidant of the CIA and the Israeli government, appears to have made clear to the U.S. administration that the Egyptian military opposes any effort to oust Mubarak – and the Obama administration is betting its cards on the military. Elite discourse echoes that view. Traditional Washington powerbrokers are siding against Egypt’s democratic revolution, not only from the right but centrists such as long-time head of the Council on Foreign Relations Les Gelb, who spits out the word “mob” over and over again when describing Egypt’s people." http://www.ips-dc.org/.../egypt_on_the_brink_-_and_the_us...
This Dylan article comment is also below all the daveatch blogspot posts links
I can see it as sort of fascist in that he's putting this "solution" out there, but not saying didley about what's...harder to say. I mean he's offering this as the way out, but the real way out will have to talk about things we've been programmed (lately) not to dig...like fixing infrastructure and gardening and smaller farms (again). The weird thing is all this was right there in the zeitgeist out of which his heros arose. No one will talk about it, but I will. I guess it's because everyone who comments in places like this has to purport that folks everywhere need only "write" insightful opinions, and play along of course with whatever gold-plated pork barrell "product" [usually not labor intensive, not sustainable, & usually requiring tons of petro products] the captains of industry happen to be intoxicated with at the moment (like, for instance, another Walmart over yonder [I think of the resources going into these bldgs like the trees the Easter Islanders cut down to roll their statues along]). No, but get down here and deal with the marginalized, and strung out, and developmentally disabled...and then you will see how useless (and divisive) this meritocratic symbolic-analyst vision of a nation has become [ignorant as well].
3. music links, Return to Spirit, & other items to read
3 likes: I can see it as sort of fascist in that he's putting this "solution" out there, but not saying didley about what's...harder to say. I mean he's offering this as the way out, but the real way out will have to talk about things we've been programmed (lately) not to dig...like fixing infrastructure and gardening and smaller farms (again). The weird thing is all this was right there in the zeitgeist out of which his heros arose. No one will talk about it, but I will. I guess it's because everyone who comments in places like this has to purport that folks everywhere need only "write" insightful opinions, and play along of course with whatever gold-plated pork barrell "product" [usually not labor intensive, not sustainable, & usually requiring tons of petro products] the captains of industry happen to be intoxicated with at the moment (like, for instance, another Walmart over yonder [I think of the resources going into these bldgs like the trees the Easter Islanders cut down to roll their statues along]). No, but get down here and deal with the marginalized, and strung out, and developmentally disabled...and then you will see how useless (and divisive) this meritocratic symbolic-analyst vision of a nation has become [ignorant as well].
The profoundness of E = mc2 and its "beauty" has been attributed to the simplicity of the formulation. Someone said the other day, "They don't know what we're dealing with." And I thought they know, but they think we of lower station deserve to deal with it (to deal with people who act badly). And that is I guess meritocracy that has gotten whacked out. I believe some kind of anthropology or psychology or sociology...or some quantum jump in one or all of these fields...is lacking. Somehow media has themselves in cocoons. It has to be up to us. An idea whose time has come. Like Sheldrake says, the morphic field'll crystalize it in many minds at once...maybe. Listening to this guy Tyson (sp?) today, I couldn't believe it. NPR would be better off talking to Rachel Parent. Because of, for one thing, something called "infrastructure." But then there's whatever transformative mission of the economy itself. And what is it? It's nothing. Well, we're beyond getting all besotted with transformative missions, aren't we? The revolution I think has already happened in terms of a frame most can understand; that is, it's been formulated. Humans have maintained "peace," according to the Girardians, with scapegoats (probably for 100,000 yrs or more) [then democracy & individual rights came along, and started going in an entirely different direction]. Seems too obvious, right? Well, just read the Girardians (explicators of Rene Girard). I may have the chronology wrong, but it seems we've gone into extreme "oneupsmanship." Every micro-strata starting at the top scapegoats the layer directly beneath it. I mean...it seems we are in "the war of all against all" (which Girardians talk about a lot). What the heck is our economy doing? Take the phrase "train wreck." Hey, we are literally there! All over the place hauling oil. It's absurd. I think Juan Cole may be right that we shouldn't get too ominous about the deepness. Maybe such could turn into despondency over unbeatable Masons & Bilderbergers, etc. What the economy should be producing I think we can comprehend. And the dysfunctionality that has overwhelmed us can be fathomed by our own minds...if we listen to whatever Fromm types are still around...vs the "screaming midgets" on winger media (ha, thanks Garrison). It appears that when we dare to get a handle on the dysfunctionality that's gripped us...dare to analyze it ourselves...that's what generates the ire of all those symbolic analysts out there. They'll do the analysis, thank you. Psychological terms no longer apply, only trips they are qualified to condemn in simplistic jargon. And weirdly they think their analyzing entitlement is all wrapped up in democracy. Democracy's "abundant living" has tapped them the analysts, not us. Yeah, that's when we're going too far with questioning authority. One must, as Limbaugh counsels, leave off from "psychobabble" and allow him to do the judging.
More real sanity would come if we were actually producing something. Meanwhile, it's not the corporation we're loyal to...it's the role the corporation gives us that we're loyal to. We re-hash/recycle (produce) more versions of whatever insipid gossip and prolefeed is currently floating about...at our stations (yes, our lowly stations). Who the stupid ones (blame worthy ones) are. That's basically where all our energy goes, not into any product. This is an overly absurd system. Humans need to be doing something together with their hands.
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theCrowdisUntruth theCrowdisUntruth • 18 hours ago
Sorry that this will be an empty comment. Last night my cursor was knocking out whole portions of what I wrote above. Finally, I decided to leave the url realizing that lots more of the knocked out segments might remain in my post (as I had first or second posted it)...as opposed to the gobbled-up version my cursor had unpredictably reduced to almost nothing. So, I left this url and came back. Well, sure'nuff lots of the old version remained but what had been in the box before my last click on "Save Edit" wasn't all there; nor was the "Edit" option IIRC. I had a copy, so I figured I'd put it in a reply. However, today I see that the part originally missing in the main comment somehow mostly made its way back into said comment. I only had to sand off some edges today [day after], and then empty out this "reply."
What Mike Lofgren described made me think of Jacques Ellul's notion/frame/phenomenon...<i>technique.</i> Cole's mention of invisibility I think goes along with the latter. Ellul's idea is tough to summarize; that very toughness jives in a way, I think, with the invisible quality...if these things are the same thing as I think they are. What I took away from Ellul's description (to try to impossibly condense it in one sentence) was that it was in the main sort of a psychology, or utilitarian zeitgeist (he wrote that actual hard technology is part of it too). BTW, to me Le Carre's fictional characters have demonstrated an intoxication with their own canniness re efficient means to achieving goals.
<i>'We have so many people who are indoctrinated, who are admitted to the secrets of state, and we have the people outside the circle.' </i> John LeCarre, BBC interview
Mar 1
"When confronted with resistance to these initiatives, members of today's elite betray the venomous hatred that lies not far beneath the smiling face of upper-middle-class benevolence." What can we see in 2014 that Lasch left out in 1994? The only thing he failed to stress enough was that the outlook of wealthier individuals on the left would be vicariously adopted by too many other portions of the left (just as the mindsent of Republican 1-percenters would be, in an extremely self-defeating manner, too much adopted by conservatives on hourly wages). I think he did see that, at root, both wellsprings of influence were, in terms of ATTITUDE, very much related. What I think is that...it is the prevalence of this blob-like attitude that has defeated us. What has defeated the left, which is what's important to me. Who can we thank? I suppose media, but also ourselves. This predicament, which it might seem impossible to get around, also seems likely to justify Nader's suggestion that some wealthy liberals run for office (IMO, though, they would have to have enough understanding of how so many of our interventions abroad were misconceived, which is a formidable subject for the Rands out there or the Chomskys out there...or anyone). http://brandon.multics.org/library/Christopher%20Lasch/lasch1994revolt.html
"combating economic inequality" actually would mean a SERIOUS return to Schumacher's "good work" concept. All Americans would have to be involved in an intense examination of what it is we're doing at work, and then we'd have to choose something more in line with what the environment's handing us. The readjustment would be massive; driving some SUV 25 miles downtown to sit in a cube and take crap from would-be-1-percenters will not get it.
We're in a dysfunctional "divided house" phenomenon in terms of political philosophy and lifestyles. Rene Girard has presented a frame which IMO describes THIS divided house and most other such critically divided houses in history (and in pre-history). I won't get into this here much more, other than to underline what media WON'T acknowledge: <u>it's vicious</u>.
It'll strike many readers here as starting off tangentially but I think it's connected. Someone close to me shared the article "America's Angriest Store". My comment on that share--> "When confronted with resistance to these initiatives, members of today's elite betray the venomous hatred that lies not far beneath the smiling face of upper-middle-class benevolence." What can we see in 2014 that Lasch left out in 1994? The only thing he failed to stress enough was that the outlook of wealthier individuals on the left would be vicariously adopted by too many other portions of the left (just as the mindsent of Republican 1-percenters would be, in an extremely self-defeating manner, too much adopted by conservatives on hourly wages). I think he did see that, at root, both wellsprings of influence were, in terms of ATTITUDE, very much related. What I think is that...it is the prevalence of this blob-like attitude that has defeated us. What has defeated the left, which is what's important to me. Who can we thank? I suppose media, but also ourselves.
This predicament, which it might seem impossible to get around, also seems likely to justify Nader's suggestion that some wealthy liberals run for office (IMO, though, they would have to possess enough understanding of how so many of our interventions abroad were misconceived, which is a formidable subject for the Rands out there or the Chomskys out there...or anyone).
"When confronted with resistance to these initiatives, members of today's elite betray the venomous hatred that lies not far beneath the smiling face of upper-middle-class benevolence." http://brandon.multics.org/library/Christopher%20Lasch/lasch1994revolt.html
What can we see in 2014 that Lasch left out in 1994? The only thing he failed to stress enough was that the outlook of wealthier individuals on the left would be vicariously adopted by too many other portions of the left (just as the mindsent of Republican 1-percenters would be, in an extremely self-defeating manner, too much adopted by conservatives on hourly wages). I think he did see that, at root, both wellsprings of influence were, in terms of ATTITUDE, very much related. What I think is that...it is the prevalence of this blob-like attitude that has defeated us. What has defeated the left, which is what's important to me. Who can we thank? I suppose media, but also ourselves.
Hardly know where to keep bringing the insight of “the wise” ones of our past to bear on where we’re headed. There was Orwell. There is Richard Stallman (who has already written a lot and activated a lot). There was Erich Fromm and Christopher Lasch. There was the novelist Michael Young (“Rise of the Meritocracy”). There was Popper and Norman Macbeth. There is Rupert Sheldrake,Amit Goswami, and Rod Hemsell. BTW, our politiking in the Mid-East plus South & Central Asia, as summarized in Juan Cole and Tariq Ali youtubes, prompts me to mention Jacques Ellul too (ie his notion of "technique").
I heard one interview with you on NPR, and you sounded like the best conversationalist in the world. Since then, no youtubes seem to re-capture that impact on me yrs ago. Can’t keep up with your books, so right here is it. Very on target AFAIC, though, with this “share.”
We haven’t even really agreed on what it is that has burned us out and made us crazy. “This is the age of machinery, A mechanical nightmare…” (The Kinks). But we ARE burned out, and folks need empathy from their sister/fellow humans. I don’t think it’s gonna happen much with these cube jobs. If we were camped out alongside the road and were simply handing crates of peas to one another…down some 200-mile-long-line of humans…it would mean MORE than these kinds of positions; but we’d have to agree in solidarity on such a bucket brigade’s purpose in a larger re-vamped approach to everything. The spinmeisters and Mad Ave [old metaphor for something even more pervasive now (out in CA too)] adepts have facilitated nichification and internicene squabbles throughout every corner of society…and this applies to what we do at work.
Ironically, there are enough PCs around to plan a division of labor in a sort of large scale USA CCC, even according to location and what individuals would individually be capable of. But it’s a human decision re whether we wanna augment survival & healing & quality of life & sustainability vs…more toys. I do give the uncorporatized geeks credit, though; plus they give me hope. At least Open Secrets and Mother Jones come out without graphics that say a thousand words with single pictures. Why lots of other economists fail to pick up this ball and run with it, at the same time, is telling regarding a total LACK of creativity floating about with regard to what these Rare Earth demanding machines should be used for.
You are right that people deserve such cube jobs at Google; but it also should be Google’s responsibility (since they are the ones with all the creativity) to come out and warn the world…that such jobs should only be a transition…to a phase in which our occupations actually enable positive and meaningful sharing among humans (more counselors and nurses for starters).
Yes, “this is the age of machinery, a mechanical nightmare..” In direct contraposition to Wikipedia and Stallman are the entities you address in this share. These entities churn out the topics & data & art they deem fit for our consumption, which unfortunately (in contradistinction to what we want and need) amount mainly to a very large “Prolefeed” wasteland. The symbolic analysts & desk jockey Winston Smiths & “creative ones” do do their bit, and then conceive that WE should be grateful and not make too much noise if eg our HMO premiums are going up through the roof. YOU ARE RIGHT to address what these entities are doing. Sad but true that many, many brains programmed by the Prolefeed product of these corporations…are predisposed deem the messages of “the wise” I mentioned up there at the beginning as…merely academic. So, then one hopes some new Pete Seeger or Green Day or Midnight Oil or Bob Marley, or Bob Dylan, or Billy Brag’ll come along, and somehow wedge in some contrary orientation by the sheer force of poetry and aesthetics. Alas, these corporations have the means to “slow down” even the phenomenon of how widely such innovaters might be appreciated...at least media wise.
I think all of us who want a better job (or more just pay) will have to come to a demand-in-common…for a complete overhaul. We’ll have to come IMO to some solidarity on some such, or we’ll be bickering right up till deaths due to heat stroke, starvation, over-work, or wandering polar vortex. No thanks, after all this we at least deserve physician-assisted exits.
Jerfferson had some great ideas about tolerance, and it would have been nice if all the Mr Smiths that went to Washington had held them in esteem after they got there. Which is worse, to engineer confrontations, or to participate in a religion that gives no discernment regarding: The holy mandates to go fight the errant are engineered.
When I shared this the other day I actually had remembered (mistakenly) that Woodhouse thought both aspects of "the universal stuff" (consciousness/energy) COULD BE reduced to one another, but here I see he does not maintain it. Like I remembered vaguely, though, his conceptual frame still alludes to a sort of limited "dualism" AFAICS...in that entities currently manifesting as "humans" may very well never end up understanding how each of the two-fold "aspects" ultimately could be, or might be reducible to one another. Originally I found an article by Woodhouse in the book "What Survives?"
http://books.google.com/books?id=dejmdCWwEHsC&pg=PA154&lpg=PA154&dq=woodhouse+%22energy+monism%22&source=bl&ots=BxtJNsw7XZ&sig=UxvQcd74CoBMzNZq1IQREAwD_Fg&hl=en&sa=X&ei=vMzVUuzzGo7OyAGZx4HIDw&ved=0CDgQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=woodhouse%20%22energy%20monism%22&f=false
Sorry the first unedited version of this post was so rough.
Whitehead's ideas relevant to Tao Te Ching seem to be at this site, and furthermore I can't see how these very same correspondences wouldn't actually be the gist of his complete philosophical legacy (his main ideas germane to ontology...what's real). They're pretty mindblowing, and I can't believe how quickly the site's owner got down to brass tacks in terms of laying out this pov that is supposed to require so much reading. Guess after this many years of living I was bound to find a few short cuts.
Can't buy the take completely, though. There are patterns in my opinion we move into and out of, or they move upon us and then away (one could postulate Jungian archetypes)...however you look at it. At first scan, it seems as though one of Whitehead's 'actual occasions' [see article] might define America's zeitgeist at, say, time X or time Y; but I wonder how all the deviations or clusters of dissenters (in this town or that county or that burg) might also be accounted for by the same 'actual occasion.' I haven't read enough to have come across any of Whitehead's examples in terms of national moods or national zeitgeists [and so don't know if according to W one 'actual occasion' can govern a whole nation]...but I am wondering how he explains boundaries between areas influenced by different 'actual occasions.' You have families, and towns, and states, and nations, and trading blocs; and the way I see it there are most likely different hexagrams [in the context of this article's unique framing of W's philosophy] applying to a whole slew of small worlds. But I am going back to these 22 pages.
You're very involved with your projects, Bill, which DO reach out. But as a liberal I have enough objectivity and exposure to the grass roots down here to see how voters are defaulting to errant POVs. Mostly I think it's because right wing media has hammered, and then folks are too over worked to find their way out of what's been hammered. It's THE TWO CAMPS that rule IMO, and they draw DEDICATED folks in based on economic policy, not whether there was evolution or how we evolved. It's more important IMO to look at the power of the economic policy determinants because...based on the intensity of these...scapegoating of the poor or shock at the hubris of the wealthy...folks are drawn into endorse anything (even we become a little insensitive to the wingers' point regarding abortion, though of course overall it's real authoritarian. If you have any connection with the military for example, you might have connections with TV Christianity...which knows nothing about economics. You don't wanna poo poo military exploits, and you've been hammered with: healthcare for immigrants will explode the debt [Christian leaders should be critiquing this logic, but there's a GREAT "sin" of omission on their part to do so...oh well, seminary/study days are over]. Alot of it's numbers, as they also hammer that social security is doing the same thing. The truth is a little more complicated. Baker, Kuttner, Hudson, and Galbraith are all refuting the "logic," but their ideas need ever more effective vehicles (their "ideas" are really just the reality). At any rate, the defaulting goes beyond issues and horribly carries individuals over into "camps" ...and the TV evangelist camp mostly runs on inertia...like some American Idol that got freakishly promoted and doesn't have the real creativity to find her/his way forward beyond the original schtick. Here's a possible crux: THE KERNEL OF WHAT'S SANE IN THE GRASS ROOTS REPUBLICAN-DENIERS IS THAT THEY'RE TURNED OFF BY THE NARCISSISTIC. Maybe we're on the verge of a change as the real narcissists out there have so few excuses that IMO they're going into direct projection...of their own condition (Brooks on Snowden). When I say "real narcissists," I'm referring to what Fromm described in terms of the group phenomenon. In the clinical sense, of course, one can imagine one seller of toxic assets that's not as personally narcissistic as another seller of same who, in the personal realm, is relatively moreso. It's sad that one's job (connections) restricts one from admitting how unjust certain economic dogmas can be...can become the personal sphere that obviates the rest of the world (sad that "mild" narcissism envelopes so many, and so many that have so much media exposure). But Fromm knew what he was talking about. Yes, at root, I think, it's a matter of choosing the liberal view or the conservative, the fundamental categories of old earth endorsers and deniers. For example, E J Dionne does not refute Brooks sufficiently; if conservatives heard these two on NPR [and they do hear on occasion something resembling] they'd not like the LACK of confrontation (idea-wise, no conviction evident as with, say, you or a Nader...I do give credit to Baker for confronting that hysteric whatever his name is [though Baker could amp it up a mite himself]). If they don't know who's closer to right, they'll go with the hype they know and assume Brooks has been roped into over-politeness with Dionne (pressured by the conspiracy). Actually, the lack of conviction and relevant nightmares not mentioned DOES sort of give one the impression of two jack leg solution finders who like to hear themselves talk...back to Fromm.
on Jacob Kierkegaard on Morning Edition http://www.npr.org/2014/01/14/262357193/more-workers-forced-to-pick-up-pension-investment-risks
This board appears to have decided to eliminate an entire comment of mine, because I repeated one of its links in a separate space/comment where readers could see it. Hey, if you wanted to eliminate a superflous comment, why remove the longer one rather than simply the shorter one with the link? Here's the quote and link again, but I have more to say afterwards.
"Not the least of what’s new in Mark Blyth’s book is the argument that austerity (not inflation) was the proximate cause of Naziism in Germany in the Thirties — also of Japanese expansionism in the same period that led to World War 2."
http://www.radioopensource.org/mark-blyth-9-on-the-dead-end-of-austerity/
"Not the least of what’s new in Mark Blyth’s book is the argument that austerity (not inflation) was the proximate cause of Naziism in Germany in the Thirties — also of Japanese expansionism in the same period that led to World War 2."
http://www.radioopensource.org/mark-blyth-9-on-the-dead-end-of-austerity/
In these days one trickle-down [shock doctrine] ideology feature is nauseatingly apparent...mimesis. Ideological purity. Dedication! It governs at least 95% of Fox’s commentary, which in turn is replicated in waiting rooms across the land (even in quasi-blue states). After reading a bit on narcissism, I’ve come away lately conjecturing that one of the chief characteristics of narcissists is that they are latched on to facile/stereotypical/petrified categories of scapegoats. Taking no cognizance of how features of the societies they are part of have changed. Stereotypical way beyond what’s rational, spoiled retirees for instance. We all designate scapegoats in weak moments, but most of us are more just in our choices in this regard (if one can say there’s any justice in such behavior). Or so goes my theory.
Peterson may believe the doctrines his institute promulgates. His numbers are the best the shockers have AFAICS. Thus, I bought the dude’s book after he was on Moyers once; I wanted possession of their best case. However, they ARE skewed [not shouting, for emphasis only] The best demonstration, for instance [to digress a little] that PPACA will not bankrupt America is sadly not driven home by FM snippets. It’s over at Wikipedia under…you guessed it…”Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act.”
I believe communicating what’s skewed and what’s not skewed is of utmost importance to the world at this moment, as the resources we must make decisions over are limited. Academe isn’t getting off its tush. So called economists need right now to cease all obeisance to the hype and utilize every platform/methodology available to get across what is actually what. Mother Jones is doing pretty well with graphics in my opinion [after all, the net is mostly a visual phenomena where I realize NPR isn’t], but no one’s bringing out Stephen J. Rose’s circular flow diagram. I suppose it would communicate too much. Teach too much. It would be like too much truth about Fukishima. With a full frontal assault on shock doctrine’s speciousness, it would be lot's harder for talking heads to keep perpetrating that all their little sound bytes were such revelatory pryings into the great mystery, wouldn't it?
The Peterson Institute is bad enough, but today (just today) it seems to be getting almost as crazy right here in this blog. Are you guys controlling it, or the Institute from afar? Let's get down to the real nitty gritty. Talking heads roll out these ridiculous mental gymnastics, and we have to listen. If mere mortals then have the temerity to try to analyze what in the world's happening in the heads of guys like Jacob Kierkegaard (when NPR tries to do its duty and air both sides)...we can't communicate our thoughts if we mention a link in two separate comments? I repeat a link by itself so folks won't miss it (hidden in the abbreviated form), and the host deletes the previous post entirely??? If you want my dollar contributions in the future, I would like an answer right here.
BTW, January article on Boeing from “The American Prospect” http://prospect.org/article/fl...
Peterson may believe the doctrines his institute promulgates. His numbers are the best the shockers have AFAICS. Thus, I bought the dude’s book after he was on Moyers once; I wanted possession of their best case. However, they ARE skewed [not shouting, for emphasis only] The best demonstration, for instance [to digress a little] that PPACA will not bankrupt America is sadly not driven home by FM snippets. It’s over at Wikipedia under…you guessed it…”Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act.”
I believe communicating what’s skewed and what’s not skewed is of utmost importance to the world at this moment, as the resources we must make decisions over are limited. Academe isn’t getting off its tush. So called economists need right now to cease all obeisance to the hype and utilize every platform/methodology available to get across what is actually what. Mother Jones is doing pretty well with graphics in my opinion [after all, the net is mostly a visual phenomena where I realize NPR isn’t], but no one’s bringing out Stephen J. Rose’s circular flow diagram. I suppose it would communicate too much. Teach too much. It would be like too much truth about Fukishima. With a full frontal assault on shock doctrine’s speciousness, it would be lot's harder for talking heads to keep perpetrating that all their little sound bytes were such revelatory pryings into the great mystery, wouldn't it?
The Peterson Institute is bad enough, but today (just today) it seems to be getting almost as crazy right here in this blog. Are you guys controlling it, or the Institute from afar? Let's get down to the real nitty gritty. Talking heads roll out these ridiculous mental gymnastics, and we have to listen. If mere mortals then have the temerity to try to analyze what in the world's happening in the heads of guys like Jacob Kierkegaard (when NPR tries to do its duty and air both sides)...we can't communicate our thoughts if we mention a link in two separate comments? I repeat a link by itself so folks won't miss it (hidden in the abbreviated form), and the host deletes the previous post entirely??? If you want my dollar contributions in the future, I would like an answer right here.
BTW, January article on Boeing from “The American Prospect” http://prospect.org/article/fl...
The message comes that makes sense within the context of the society. It could be large. It could be the whole Mediterranean society 2000 yrs ago. The so-called primordial Buddha had a message for a different situation, who knows maybe for the Denisovians. Hey, but also true AFAICS, is that most often straight is the gate and most often narrow is the way for those to whom the message makes sense...when it arrives. After growing a bit, I don't think it needs to become non-relevant in the next society. I agree more with Rene Girard and even Aurobindo on that score. http://bhagavan-ramana.org/guru.html
What originally was one of the biggest scandals of Christianity (besides defending scapegoat-persons)? Maybe not the virgin birth. Maybe the same doctrine that got George Fox beat to a pulp so frequently...that it wasn't necessary to be forking over to some establishment heaven/earth mediator. Christianity may not have been then (and some variants are not now) alone with this contention.
The message comes that makes sense within the context of the society. It could be large. It could be the whole Mediterranean society 2000 yrs ago. Nevertheless, also true AFAICS, is that, most often, straight is the gate and most often narrow is the way for those to whom the message makes any sense...when it arrives. After growing a bit, I don't think it needs to become non-relevant for the next society that comes along. I agree more with Rene Girard and even Aurobindo on this score. http://bhagavan-ramana.org/guru.html
My upbringing fostered development of an ear for the "different drum." The subset of my generation to which I belonged went through a whole LOT of speculation...and, even so, as a philosophy major I perhaps went through a little extra. Some of us emerged on the other side moving (I won't say marching) to a simpler beat...yep, for sure though from a different drum. What's polyrhythmic can become a God of ornateness, and if there's no inspired melody it can paradoxically become constraining, demanding...too heavy. The metered sound of a creed in times past may actually have been identified by its adherents with something different than its "literal" account of things that ended up handed down (sacred texts eg). So, it is hard to judge what spiritual movements in the past really knew about the Great Spirit. But in the span of a life we can see that more truth is opening up about this Spirit, and we can conjecture from there. Sad to say in a way, "a differnt drum" doesn't, for me, square in every way with a "Perennial" drum. Jacques Ellul said the human/God relationship in history was dialectical (but this word signifies for me my ignorance of Marx's vast work, the style of which in many instances I couldn't handle well). Yeah, the drum beat can wind up simpler to the point of causing its proponents or "prophets" to appear ludicrous and retrograde to the world-wise.
theory) was like Lao Tzu's...a more thought out plan wherein gov is
not allowed to exercise too much control. [If you ask me to celebrate
"the best" out of umpteen lives of artists, why can't I/we celebrate
"the best" aspect of Jefferson's legacy...this dream or vision, which
actually <i>has</i> come to some relative degree of fruition in the
USA?]
To focus on actualizing the
potential of the citizenry and then to <i>allow</i> them the fredom to
do
something with it. Tea Partiers have a cherished (but way too vague)
concept of this. The freedom has to be protected, which they have
forgotten. You cut away the barriers for green biz, not tyrants like
Walmart and JP. Speeches that defend only the "freedom" of the tyrants seem to have come to a point where they leave out the freedom of the polity/citizens. They really are stale old things...and <i>real</i> biased when they acquiesce to the personhood doctrine for corporations...when they acquiesce to the notion that the corporation's personhood is worth more than the personhood of individual humans. There's not just this tradition/philosophy, but
there's the spending
tradition too...when needed...even when it'll take some years to pay
it back (sell bonds). Michael Hudson seems to be pretty good on
explaining this. It's part of unleashing the potential. Going to
vouchers in education, for instance, actually means you're
meddling...obstructing...getting in the way of potential. Selling this
as unobstructing potential is the great achievment of today's media
(marketing) propaganda. Yes, if 51% today wanna go with Jefferson's
approach, it's not good enough for the austerity adepts. I think it's
because they have a whole other idea of actualizing potential. Perhaps
they have a misguided notion that something too unruly would result
(red flags or mental blocks on specific issues like Medicaid handling
cost hikes that are outta sight for the poor). Perhaps they are
controlled by these phobias to the point where their memory of
Jefferson's aims have become blocked. If unblocked, though, they might
entertain the idea that the majority <i>can</i> come to a place where
they
make wise political choices.
links for national listening day
syria
not disappeared yet 11/1
The Hobbesian is right re this specific issue. But it's your lucky day, and I wish to wax general. Seems I feel I haven't made an effort to relate to Libertarians. I have an idea of Libertarians from what I hear and read (and from the old days in front of the DMV); but it's all either too much memories or too much cerebral. I owe everyone a little sharing of what I've learned. I want to share it as directly as I can. I know, this is still sort of a cerebral way of doing so.
I admire you guys and gals for one thing, staying with what you believe even if media doesn't see your concerns as headline news...at least until recently. When I've worked, I've worked hard. In some decades I was too tired to study much, but I was blessed to be able to keep at it over the years. When media's not on your side, it's like my little team....whom I guess I could term Kuccinichian or Hudsonian.
There's one simple thought experiment that can determine if the following can be solved by freer markets: 1)national governments' investment in war, 2)the shadow economy's investment in war, and 3)the energysource/environment issue. First, familiarize yourself with what is going on in Syria. Then, ask yourself why are things allowed to get so apocalyptic in that region...even by groups at war with one another? There can only be one answer, and that is CONTROL of the oil to which all of our societies have become foolishly addicted. It is the guarantor of the meagerest functioning of any society or army today (functioning vis a vis business as usual if nothing else can be imagined) for the short time that's left in which said manner of prior functioning will be possible at all in the future. Well, scaling back the dependence has to be PLANNED. Legalizing substances would take care to a great extent of the shadow economy (at least allow some big progress); but curtailing emissions over the planet takes planning. And synergizing the valuable time/labor of those going into green jobs such that folks aren't working at cross purposes also takes planning.
The other problems are lesser, and IMO you guys and gals only need to get a few general economic facts straight to correct your position. The first is the "creating money" issue. Perhaps the Fed shouldn't do it, perhaps only Treasury as Kuccinich maintained. The noteworthy "creation" we all should be considering are the toxic loans (the infamous ones prior to 2008; I'm not hip to how bad some might be now). It was ok for the banks to create this money, but you guys maintain it's not ok to create (borrow) money for social programs. Firstly, you need to accurately compare the "creation" by banks which you allow with the "creation" by gov to which you're ideologically opposed.
"Not a single Republican, not a single Democrat has talked about what has actually increased the government debt by $13 trillion since 2008. And that is the bailouts of the banks, taking a Freddie Mae [sic] and Freddie Mac onto the public balance sheet for $5.3 trillion to bail out the banks from their reckless mortgage loans, the more than $2 trillion in quantitative easing when the Federal Reserve has just created credit to give to the banks to buy their junk mortgages and cash for trash." Michael Hudson 3/25/13 http://michael-hudson.com/.../
Then there is the more fundamental difference between my views and your views.
"Keynes was also well aware, long before his critics, that government borrowing could crowd out some private investment. In The General Theory itself, he noted that the effects of the government directly increasing employment on public works may include 'increasing the rate of interest and so retarding investment in other directions.' This does not imply, however, dollar-for-dollar crowding out. Keynes still believed, and the empirical evidence confirms, that under depression conditions an increase in government spending can result in an increase in total output larger than the initial spending increase (a multiplier greater than one)."http://www.dollarsandsense.org/.../0509reusskeynespartI.html
(brand new, not deleted as of 10/7/13)
March '13 "Not a single Republican, not a single Democrat has talked about what has actually increased the government debt by $13 trillion since 2008. And that is the bailouts of the banks, taking a Freddie Mae [sic] and Freddie Mac onto the public balance sheet for $5.3 trillion to bail out the banks from their reckless mortgage loans, the more than $2 trillion in quantitative easing when the Federal Reserve has just created credit to give to the banks to buy their junk mortgages and cash for trash." http://michael-hudson.com/2013/03/bank-bailouts-burden-the-public-debt/
Hudson's delivery has already been masterfully pared down (for the sake of the harried layperson or student). So I could be wrong, but I often feel his points could be stated in yet other ways. The concepts have been really torqued around by Fox et al, so in conversations I sense a sort of pervading nihilism (sp?) that coming back to fundamental clarity on'em is impossible. Add to that the problem of faulty transcription of the interviews at this site [if it's human, at least it beats voice recognition programs]. The way I would state one of Hudson's points here is that: Banks "create" money on the basis or premise or theory that the worth of the house (value in the economy) will be greater than the loan required to build it. Thus, the builder will have more coming in when he sells it than he shelled out for the loan. It's likewise based on the premise that the family in a home (for which they got a bank loan) will produce more (earn more), and contribute more to the overall economy having the convenience of owning their home. Yep, I suppose THIS IS WHERE BANKS CREATE MONEY VS THE TREASURY THAT PRINTS IT (since the banks do not have the whole amount they've loaned in the vault...the Federal Reserve doing this in huge, huge blocks). A wrong premise is that if the family's income can't forseeably handle the home loan...they will end up contributing more to the nation's economy anyway. Concomitant is that there is no need to focus on the "jobs problem," if you just kick start the whole thing by getting folks with any kind of income to "buy" home loans. Then, there is the phenomenon of the banks "selling" those loans made to families for whom payoff was too much of a struggle (often impossible with ballooning interest rates). I suppose they sold'em to big portfolio managers or perhaps they had/have their own portfolios into which they added'em along with other more lucrative arrangements/contracts...or perhaps sold'em to other banks. Well, if the portfolio packages were tainted by contents that didn't pay [bad home loans], buyers came to perceive them as "toxic." No one would buy a whole range of contaminated portfolios, so gov says we'll buy'em and get you off the hook...thus freeing the second buyers in the chain (banks that bought'em from the first bank/owners). In theory this puts these latter loan owners (banks) back solidly on square one, so that they can begin loaning to enterprises that can pay (and stop purchasing toxic packages that won't sell). But then a previous circumstance makes itself all too plain: the set up of the economy is chiefly conducive to monopoly players...and the layouts of the monopolies is anything but labor intensive (concerned with creating jobs). Equally important [and more stessed by Hudson] is the fact that the bailed out banks WON'T MAKE LOANS TO ENTERPRISES THAT COULD MAKE PROFIT & PAY'EM BACK.
& this
"In one example, Sen. Barack Obama took to the Senate floor on March 16, 2006, in opposition to raising the debt ceiling while George W. Bush was president.
'Increasing America’s debt weakens us,' Obama argued then." Sometime, I'd like to discuss the assumptions behind the things Michael Hudson says and writes (which I believe are correct...econ prof at Univ of Missouri). http://truth-out.org/news/item/19255-the-debt-ceiling-dates-back-to-founding-fathers
(not deleted as of 10/4)
"Since the passage of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, the Senate and the House are supposed to pass budget resolutions in the spring. These budget resolutions set a framework for spending, taxation and other fiscal items in the coming fiscal year. They also lay out general plans for the next four years. If these budget resolutions differ, the chambers are supposed to hammer out a compromise.
Budget resolutions are policy plans. They are not appropriations bills, or spending bills, which actually allocate money for specific purposes.
If a budget resolution doesn’t pass, the federal government won’t go dark. In the absence of a budget resolution, appropriations bills have continued to allocate money.
But, as a previous PolitiFact story said, 'the inability to pass the budget framework can reflect poorly on the majority's organizational skills and/or the degree of partisan discord in Congress. It also increases the likelihood of a logjam of appropriations bills in the fall and winter, and decreases the chance that controversial tax bills will pass the Senate.'" http://www.politifact.com/ohio/statements/2012/apr/26/john-boehner/john-boehner-says-senate-dems-havent-passed-budget/
(not deleted as of 10/4)
"When the debt ceiling is reached, the Treasury has undertaken 'extraordinary measures' which buy more time for the ceiling to be raised. The United States has never reached the point of default where the Treasury is unable to pay its obligations. If this situation were to occur, it is unclear whether the Treasury would be able to prioritize payments on debt to avoid a default on its debt obligations, but it would at least have to default on some of its non-debt obligations. A default could trigger a variety of economic problems including a financial crisis and a decline in output that would put the country into a recession. In 2011 the United States reached a point of near default. The delay in raising the debt ceiling resulted in the first downgrade in the United States credit rating, a sharp drop in the stock market, and an increase in borrowing costs. Congress raised the debt limit with the Budget Control Act of 2011, which created the fiscal cliff and set a new debt ceiling that was reached on December 31, 2012. The Treasury has adopted extraordinary measures to avoid a default on its obligations. On February 4, 2013, President Barack Obama signed a suspension of the debt ceiling that ran until May 19, 2013. After May 19, the debt ceiling was raised to $16.699 trillion, the level of debt incurred during the suspension, and the Treasury resumed extraordinary measures.[1] Treasury http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt_ceiling#CITEREFSahadiMay_17.2C_20132013
Nope, I don't know what "non-debt obligations" refers to, immediate necessary spending?
not deleted as of 1-3-14
This is a new site for me (here below), but what's with the melt through point off South America? As I understood it, "melt"downs would involve all the U235 & U238 melting everything close, therefore at a deep enough level all the stuff from all the rods (or whichever involved, probably all) would converge...which would yield an even hotter mass...that would at that point melt its way down even faster, via gravity of course. But I've never heard that the U235 material is so concentrated (as in a bomb) such that there'd be an explosive chain reaction (IIRC I've read a denial of same). This following was just the first citing I found, maybe not the most well known, but the statement jives with what I remember-->"Fuel-grade enriched uranium still contains a high proportion of U238." I suppose that's why the material shouldn't explode; believe bombs are pure U235 (or worse, Plutonium). For sharing purposes here I'll put the link where the previous is at below the rationalwiki link on the EU Times. Maybe it's converging and the plumes are rock, sand, the rod walls (Zirconium), plus water vapor? Check out http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/European_Union_Times
on proportion of U238 in the rods' contents
https://archive.installgentoo.net/sci/thread/5818313
Good point from zlop IMO in reply to your post above.
You are correct IMO that facebook makes a good newspaper, to read or to issue yourself. Sometimes I wish my mother was still alive [on this plane] to experience it. When one sees so many formulations from "Like"d orgs, though, it seems one can imagine change a'comin quicker than it might in reality (Arab Spring prime example). Wouldn't put it past professional PR being involved with said spring via said media (nevertheless, I stick with Chalmers Johnson's version of things vs trutherism's). Conveying what one knows about heinous scams apparently is an ability or gift that may come via an extended process of outlasting, in <i>faith</i>, those one encounters in ones own life (and in my case the results are far from what I anticipated when younger).
The thought has repeatedly occurred to me lately that <i>like mindedness</i> in a movement is more important than well meaning initiatives going in ten thousand directions. Weird that facebook shares themselves have backed up this thought: Wendell Berry quotes, Richard Rohr quotes, and the other day The Ten Native American Commandments. Vandana Shiva's <i>style</i> or bearing, even beyond her information.
I'm afraid by like-mindedness I mean something that crops up in an unpredictable fashion. Mob mentality can be whipped up by the right PR...given enough "public diplomacy" (William Casey). With respect to consumption or to politics, mimesis it's sometimes called. But regarding an enlightened solidarity or "darshan," I don't think anyone can name the elements that usher it in. I experienced it in the 60s. At the same time I have to say that amidst the movements of the 60s...the myriad accounts of same <i>in media</i> often described something phonier...and many were the folks who embraced the phonier aspects, so desirous were they of the truer spirit of what was happening. I know it's weird to say this, but the other day I had the thought that all through the Old Testament you had these waves of legalism (hard ass-ism). Only if they were (as we say) "lucky"...very lucky...did the Israelites (applies to us too) experience a change-in-zeitgeist-era or change-in-national- spirit era. The waves of legalism come over and over and over. No matter who or how many think they're setting rules for justice, civil liberties, or human rights in stone...those waves of legalism will return (or try to return). Somehow, I guess, they bring us the trials we need to become what we're able to become. It seems these lessons might be especially enhanced if we see that legalism can really transition over to mercy. For such a transition (and the reverse version) can occur with respect to individuals as well.
on Q.A. page
Your thoughts and Ronald's are closest to mine. I've caught up recently with some speculative physics (laboring as a layman to do so). It was fun labor. Listening to one utube interview with Norey on Coast to Coast, I was sort of surprised Amit was suspending judgement so completely on strings. The nice thing about strings I guess was that they needed more dimensions, so I guess some physicists have had to stretch their minds a little. I have two questions about "dark matter." First, why were dark particles so strongly conjectured? I suppose because nothing but particles with "mass" can exert gravity? The second is...is it not assumed the stuff could have existence across some of the (10) string dimensions? In some kind of hyperspace or across a number of "hyperspaces"? If that's the case, it's just like the problem with imagining the morphic field...our culture has not passed along the means to do so [and, as a layman, I have no math to speak of to assist]. If it's in some space that's unimaginable, why must it be so strongly conjectured that dark matter consists of "particles" as we know them thus far? Just as with strings, if they dwell in dimensions we can't imagine, why "only" loops or rubber bands? Because of what we know about electrons tied to nuclei...a sort of phenomenon that's likely even with additional dimensions?
9/30/13
10/1/13
10/3
comparing medicaid expansion & no expansion states
shared on Rigel's page 10/4
Good decision. When gov "shuts down," it seems the pressure builds not to have faith and to become preoccupied with thoughts re the ridiculousness of balony propaganda. OTOH one can get things off one's chest. Since I have the day off, here goes.
Right after corporations and Wall St thought they could really get away with murder [when banks, municipalities, & investment portfolios realized what garbage they had purchased from Wall St in 2008], the economy for sure took a dive. Prior to that, though, there had been offshoring and mergers. Offshoring & introducing the "competition model" into healthcare...worked against our economy synergistically like twin demons. When premium rates began rising 4X faster than wages/salaries (when hospitals began competing against one another and doctors began competing against one another and the big insurers began competing against one another vis a vis sending profits to investors), employers here in the U.S. DID begin taking a hit providing health insurance for their employees. It's difficult to see what is most to blame, competition among corporations to send profits to Wall St investors by offshoring (and of course get more dough for their management & CEOs in the process)...or competition among the big healthcare insurers to do the same (which also in CA means denying payment for 30% of what the doctor orders). Average folk took a hit with offshoring, took a hit with premium rates, and took a hit with claim denials. This healthcare thing is not just some ancillary issue. Not just another entitlement obsession (if there could be such a thing which I doubt). Healthcare & tanked economy are VERY joined issues.
Physicans for National Healthcare, Ralph Nader, and many others give excellent reasons why a "single payer" system would be best. My hope is, though, that the ACA era will be an era of improvement (wherein, after initial glitches, all of us will end up a little less worried about balony propaganda). At her page Maggie Mahar stated this 9/28: "...of course you're paying for far more than the room. You are paying for all of the very expensive equipment in the hospital--those costs are spread out over everyone's bills. But the good news is that some hospitals have begun to do a better job of coordinating care, streamlining systems, and reducing errors. You can see this in the bills that they send to Medicare. Under reform, I'm very hopeful that we'll 'break the curve' of rising hospital costs. But it will take time." One of her articles linked on her fb page--> http://www.healthinsurance.org/blog/2013/09/26/obamacare-and-the-bad-news-bearers/
As best I can tell from scanning it, Mahar doesn't address point blank who will lose out in the states that do not go with the Medicaid expansion provision of ACA. Look people, as you can tell from the chart at the last link I'm leaving, a lot of families bringing in more than 20K or 40K will lose out in the states that don't go with the program (a "program" that spreads costs out very thinly...wisely). It's time IMO for you to wake up and insist on Medicaid expansion in our state; otherwise your taxes will be paying for the benefits under said expansion in the states that HAVE endorsed it. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151673656002286&set=a.10150669654557286.390006.20239752285&type=1&theater
still there 11/23 AM
This is goes over conspiracy culture. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/10/chart-obama-conspiracy-theories
This IMO is not "conspiracy culture."
http://fair.org/extra-online-articles/the-plot-to-kill-jfk/
one of these I deleted today 11/24/13
horses
s georgia islands
best renticular http://www.panoramio.com/photo/2533881
the blog http://houseduties.tumblr.com/
tumblr dashboard https://www.tumblr.com/settings/blog/houseduties
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amitanir@365
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newest email
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wordp
apulieus2
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Tangled heirarchy subtleties are sensed or intuited with respect to the departed?
A thought of a loved one may coincide with a significant event. You could call that synchronicity, fair enough. Memories can be vivid, fair enough. But is it soley the attributes of "good" memory...that make them vivid?
y...nine, capitol Y, k, capitol Z, @
disq @ no caps
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amita__r
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not sure about that at sign...original got erased by cursor
see 4/14's "a malignant narcissists shock tactics" http://narc-attack.blogspot.com/
still there 11/24 morning
If they were "megalithic," these purportedly "big" underwater structures would move the dates back for earliest antecedents of Mayan civ [architecture in the photo] in an astounding fashion! If the usage of "megalithic" in your article [or John's, I forget] goes beyond neolithic & includes mesolithic....then let's say a minimal move-back-date would be something like 10,000 BCE...8k yrs beyond the earliest "beginnings" recognized as 2000 BCE (remarkably early already). Yeah, I should have said "Mayan," not "Aztec" up there [so I changed it]. And...if they are claiming "before the last ice age"...it would of course imply even earlier...12K yrs earlier than what's been recognized (using a conservative guesstimate of say 1000 yrs prior to the most recent conjectured end of the most recent ice age which was 13K yrs back...a guestimate which does not even put these beginnings prior to the ENTIRE duration of said ice age).
"The construction of these structures took place mainly in the Neolithic (though earlier Mesolithic examples are known) and continued into the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age."http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megalithic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesolithic
"During the most recent North American glaciation, during the latter part of the Wisconsin Stage (26,000 to 13,300 years ago), sheets extended to about 45 degrees north latitude. These sheets were 3 to 4 km thick." Wikipedia
not a disappearnce issue: Benjamin Tribbett
https://www.facebook.com/notlarrysabato?hc_location=stream
"The construction of these structures took place mainly in the Neolithic (though earlier Mesolithic examples are known) and continued into the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age."http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megalithic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesolithic
"During the most recent North American glaciation, during the latter part of the Wisconsin Stage (26,000 to 13,300 years ago), sheets extended to about 45 degrees north latitude. These sheets were 3 to 4 km thick." Wikipedia
not a disappearnce issue: Benjamin Tribbett
https://www.facebook.com/notlarrysabato?hc_location=stream
Here's something that's dated but to the point: "Mubarak’s hand-picked Vice-President Omar Suleiman, long-time confidant of the CIA and the Israeli government, appears to have made clear to the U.S. administration that the Egyptian military opposes any effort to oust Mubarak – and the Obama administration is betting its cards on the military. Elite discourse echoes that view. Traditional Washington powerbrokers are siding against Egypt’s democratic revolution, not only from the right but centrists such as long-time head of the Council on Foreign Relations Les Gelb, who spits out the word “mob” over and over again when describing Egypt’s people." http://www.ips-dc.org/.../egypt_on_the_brink_-_and_the_us...
This Dylan article comment is also below all the daveatch blogspot posts links
I can see it as sort of fascist in that he's putting this "solution" out there, but not saying didley about what's...harder to say. I mean he's offering this as the way out, but the real way out will have to talk about things we've been programmed (lately) not to dig...like fixing infrastructure and gardening and smaller farms (again). The weird thing is all this was right there in the zeitgeist out of which his heros arose. No one will talk about it, but I will. I guess it's because everyone who comments in places like this has to purport that folks everywhere need only "write" insightful opinions, and play along of course with whatever gold-plated pork barrell "product" [usually not labor intensive, not sustainable, & usually requiring tons of petro products] the captains of industry happen to be intoxicated with at the moment (like, for instance, another Walmart over yonder [I think of the resources going into these bldgs like the trees the Easter Islanders cut down to roll their statues along]). No, but get down here and deal with the marginalized, and strung out, and developmentally disabled...and then you will see how useless (and divisive) this meritocratic symbolic-analyst vision of a nation has become [ignorant as well].
3. music links, Return to Spirit, & other items to read
3 likes: I can see it as sort of fascist in that he's putting this "solution" out there, but not saying didley about what's...harder to say. I mean he's offering this as the way out, but the real way out will have to talk about things we've been programmed (lately) not to dig...like fixing infrastructure and gardening and smaller farms (again). The weird thing is all this was right there in the zeitgeist out of which his heros arose. No one will talk about it, but I will. I guess it's because everyone who comments in places like this has to purport that folks everywhere need only "write" insightful opinions, and play along of course with whatever gold-plated pork barrell "product" [usually not labor intensive, not sustainable, & usually requiring tons of petro products] the captains of industry happen to be intoxicated with at the moment (like, for instance, another Walmart over yonder [I think of the resources going into these bldgs like the trees the Easter Islanders cut down to roll their statues along]). No, but get down here and deal with the marginalized, and strung out, and developmentally disabled...and then you will see how useless (and divisive) this meritocratic symbolic-analyst vision of a nation has become [ignorant as well].
The profoundness of E = mc2 and its "beauty" has been attributed to the simplicity of the formulation. Someone said the other day, "They don't know what we're dealing with." And I thought they know, but they think we of lower station deserve to deal with it (to deal with people who act badly). And that is I guess meritocracy that has gotten whacked out. I believe some kind of anthropology or psychology or sociology...or some quantum jump in one or all of these fields...is lacking. Somehow media has themselves in cocoons. It has to be up to us. An idea whose time has come. Like Sheldrake says, the morphic field'll crystalize it in many minds at once...maybe. Listening to this guy Tyson (sp?) today, I couldn't believe it. NPR would be better off talking to Rachel Parent. Because of, for one thing, something called "infrastructure." But then there's whatever transformative mission of the economy itself. And what is it? It's nothing. Well, we're beyond getting all besotted with transformative missions, aren't we? The revolution I think has already happened in terms of a frame most can understand; that is, it's been formulated. Humans have maintained "peace," according to the Girardians, with scapegoats (probably for 100,000 yrs or more) [then democracy & individual rights came along, and started going in an entirely different direction]. Seems too obvious, right? Well, just read the Girardians (explicators of Rene Girard). I may have the chronology wrong, but it seems we've gone into extreme "oneupsmanship." Every micro-strata starting at the top scapegoats the layer directly beneath it. I mean...it seems we are in "the war of all against all" (which Girardians talk about a lot). What the heck is our economy doing? Take the phrase "train wreck." Hey, we are literally there! All over the place hauling oil. It's absurd. I think Juan Cole may be right that we shouldn't get too ominous about the deepness. Maybe such could turn into despondency over unbeatable Masons & Bilderbergers, etc. What the economy should be producing I think we can comprehend. And the dysfunctionality that has overwhelmed us can be fathomed by our own minds...if we listen to whatever Fromm types are still around...vs the "screaming midgets" on winger media (ha, thanks Garrison). It appears that when we dare to get a handle on the dysfunctionality that's gripped us...dare to analyze it ourselves...that's what generates the ire of all those symbolic analysts out there. They'll do the analysis, thank you. Psychological terms no longer apply, only trips they are qualified to condemn in simplistic jargon. And weirdly they think their analyzing entitlement is all wrapped up in democracy. Democracy's "abundant living" has tapped them the analysts, not us. Yeah, that's when we're going too far with questioning authority. One must, as Limbaugh counsels, leave off from "psychobabble" and allow him to do the judging.
More real sanity would come if we were actually producing something. Meanwhile, it's not the corporation we're loyal to...it's the role the corporation gives us that we're loyal to. We re-hash/recycle (produce) more versions of whatever insipid gossip and prolefeed is currently floating about...at our stations (yes, our lowly stations). Who the stupid ones (blame worthy ones) are. That's basically where all our energy goes, not into any product. This is an overly absurd system. Humans need to be doing something together with their hands.
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theCrowdisUntruth theCrowdisUntruth • 18 hours ago
Sorry that this will be an empty comment. Last night my cursor was knocking out whole portions of what I wrote above. Finally, I decided to leave the url realizing that lots more of the knocked out segments might remain in my post (as I had first or second posted it)...as opposed to the gobbled-up version my cursor had unpredictably reduced to almost nothing. So, I left this url and came back. Well, sure'nuff lots of the old version remained but what had been in the box before my last click on "Save Edit" wasn't all there; nor was the "Edit" option IIRC. I had a copy, so I figured I'd put it in a reply. However, today I see that the part originally missing in the main comment somehow mostly made its way back into said comment. I only had to sand off some edges today [day after], and then empty out this "reply."
What Mike Lofgren described made me think of Jacques Ellul's notion/frame/phenomenon...<i>technique.</i> Cole's mention of invisibility I think goes along with the latter. Ellul's idea is tough to summarize; that very toughness jives in a way, I think, with the invisible quality...if these things are the same thing as I think they are. What I took away from Ellul's description (to try to impossibly condense it in one sentence) was that it was in the main sort of a psychology, or utilitarian zeitgeist (he wrote that actual hard technology is part of it too). BTW, to me Le Carre's fictional characters have demonstrated an intoxication with their own canniness re efficient means to achieving goals.
<i>'We have so many people who are indoctrinated, who are admitted to the secrets of state, and we have the people outside the circle.' </i> John LeCarre, BBC interview
Mar 1
"When confronted with resistance to these initiatives, members of today's elite betray the venomous hatred that lies not far beneath the smiling face of upper-middle-class benevolence." What can we see in 2014 that Lasch left out in 1994? The only thing he failed to stress enough was that the outlook of wealthier individuals on the left would be vicariously adopted by too many other portions of the left (just as the mindsent of Republican 1-percenters would be, in an extremely self-defeating manner, too much adopted by conservatives on hourly wages). I think he did see that, at root, both wellsprings of influence were, in terms of ATTITUDE, very much related. What I think is that...it is the prevalence of this blob-like attitude that has defeated us. What has defeated the left, which is what's important to me. Who can we thank? I suppose media, but also ourselves. This predicament, which it might seem impossible to get around, also seems likely to justify Nader's suggestion that some wealthy liberals run for office (IMO, though, they would have to have enough understanding of how so many of our interventions abroad were misconceived, which is a formidable subject for the Rands out there or the Chomskys out there...or anyone). http://brandon.multics.org/library/Christopher%20Lasch/lasch1994revolt.html
"combating economic inequality" actually would mean a SERIOUS return to Schumacher's "good work" concept. All Americans would have to be involved in an intense examination of what it is we're doing at work, and then we'd have to choose something more in line with what the environment's handing us. The readjustment would be massive; driving some SUV 25 miles downtown to sit in a cube and take crap from would-be-1-percenters will not get it.
We're in a dysfunctional "divided house" phenomenon in terms of political philosophy and lifestyles. Rene Girard has presented a frame which IMO describes THIS divided house and most other such critically divided houses in history (and in pre-history). I won't get into this here much more, other than to underline what media WON'T acknowledge: <u>it's vicious</u>.
It'll strike many readers here as starting off tangentially but I think it's connected. Someone close to me shared the article "America's Angriest Store". My comment on that share--> "When confronted with resistance to these initiatives, members of today's elite betray the venomous hatred that lies not far beneath the smiling face of upper-middle-class benevolence." What can we see in 2014 that Lasch left out in 1994? The only thing he failed to stress enough was that the outlook of wealthier individuals on the left would be vicariously adopted by too many other portions of the left (just as the mindsent of Republican 1-percenters would be, in an extremely self-defeating manner, too much adopted by conservatives on hourly wages). I think he did see that, at root, both wellsprings of influence were, in terms of ATTITUDE, very much related. What I think is that...it is the prevalence of this blob-like attitude that has defeated us. What has defeated the left, which is what's important to me. Who can we thank? I suppose media, but also ourselves.
This predicament, which it might seem impossible to get around, also seems likely to justify Nader's suggestion that some wealthy liberals run for office (IMO, though, they would have to possess enough understanding of how so many of our interventions abroad were misconceived, which is a formidable subject for the Rands out there or the Chomskys out there...or anyone).
"When confronted with resistance to these initiatives, members of today's elite betray the venomous hatred that lies not far beneath the smiling face of upper-middle-class benevolence." http://brandon.multics.org/library/Christopher%20Lasch/lasch1994revolt.html
What can we see in 2014 that Lasch left out in 1994? The only thing he failed to stress enough was that the outlook of wealthier individuals on the left would be vicariously adopted by too many other portions of the left (just as the mindsent of Republican 1-percenters would be, in an extremely self-defeating manner, too much adopted by conservatives on hourly wages). I think he did see that, at root, both wellsprings of influence were, in terms of ATTITUDE, very much related. What I think is that...it is the prevalence of this blob-like attitude that has defeated us. What has defeated the left, which is what's important to me. Who can we thank? I suppose media, but also ourselves.
Hardly know where to keep bringing the insight of “the wise” ones of our past to bear on where we’re headed. There was Orwell. There is Richard Stallman (who has already written a lot and activated a lot). There was Erich Fromm and Christopher Lasch. There was the novelist Michael Young (“Rise of the Meritocracy”). There was Popper and Norman Macbeth. There is Rupert Sheldrake,Amit Goswami, and Rod Hemsell. BTW, our politiking in the Mid-East plus South & Central Asia, as summarized in Juan Cole and Tariq Ali youtubes, prompts me to mention Jacques Ellul too (ie his notion of "technique").
I heard one interview with you on NPR, and you sounded like the best conversationalist in the world. Since then, no youtubes seem to re-capture that impact on me yrs ago. Can’t keep up with your books, so right here is it. Very on target AFAIC, though, with this “share.”
We haven’t even really agreed on what it is that has burned us out and made us crazy. “This is the age of machinery, A mechanical nightmare…” (The Kinks). But we ARE burned out, and folks need empathy from their sister/fellow humans. I don’t think it’s gonna happen much with these cube jobs. If we were camped out alongside the road and were simply handing crates of peas to one another…down some 200-mile-long-line of humans…it would mean MORE than these kinds of positions; but we’d have to agree in solidarity on such a bucket brigade’s purpose in a larger re-vamped approach to everything. The spinmeisters and Mad Ave [old metaphor for something even more pervasive now (out in CA too)] adepts have facilitated nichification and internicene squabbles throughout every corner of society…and this applies to what we do at work.
Ironically, there are enough PCs around to plan a division of labor in a sort of large scale USA CCC, even according to location and what individuals would individually be capable of. But it’s a human decision re whether we wanna augment survival & healing & quality of life & sustainability vs…more toys. I do give the uncorporatized geeks credit, though; plus they give me hope. At least Open Secrets and Mother Jones come out without graphics that say a thousand words with single pictures. Why lots of other economists fail to pick up this ball and run with it, at the same time, is telling regarding a total LACK of creativity floating about with regard to what these Rare Earth demanding machines should be used for.
You are right that people deserve such cube jobs at Google; but it also should be Google’s responsibility (since they are the ones with all the creativity) to come out and warn the world…that such jobs should only be a transition…to a phase in which our occupations actually enable positive and meaningful sharing among humans (more counselors and nurses for starters).
Yes, “this is the age of machinery, a mechanical nightmare..” In direct contraposition to Wikipedia and Stallman are the entities you address in this share. These entities churn out the topics & data & art they deem fit for our consumption, which unfortunately (in contradistinction to what we want and need) amount mainly to a very large “Prolefeed” wasteland. The symbolic analysts & desk jockey Winston Smiths & “creative ones” do do their bit, and then conceive that WE should be grateful and not make too much noise if eg our HMO premiums are going up through the roof. YOU ARE RIGHT to address what these entities are doing. Sad but true that many, many brains programmed by the Prolefeed product of these corporations…are predisposed deem the messages of “the wise” I mentioned up there at the beginning as…merely academic. So, then one hopes some new Pete Seeger or Green Day or Midnight Oil or Bob Marley, or Bob Dylan, or Billy Brag’ll come along, and somehow wedge in some contrary orientation by the sheer force of poetry and aesthetics. Alas, these corporations have the means to “slow down” even the phenomenon of how widely such innovaters might be appreciated...at least media wise.
I think all of us who want a better job (or more just pay) will have to come to a demand-in-common…for a complete overhaul. We’ll have to come IMO to some solidarity on some such, or we’ll be bickering right up till deaths due to heat stroke, starvation, over-work, or wandering polar vortex. No thanks, after all this we at least deserve physician-assisted exits.
Jerfferson had some great ideas about tolerance, and it would have been nice if all the Mr Smiths that went to Washington had held them in esteem after they got there. Which is worse, to engineer confrontations, or to participate in a religion that gives no discernment regarding: The holy mandates to go fight the errant are engineered.
When I shared this the other day I actually had remembered (mistakenly) that Woodhouse thought both aspects of "the universal stuff" (consciousness/energy) COULD BE reduced to one another, but here I see he does not maintain it. Like I remembered vaguely, though, his conceptual frame still alludes to a sort of limited "dualism" AFAICS...in that entities currently manifesting as "humans" may very well never end up understanding how each of the two-fold "aspects" ultimately could be, or might be reducible to one another. Originally I found an article by Woodhouse in the book "What Survives?"
http://books.google.com/books?id=dejmdCWwEHsC&pg=PA154&lpg=PA154&dq=woodhouse+%22energy+monism%22&source=bl&ots=BxtJNsw7XZ&sig=UxvQcd74CoBMzNZq1IQREAwD_Fg&hl=en&sa=X&ei=vMzVUuzzGo7OyAGZx4HIDw&ved=0CDgQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=woodhouse%20%22energy%20monism%22&f=false
Sorry the first unedited version of this post was so rough.
Whitehead's ideas relevant to Tao Te Ching seem to be at this site, and furthermore I can't see how these very same correspondences wouldn't actually be the gist of his complete philosophical legacy (his main ideas germane to ontology...what's real). They're pretty mindblowing, and I can't believe how quickly the site's owner got down to brass tacks in terms of laying out this pov that is supposed to require so much reading. Guess after this many years of living I was bound to find a few short cuts.
Can't buy the take completely, though. There are patterns in my opinion we move into and out of, or they move upon us and then away (one could postulate Jungian archetypes)...however you look at it. At first scan, it seems as though one of Whitehead's 'actual occasions' [see article] might define America's zeitgeist at, say, time X or time Y; but I wonder how all the deviations or clusters of dissenters (in this town or that county or that burg) might also be accounted for by the same 'actual occasion.' I haven't read enough to have come across any of Whitehead's examples in terms of national moods or national zeitgeists [and so don't know if according to W one 'actual occasion' can govern a whole nation]...but I am wondering how he explains boundaries between areas influenced by different 'actual occasions.' You have families, and towns, and states, and nations, and trading blocs; and the way I see it there are most likely different hexagrams [in the context of this article's unique framing of W's philosophy] applying to a whole slew of small worlds. But I am going back to these 22 pages.
You're very involved with your projects, Bill, which DO reach out. But as a liberal I have enough objectivity and exposure to the grass roots down here to see how voters are defaulting to errant POVs. Mostly I think it's because right wing media has hammered, and then folks are too over worked to find their way out of what's been hammered. It's THE TWO CAMPS that rule IMO, and they draw DEDICATED folks in based on economic policy, not whether there was evolution or how we evolved. It's more important IMO to look at the power of the economic policy determinants because...based on the intensity of these...scapegoating of the poor or shock at the hubris of the wealthy...folks are drawn into endorse anything (even we become a little insensitive to the wingers' point regarding abortion, though of course overall it's real authoritarian. If you have any connection with the military for example, you might have connections with TV Christianity...which knows nothing about economics. You don't wanna poo poo military exploits, and you've been hammered with: healthcare for immigrants will explode the debt [Christian leaders should be critiquing this logic, but there's a GREAT "sin" of omission on their part to do so...oh well, seminary/study days are over]. Alot of it's numbers, as they also hammer that social security is doing the same thing. The truth is a little more complicated. Baker, Kuttner, Hudson, and Galbraith are all refuting the "logic," but their ideas need ever more effective vehicles (their "ideas" are really just the reality). At any rate, the defaulting goes beyond issues and horribly carries individuals over into "camps" ...and the TV evangelist camp mostly runs on inertia...like some American Idol that got freakishly promoted and doesn't have the real creativity to find her/his way forward beyond the original schtick. Here's a possible crux: THE KERNEL OF WHAT'S SANE IN THE GRASS ROOTS REPUBLICAN-DENIERS IS THAT THEY'RE TURNED OFF BY THE NARCISSISTIC. Maybe we're on the verge of a change as the real narcissists out there have so few excuses that IMO they're going into direct projection...of their own condition (Brooks on Snowden). When I say "real narcissists," I'm referring to what Fromm described in terms of the group phenomenon. In the clinical sense, of course, one can imagine one seller of toxic assets that's not as personally narcissistic as another seller of same who, in the personal realm, is relatively moreso. It's sad that one's job (connections) restricts one from admitting how unjust certain economic dogmas can be...can become the personal sphere that obviates the rest of the world (sad that "mild" narcissism envelopes so many, and so many that have so much media exposure). But Fromm knew what he was talking about. Yes, at root, I think, it's a matter of choosing the liberal view or the conservative, the fundamental categories of old earth endorsers and deniers. For example, E J Dionne does not refute Brooks sufficiently; if conservatives heard these two on NPR [and they do hear on occasion something resembling] they'd not like the LACK of confrontation (idea-wise, no conviction evident as with, say, you or a Nader...I do give credit to Baker for confronting that hysteric whatever his name is [though Baker could amp it up a mite himself]). If they don't know who's closer to right, they'll go with the hype they know and assume Brooks has been roped into over-politeness with Dionne (pressured by the conspiracy). Actually, the lack of conviction and relevant nightmares not mentioned DOES sort of give one the impression of two jack leg solution finders who like to hear themselves talk...back to Fromm.
on Jacob Kierkegaard on Morning Edition http://www.npr.org/2014/01/14/262357193/more-workers-forced-to-pick-up-pension-investment-risks
This board appears to have decided to eliminate an entire comment of mine, because I repeated one of its links in a separate space/comment where readers could see it. Hey, if you wanted to eliminate a superflous comment, why remove the longer one rather than simply the shorter one with the link? Here's the quote and link again, but I have more to say afterwards.
"Not the least of what’s new in Mark Blyth’s book is the argument that austerity (not inflation) was the proximate cause of Naziism in Germany in the Thirties — also of Japanese expansionism in the same period that led to World War 2."
http://www.radioopensource.org/mark-blyth-9-on-the-dead-end-of-austerity/
"Not the least of what’s new in Mark Blyth’s book is the argument that austerity (not inflation) was the proximate cause of Naziism in Germany in the Thirties — also of Japanese expansionism in the same period that led to World War 2."
http://www.radioopensource.org/mark-blyth-9-on-the-dead-end-of-austerity/
In these days one trickle-down [shock doctrine] ideology feature is nauseatingly apparent...mimesis. Ideological purity. Dedication! It governs at least 95% of Fox’s commentary, which in turn is replicated in waiting rooms across the land (even in quasi-blue states). After reading a bit on narcissism, I’ve come away lately conjecturing that one of the chief characteristics of narcissists is that they are latched on to facile/stereotypical/petrified categories of scapegoats. Taking no cognizance of how features of the societies they are part of have changed. Stereotypical way beyond what’s rational, spoiled retirees for instance. We all designate scapegoats in weak moments, but most of us are more just in our choices in this regard (if one can say there’s any justice in such behavior). Or so goes my theory.
Peterson may believe the doctrines his institute promulgates. His numbers are the best the shockers have AFAICS. Thus, I bought the dude’s book after he was on Moyers once; I wanted possession of their best case. However, they ARE skewed [not shouting, for emphasis only] The best demonstration, for instance [to digress a little] that PPACA will not bankrupt America is sadly not driven home by FM snippets. It’s over at Wikipedia under…you guessed it…”Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act.”
I believe communicating what’s skewed and what’s not skewed is of utmost importance to the world at this moment, as the resources we must make decisions over are limited. Academe isn’t getting off its tush. So called economists need right now to cease all obeisance to the hype and utilize every platform/methodology available to get across what is actually what. Mother Jones is doing pretty well with graphics in my opinion [after all, the net is mostly a visual phenomena where I realize NPR isn’t], but no one’s bringing out Stephen J. Rose’s circular flow diagram. I suppose it would communicate too much. Teach too much. It would be like too much truth about Fukishima. With a full frontal assault on shock doctrine’s speciousness, it would be lot's harder for talking heads to keep perpetrating that all their little sound bytes were such revelatory pryings into the great mystery, wouldn't it?
The Peterson Institute is bad enough, but today (just today) it seems to be getting almost as crazy right here in this blog. Are you guys controlling it, or the Institute from afar? Let's get down to the real nitty gritty. Talking heads roll out these ridiculous mental gymnastics, and we have to listen. If mere mortals then have the temerity to try to analyze what in the world's happening in the heads of guys like Jacob Kierkegaard (when NPR tries to do its duty and air both sides)...we can't communicate our thoughts if we mention a link in two separate comments? I repeat a link by itself so folks won't miss it (hidden in the abbreviated form), and the host deletes the previous post entirely??? If you want my dollar contributions in the future, I would like an answer right here.
BTW, January article on Boeing from “The American Prospect” http://prospect.org/article/fl...
Peterson may believe the doctrines his institute promulgates. His numbers are the best the shockers have AFAICS. Thus, I bought the dude’s book after he was on Moyers once; I wanted possession of their best case. However, they ARE skewed [not shouting, for emphasis only] The best demonstration, for instance [to digress a little] that PPACA will not bankrupt America is sadly not driven home by FM snippets. It’s over at Wikipedia under…you guessed it…”Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act.”
I believe communicating what’s skewed and what’s not skewed is of utmost importance to the world at this moment, as the resources we must make decisions over are limited. Academe isn’t getting off its tush. So called economists need right now to cease all obeisance to the hype and utilize every platform/methodology available to get across what is actually what. Mother Jones is doing pretty well with graphics in my opinion [after all, the net is mostly a visual phenomena where I realize NPR isn’t], but no one’s bringing out Stephen J. Rose’s circular flow diagram. I suppose it would communicate too much. Teach too much. It would be like too much truth about Fukishima. With a full frontal assault on shock doctrine’s speciousness, it would be lot's harder for talking heads to keep perpetrating that all their little sound bytes were such revelatory pryings into the great mystery, wouldn't it?
The Peterson Institute is bad enough, but today (just today) it seems to be getting almost as crazy right here in this blog. Are you guys controlling it, or the Institute from afar? Let's get down to the real nitty gritty. Talking heads roll out these ridiculous mental gymnastics, and we have to listen. If mere mortals then have the temerity to try to analyze what in the world's happening in the heads of guys like Jacob Kierkegaard (when NPR tries to do its duty and air both sides)...we can't communicate our thoughts if we mention a link in two separate comments? I repeat a link by itself so folks won't miss it (hidden in the abbreviated form), and the host deletes the previous post entirely??? If you want my dollar contributions in the future, I would like an answer right here.
BTW, January article on Boeing from “The American Prospect” http://prospect.org/article/fl...
The message comes that makes sense within the context of the society. It could be large. It could be the whole Mediterranean society 2000 yrs ago. The so-called primordial Buddha had a message for a different situation, who knows maybe for the Denisovians. Hey, but also true AFAICS, is that most often straight is the gate and most often narrow is the way for those to whom the message makes sense...when it arrives. After growing a bit, I don't think it needs to become non-relevant in the next society. I agree more with Rene Girard and even Aurobindo on that score. http://bhagavan-ramana.org/guru.html
What originally was one of the biggest scandals of Christianity (besides defending scapegoat-persons)? Maybe not the virgin birth. Maybe the same doctrine that got George Fox beat to a pulp so frequently...that it wasn't necessary to be forking over to some establishment heaven/earth mediator. Christianity may not have been then (and some variants are not now) alone with this contention.
The message comes that makes sense within the context of the society. It could be large. It could be the whole Mediterranean society 2000 yrs ago. Nevertheless, also true AFAICS, is that, most often, straight is the gate and most often narrow is the way for those to whom the message makes any sense...when it arrives. After growing a bit, I don't think it needs to become non-relevant for the next society that comes along. I agree more with Rene Girard and even Aurobindo on this score. http://bhagavan-ramana.org/guru.html
My upbringing fostered development of an ear for the "different drum." The subset of my generation to which I belonged went through a whole LOT of speculation...and, even so, as a philosophy major I perhaps went through a little extra. Some of us emerged on the other side moving (I won't say marching) to a simpler beat...yep, for sure though from a different drum. What's polyrhythmic can become a God of ornateness, and if there's no inspired melody it can paradoxically become constraining, demanding...too heavy. The metered sound of a creed in times past may actually have been identified by its adherents with something different than its "literal" account of things that ended up handed down (sacred texts eg). So, it is hard to judge what spiritual movements in the past really knew about the Great Spirit. But in the span of a life we can see that more truth is opening up about this Spirit, and we can conjecture from there. Sad to say in a way, "a differnt drum" doesn't, for me, square in every way with a "Perennial" drum. Jacques Ellul said the human/God relationship in history was dialectical (but this word signifies for me my ignorance of Marx's vast work, the style of which in many instances I couldn't handle well). Yeah, the drum beat can wind up simpler to the point of causing its proponents or "prophets" to appear ludicrous and retrograde to the world-wise.
theory) was like Lao Tzu's...a more thought out plan wherein gov is
not allowed to exercise too much control. [If you ask me to celebrate
"the best" out of umpteen lives of artists, why can't I/we celebrate
"the best" aspect of Jefferson's legacy...this dream or vision, which
actually <i>has</i> come to some relative degree of fruition in the
USA?]
To focus on actualizing the
potential of the citizenry and then to <i>allow</i> them the fredom to
do
something with it. Tea Partiers have a cherished (but way too vague)
concept of this. The freedom has to be protected, which they have
forgotten. You cut away the barriers for green biz, not tyrants like
Walmart and JP. Speeches that defend only the "freedom" of the tyrants seem to have come to a point where they leave out the freedom of the polity/citizens. They really are stale old things...and <i>real</i> biased when they acquiesce to the personhood doctrine for corporations...when they acquiesce to the notion that the corporation's personhood is worth more than the personhood of individual humans. There's not just this tradition/philosophy, but
there's the spending
tradition too...when needed...even when it'll take some years to pay
it back (sell bonds). Michael Hudson seems to be pretty good on
explaining this. It's part of unleashing the potential. Going to
vouchers in education, for instance, actually means you're
meddling...obstructing...getting in the way of potential. Selling this
as unobstructing potential is the great achievment of today's media
(marketing) propaganda. Yes, if 51% today wanna go with Jefferson's
approach, it's not good enough for the austerity adepts. I think it's
because they have a whole other idea of actualizing potential. Perhaps
they have a misguided notion that something too unruly would result
(red flags or mental blocks on specific issues like Medicaid handling
cost hikes that are outta sight for the poor). Perhaps they are
controlled by these phobias to the point where their memory of
Jefferson's aims have become blocked. If unblocked, though, they might
entertain the idea that the majority <i>can</i> come to a place where
they
make wise political choices.
links for national listening day
syria
not disappeared yet 11/1
The Hobbesian is right re this specific issue. But it's your lucky day, and I wish to wax general. Seems I feel I haven't made an effort to relate to Libertarians. I have an idea of Libertarians from what I hear and read (and from the old days in front of the DMV); but it's all either too much memories or too much cerebral. I owe everyone a little sharing of what I've learned. I want to share it as directly as I can. I know, this is still sort of a cerebral way of doing so.
I admire you guys and gals for one thing, staying with what you believe even if media doesn't see your concerns as headline news...at least until recently. When I've worked, I've worked hard. In some decades I was too tired to study much, but I was blessed to be able to keep at it over the years. When media's not on your side, it's like my little team....whom I guess I could term Kuccinichian or Hudsonian.
There's one simple thought experiment that can determine if the following can be solved by freer markets: 1)national governments' investment in war, 2)the shadow economy's investment in war, and 3)the energysource/environment issue. First, familiarize yourself with what is going on in Syria. Then, ask yourself why are things allowed to get so apocalyptic in that region...even by groups at war with one another? There can only be one answer, and that is CONTROL of the oil to which all of our societies have become foolishly addicted. It is the guarantor of the meagerest functioning of any society or army today (functioning vis a vis business as usual if nothing else can be imagined) for the short time that's left in which said manner of prior functioning will be possible at all in the future. Well, scaling back the dependence has to be PLANNED. Legalizing substances would take care to a great extent of the shadow economy (at least allow some big progress); but curtailing emissions over the planet takes planning. And synergizing the valuable time/labor of those going into green jobs such that folks aren't working at cross purposes also takes planning.
The other problems are lesser, and IMO you guys and gals only need to get a few general economic facts straight to correct your position. The first is the "creating money" issue. Perhaps the Fed shouldn't do it, perhaps only Treasury as Kuccinich maintained. The noteworthy "creation" we all should be considering are the toxic loans (the infamous ones prior to 2008; I'm not hip to how bad some might be now). It was ok for the banks to create this money, but you guys maintain it's not ok to create (borrow) money for social programs. Firstly, you need to accurately compare the "creation" by banks which you allow with the "creation" by gov to which you're ideologically opposed.
"Not a single Republican, not a single Democrat has talked about what has actually increased the government debt by $13 trillion since 2008. And that is the bailouts of the banks, taking a Freddie Mae [sic] and Freddie Mac onto the public balance sheet for $5.3 trillion to bail out the banks from their reckless mortgage loans, the more than $2 trillion in quantitative easing when the Federal Reserve has just created credit to give to the banks to buy their junk mortgages and cash for trash." Michael Hudson 3/25/13 http://michael-hudson.com/.../
Then there is the more fundamental difference between my views and your views.
"Keynes was also well aware, long before his critics, that government borrowing could crowd out some private investment. In The General Theory itself, he noted that the effects of the government directly increasing employment on public works may include 'increasing the rate of interest and so retarding investment in other directions.' This does not imply, however, dollar-for-dollar crowding out. Keynes still believed, and the empirical evidence confirms, that under depression conditions an increase in government spending can result in an increase in total output larger than the initial spending increase (a multiplier greater than one)."http://www.dollarsandsense.org/.../0509reusskeynespartI.html
(brand new, not deleted as of 10/7/13)
March '13 "Not a single Republican, not a single Democrat has talked about what has actually increased the government debt by $13 trillion since 2008. And that is the bailouts of the banks, taking a Freddie Mae [sic] and Freddie Mac onto the public balance sheet for $5.3 trillion to bail out the banks from their reckless mortgage loans, the more than $2 trillion in quantitative easing when the Federal Reserve has just created credit to give to the banks to buy their junk mortgages and cash for trash." http://michael-hudson.com/2013/03/bank-bailouts-burden-the-public-debt/
Hudson's delivery has already been masterfully pared down (for the sake of the harried layperson or student). So I could be wrong, but I often feel his points could be stated in yet other ways. The concepts have been really torqued around by Fox et al, so in conversations I sense a sort of pervading nihilism (sp?) that coming back to fundamental clarity on'em is impossible. Add to that the problem of faulty transcription of the interviews at this site [if it's human, at least it beats voice recognition programs]. The way I would state one of Hudson's points here is that: Banks "create" money on the basis or premise or theory that the worth of the house (value in the economy) will be greater than the loan required to build it. Thus, the builder will have more coming in when he sells it than he shelled out for the loan. It's likewise based on the premise that the family in a home (for which they got a bank loan) will produce more (earn more), and contribute more to the overall economy having the convenience of owning their home. Yep, I suppose THIS IS WHERE BANKS CREATE MONEY VS THE TREASURY THAT PRINTS IT (since the banks do not have the whole amount they've loaned in the vault...the Federal Reserve doing this in huge, huge blocks). A wrong premise is that if the family's income can't forseeably handle the home loan...they will end up contributing more to the nation's economy anyway. Concomitant is that there is no need to focus on the "jobs problem," if you just kick start the whole thing by getting folks with any kind of income to "buy" home loans. Then, there is the phenomenon of the banks "selling" those loans made to families for whom payoff was too much of a struggle (often impossible with ballooning interest rates). I suppose they sold'em to big portfolio managers or perhaps they had/have their own portfolios into which they added'em along with other more lucrative arrangements/contracts...or perhaps sold'em to other banks. Well, if the portfolio packages were tainted by contents that didn't pay [bad home loans], buyers came to perceive them as "toxic." No one would buy a whole range of contaminated portfolios, so gov says we'll buy'em and get you off the hook...thus freeing the second buyers in the chain (banks that bought'em from the first bank/owners). In theory this puts these latter loan owners (banks) back solidly on square one, so that they can begin loaning to enterprises that can pay (and stop purchasing toxic packages that won't sell). But then a previous circumstance makes itself all too plain: the set up of the economy is chiefly conducive to monopoly players...and the layouts of the monopolies is anything but labor intensive (concerned with creating jobs). Equally important [and more stessed by Hudson] is the fact that the bailed out banks WON'T MAKE LOANS TO ENTERPRISES THAT COULD MAKE PROFIT & PAY'EM BACK.
& this
"In one example, Sen. Barack Obama took to the Senate floor on March 16, 2006, in opposition to raising the debt ceiling while George W. Bush was president.
'Increasing America’s debt weakens us,' Obama argued then." Sometime, I'd like to discuss the assumptions behind the things Michael Hudson says and writes (which I believe are correct...econ prof at Univ of Missouri). http://truth-out.org/news/item/19255-the-debt-ceiling-dates-back-to-founding-fathers
(not deleted as of 10/4)
"Since the passage of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, the Senate and the House are supposed to pass budget resolutions in the spring. These budget resolutions set a framework for spending, taxation and other fiscal items in the coming fiscal year. They also lay out general plans for the next four years. If these budget resolutions differ, the chambers are supposed to hammer out a compromise.
Budget resolutions are policy plans. They are not appropriations bills, or spending bills, which actually allocate money for specific purposes.
If a budget resolution doesn’t pass, the federal government won’t go dark. In the absence of a budget resolution, appropriations bills have continued to allocate money.
But, as a previous PolitiFact story said, 'the inability to pass the budget framework can reflect poorly on the majority's organizational skills and/or the degree of partisan discord in Congress. It also increases the likelihood of a logjam of appropriations bills in the fall and winter, and decreases the chance that controversial tax bills will pass the Senate.'" http://www.politifact.com/ohio/statements/2012/apr/26/john-boehner/john-boehner-says-senate-dems-havent-passed-budget/
(not deleted as of 10/4)
"When the debt ceiling is reached, the Treasury has undertaken 'extraordinary measures' which buy more time for the ceiling to be raised. The United States has never reached the point of default where the Treasury is unable to pay its obligations. If this situation were to occur, it is unclear whether the Treasury would be able to prioritize payments on debt to avoid a default on its debt obligations, but it would at least have to default on some of its non-debt obligations. A default could trigger a variety of economic problems including a financial crisis and a decline in output that would put the country into a recession. In 2011 the United States reached a point of near default. The delay in raising the debt ceiling resulted in the first downgrade in the United States credit rating, a sharp drop in the stock market, and an increase in borrowing costs. Congress raised the debt limit with the Budget Control Act of 2011, which created the fiscal cliff and set a new debt ceiling that was reached on December 31, 2012. The Treasury has adopted extraordinary measures to avoid a default on its obligations. On February 4, 2013, President Barack Obama signed a suspension of the debt ceiling that ran until May 19, 2013. After May 19, the debt ceiling was raised to $16.699 trillion, the level of debt incurred during the suspension, and the Treasury resumed extraordinary measures.[1] Treasury http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt_ceiling#CITEREFSahadiMay_17.2C_20132013
Nope, I don't know what "non-debt obligations" refers to, immediate necessary spending?
not deleted as of 1-3-14
This is a new site for me (here below), but what's with the melt through point off South America? As I understood it, "melt"downs would involve all the U235 & U238 melting everything close, therefore at a deep enough level all the stuff from all the rods (or whichever involved, probably all) would converge...which would yield an even hotter mass...that would at that point melt its way down even faster, via gravity of course. But I've never heard that the U235 material is so concentrated (as in a bomb) such that there'd be an explosive chain reaction (IIRC I've read a denial of same). This following was just the first citing I found, maybe not the most well known, but the statement jives with what I remember-->"Fuel-grade enriched uranium still contains a high proportion of U238." I suppose that's why the material shouldn't explode; believe bombs are pure U235 (or worse, Plutonium). For sharing purposes here I'll put the link where the previous is at below the rationalwiki link on the EU Times. Maybe it's converging and the plumes are rock, sand, the rod walls (Zirconium), plus water vapor? Check out http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/European_Union_Times
on proportion of U238 in the rods' contents
https://archive.installgentoo.net/sci/thread/5818313
Good point from zlop IMO in reply to your post above.
You are correct IMO that facebook makes a good newspaper, to read or to issue yourself. Sometimes I wish my mother was still alive [on this plane] to experience it. When one sees so many formulations from "Like"d orgs, though, it seems one can imagine change a'comin quicker than it might in reality (Arab Spring prime example). Wouldn't put it past professional PR being involved with said spring via said media (nevertheless, I stick with Chalmers Johnson's version of things vs trutherism's). Conveying what one knows about heinous scams apparently is an ability or gift that may come via an extended process of outlasting, in <i>faith</i>, those one encounters in ones own life (and in my case the results are far from what I anticipated when younger).
The thought has repeatedly occurred to me lately that <i>like mindedness</i> in a movement is more important than well meaning initiatives going in ten thousand directions. Weird that facebook shares themselves have backed up this thought: Wendell Berry quotes, Richard Rohr quotes, and the other day The Ten Native American Commandments. Vandana Shiva's <i>style</i> or bearing, even beyond her information.
I'm afraid by like-mindedness I mean something that crops up in an unpredictable fashion. Mob mentality can be whipped up by the right PR...given enough "public diplomacy" (William Casey). With respect to consumption or to politics, mimesis it's sometimes called. But regarding an enlightened solidarity or "darshan," I don't think anyone can name the elements that usher it in. I experienced it in the 60s. At the same time I have to say that amidst the movements of the 60s...the myriad accounts of same <i>in media</i> often described something phonier...and many were the folks who embraced the phonier aspects, so desirous were they of the truer spirit of what was happening. I know it's weird to say this, but the other day I had the thought that all through the Old Testament you had these waves of legalism (hard ass-ism). Only if they were (as we say) "lucky"...very lucky...did the Israelites (applies to us too) experience a change-in-zeitgeist-era or change-in-national- spirit era. The waves of legalism come over and over and over. No matter who or how many think they're setting rules for justice, civil liberties, or human rights in stone...those waves of legalism will return (or try to return). Somehow, I guess, they bring us the trials we need to become what we're able to become. It seems these lessons might be especially enhanced if we see that legalism can really transition over to mercy. For such a transition (and the reverse version) can occur with respect to individuals as well.
on Q.A. page
Your thoughts and Ronald's are closest to mine. I've caught up recently with some speculative physics (laboring as a layman to do so). It was fun labor. Listening to one utube interview with Norey on Coast to Coast, I was sort of surprised Amit was suspending judgement so completely on strings. The nice thing about strings I guess was that they needed more dimensions, so I guess some physicists have had to stretch their minds a little. I have two questions about "dark matter." First, why were dark particles so strongly conjectured? I suppose because nothing but particles with "mass" can exert gravity? The second is...is it not assumed the stuff could have existence across some of the (10) string dimensions? In some kind of hyperspace or across a number of "hyperspaces"? If that's the case, it's just like the problem with imagining the morphic field...our culture has not passed along the means to do so [and, as a layman, I have no math to speak of to assist]. If it's in some space that's unimaginable, why must it be so strongly conjectured that dark matter consists of "particles" as we know them thus far? Just as with strings, if they dwell in dimensions we can't imagine, why "only" loops or rubber bands? Because of what we know about electrons tied to nuclei...a sort of phenomenon that's likely even with additional dimensions?
9/30/13
10/1/13
10/3
comparing medicaid expansion & no expansion states
shared on Rigel's page 10/4
Good decision. When gov "shuts down," it seems the pressure builds not to have faith and to become preoccupied with thoughts re the ridiculousness of balony propaganda. OTOH one can get things off one's chest. Since I have the day off, here goes.
Right after corporations and Wall St thought they could really get away with murder [when banks, municipalities, & investment portfolios realized what garbage they had purchased from Wall St in 2008], the economy for sure took a dive. Prior to that, though, there had been offshoring and mergers. Offshoring & introducing the "competition model" into healthcare...worked against our economy synergistically like twin demons. When premium rates began rising 4X faster than wages/salaries (when hospitals began competing against one another and doctors began competing against one another and the big insurers began competing against one another vis a vis sending profits to investors), employers here in the U.S. DID begin taking a hit providing health insurance for their employees. It's difficult to see what is most to blame, competition among corporations to send profits to Wall St investors by offshoring (and of course get more dough for their management & CEOs in the process)...or competition among the big healthcare insurers to do the same (which also in CA means denying payment for 30% of what the doctor orders). Average folk took a hit with offshoring, took a hit with premium rates, and took a hit with claim denials. This healthcare thing is not just some ancillary issue. Not just another entitlement obsession (if there could be such a thing which I doubt). Healthcare & tanked economy are VERY joined issues.
Physicans for National Healthcare, Ralph Nader, and many others give excellent reasons why a "single payer" system would be best. My hope is, though, that the ACA era will be an era of improvement (wherein, after initial glitches, all of us will end up a little less worried about balony propaganda). At her page Maggie Mahar stated this 9/28: "...of course you're paying for far more than the room. You are paying for all of the very expensive equipment in the hospital--those costs are spread out over everyone's bills. But the good news is that some hospitals have begun to do a better job of coordinating care, streamlining systems, and reducing errors. You can see this in the bills that they send to Medicare. Under reform, I'm very hopeful that we'll 'break the curve' of rising hospital costs. But it will take time." One of her articles linked on her fb page--> http://www.healthinsurance.org/blog/2013/09/26/obamacare-and-the-bad-news-bearers/
As best I can tell from scanning it, Mahar doesn't address point blank who will lose out in the states that do not go with the Medicaid expansion provision of ACA. Look people, as you can tell from the chart at the last link I'm leaving, a lot of families bringing in more than 20K or 40K will lose out in the states that don't go with the program (a "program" that spreads costs out very thinly...wisely). It's time IMO for you to wake up and insist on Medicaid expansion in our state; otherwise your taxes will be paying for the benefits under said expansion in the states that HAVE endorsed it. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151673656002286&set=a.10150669654557286.390006.20239752285&type=1&theater
"Sometimes I wonder what I am
Feel like I'm living in a hologram
Doesn't seem to matter what's right or wrong
Everybody's grabbing and coming on strong..."
Bruce Cockburn
One can understand oil wars and future water wars; they spring from dwindling resources. You have the alternatives of sustainability and redistribution, but these are faced with institutional and political obstacles, supported mainly by commerical and monopolistic hegemonies (there is some philosophical opposition on the part of people, hard earned in taking time to read; true they might have read Ayn Rand, but they sacrificed valuable time). As we can see the-powers-that-be deem these obstacles unbeatable, we then attempt to analyze how the major players in the resource wars will generate support amidst their populations. During the time when Jimmy Carter was president, it would have been hard to imagine a situation where the US locks up, say, a Stephen Kim for what he told Fox's James Rosen [of course, we did not know then what Zbigniew Brezinski was talking Carter into in terms of Afghanistan]. So we might conclude one of the means by which they'll genererate support is outright repression. As John Stewart says ISMW, it's hard to see how what Kim revealed constituted any kind of legal crime. Do we see a full court press with a little fouling going on? Yeah, it would seem we see a little overkill or over reach. In fact it seems we see a little overkill in other institutions and agencies. This some scholars might say is the "blind" aspect of Ellul's "technique" (his concept of "technique"). Irrational repression <i>seems</i> at times to imply to me: a general path to repression entails "practice," which fleshes out in terms of many individual stories wherein victimization of persons ends up quite irrational...are institutions gaining practice? Is it simply resolve to champion what's practicable, ye olde shock doctrine? Is it simply resolve to <i>practice</i> a little repression towards that end?
It only seems that way to me for moments. Ponder it a little more, and it's hard to imagine most folks accepting the absurd aspects of this explanation. As a brief alternative I'd bring to bear the thinking of 1) a lit prof, and 2)a biochemistry researcher (no, the latter's ideas don't deal with setting up, in positive fashion, "habits" to change neural pathways).
The lit prof is René Girard. Girard has found a scapegoating pattern in many myths and novels. Applied to society, it says that the order [peace in] of societies rests on the practice of scapegoating (increasingly questioned after given points in recent history). For me, I see this "pattern" in Jungian terms, or at least psychological terms. The scapegoating I see as an archetype or zeitgeist...all participate when the archetype rolls in (possibly there's a bit of Fromm's "group narcissism" involved too). But when you take these mass psychological phenomena, are there other terms to describe them? As far as I can see, a number hypothesized by Rupert Sheldrake are just as accurate.
At any rate, when I read this below, I realized how powerful Ellul's notion of "technique" was, and how this given lens predisposed my thinking when it came to media, mind, and geopolitical concerns.
"For Ellul, technique’s dominion over society is all the more in need of critical analysis as its outputs are unanimously hailed as tools for human progress or emancipation – and its failings presented as human inability in letting technology and experts share their blessings with humanity. These essential points of Ellul’s work make him relevant in a time of finance-driven austerity, when technical expertise and technical imperatives seem to override human well-being and social progress, and indeed to go directly against them, intensifying repression, rather than regulation and redistribution, in order to supress the effects of its internal contradictions." Artur Matos Alves
http://www.academia.edu/6406046/Jacques_Ellul_s_Anti-Democratic_Economy_Persuading_Citizens_and_Consumers_in_the_Information_Society
still there 11/23 AM
This is goes over conspiracy culture. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/10/chart-obama-conspiracy-theories
This IMO is not "conspiracy culture."
http://fair.org/extra-online-articles/the-plot-to-kill-jfk/
one of these I deleted today 11/24/13
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s georgia islands
best renticular http://www.panoramio.com/photo/2533881
the blog http://houseduties.tumblr.com/
tumblr dashboard https://www.tumblr.com/settings/blog/houseduties
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Tangled heirarchy subtleties are sensed or intuited with respect to the departed?
A thought of a loved one may coincide with a significant event. You could call that synchronicity, fair enough. Memories can be vivid, fair enough. But is it soley the attributes of "good" memory...that make them vivid?
y...nine, capitol Y, k, capitol Z, @
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see 4/14's "a malignant narcissists shock tactics" http://narc-attack.blogspot.com/
Glad to read your opinion on this, Arlo. We should hear more from the musicians we revere...I mean read developed opinions. It would be totally appropriate as musicians are role "models." Apart from your role and your dad's (which are exceptionally anti-fascist), "models" for René Girard have a special anthropological role. I'll paraphrase [and there might be a little of my own spin but I'll do my best]. I may be wrong, but it's very different than Marx. If too many people can successfully imitate a restricted number of role models, then a kind of antsy rivalry sets itself up in society. If things don't correct, you can get a sort of war of all against all thing going.
Well, in one music genre we know there flourish many performers conforming to a model pretty cookie cut (not to say there aren't exceptions [it's a big country] or that no poetic talent is in evidence). What makes it worse is that many, many of these very similar "models" are "in your face" types to begin with. But there are myriad other little battlegrounds in the war of all against all. Even more important are the problem solver models like Limbaugh, Hannity, and Savage. They might not seem like they have answers to our crowd, but trust me...they come across as omniscient to an important sector of folks...who imitate them. We are sort of the same way. In fact, our side started the more-merit-for-smarts-thing, AND YES THOSE BUBBAS ARE IMITATING US! Venezuela's a terrorist threat? OK, yes cause the "defense intellectual"s say so. Ukraine's the aggressor? OK, Obama says so, so let's frack the living "h" out of the earth we live on so as to crash Russia's economy, Iran's economy, and Venezuela's economy (exchange rates are involved too). [I seriously suspect Obama's pressured into these pronouncements] There's an unconscious urgency behind the right studied answers ultimately, I think, due to resource depletion. I think this figures unconsciously with climate change denier's rigid zeal as well. Their argumentative style (and their take-no-prisoners-politik'n), I mean, seems to me to reveal worry over castastrophe. It's like there's no time. Resources in terms of "pay" actually reinforce the former. Everything's running out. But that's another topic.
In Rene Girard's way of thinking, once this escalation gets started (oneupsmanship re "best" imitation of the models)... primordially the only solution was to make a scapegoat out of one of the celebrated competitors...suddenly judged as too phony or counterfeit. There's a quietness (peace) that follows...thus order is restored to the tribe or society. Seems to me anyway, some of "our" writers are noticing this. "We are also hyperaware of how some in society scapegoat others for problems they face, encouraged by conservative media such as Fox News, the New York Post, and increasingly, the Wall Street Journal—all owned by Rupert Murdoch. Immigrants, for example, are blamed for numerous social ills, and certainly the more than 11 million undocumented immigrants and their families live in fear every day. But poor people of all stripes face discrimination, and racism, whether overt or covert, makes life far more dangerous for people of color than for whites." http://www.alternet.org/fear-america/fear-dominates-politics-media-and-human-existence-america-and-its-getting-worse
May June '15
http://billmoyers.com/2015/06/01/discarding-elderly/
They won't be paying for our stupidity. They'll be setting up a system they'll have to rely on in the blink of an eye.
There was a system that emerged, and no cut and dry demarcation line between boomers and others. What you're talking about is a system, but seems to me talk-about-it has barely begun. I think I see here in these comments that some boomers are trying to ressurect the tail ends of what sanity there was that remained after WWII (still pretty racist). The standard you invoke...how developed was it prior to the boomers? Our conversations generally imploy the thesis-antithesis-synthesis frame; but a great writer pointed out that actually in whatever synthesis are always contained the prior elements. The most eloquent founders had slaves, so if we're worse...what really was better? They were "better" in some spheres, that's all you can say. Listening to Hedges & Scheer, one realizes the corset maker Tom Paine probably was one of few whose hands were clean (and, so far as I know, Franklin).
<blockquote>"We are, it seems, enmeshed in a new hybrid system, which fits the
Constitution, the classic tripartite separation of powers, and the idea of democracy increasingly poorly. We have neither an adequate name for it, nor an adequate language to describe it." Tom Englehardt
http://www.juancole.com/2015/06/ponzi-scheme-america.html</blockquote>
You could say our system's warped. You could say it was absurd. You could say it was complex. But if one reads, for instance, elioflight's post below one has to admit it's really something new & unique in terms of its heinous absurdity. At the very least it's indicative of a society tearing itself apart.
We're just proles throwing our little thoughts around. But as the discussion's barely begun (say in comparison with the previous counter culture era), I <i>will</i> mention my idea that these groups are currently functioning as scapegoats. We need a whole revolution in the way we think about a lot of things, anthropology included.
<blockquote>"The condensation of all the separated scandals is the paroxysm of a process that begins with mimetic desire and its rivalries. These rivalries as they multiply, create a mimetic crisis, the war of <i>all against all</i>. The resulting violence of all against all would annihilate the community if it were not transformed, in the end, into a war of <i>all against one</i>, thanks to which the unity of the community is reestablished."
René Girard </blockquote>
One race? One religion? Snowden? Nader? The world doesn't need our "unity" around all-are-scapegoated-save-1% starting from the bottom and going up.
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a good rundown on Girard.
My personal take on why American progressives find it hard to join together and oppose corrupt politics (and why politicians do too)...you might find a bit convoluted. Right now I'll mention just one factor that strikes me. We've been hit by a lot of propaganda: There's training if your specialized job's been subsumed by other slots; There's training if your job's been off-shored; If you can't make it here you can't make it anywhere; Some library hours needed to be sliced off, but THE INTERNET CAN KEEP YOU INFORMED; The more portable your internet platform (and the faster) the better you can know EVERYTHING a responsible citizen should know, or experience everything an entertained citizen should experience. We've heard all this, and consequently because we think the net can deliver all this WE BELIEVE IT IS DELIVERING ALL THIS, AND THAT WE ARE DISCOVERING EVERYDAY EVERYTHING WORTH KNOWING. For example, if someone else can't plainly see that Hillary is the best bet for getting "dark money" out of politics, that's their problem.
We were supposed to have been informed, but most of us have let many issues go unexamined. No, the net in general didn't scream many warnings. So, we're all compromised. We thought we knew (and cared) more than the next guy, but we didn't. Events and developments proved this over and over. So, we endeavored to squeeze in even more knowledge. We mimicked those who KNEW. But to handle all this knowledge we had to have fulfilled drives, so mimesis there too...mimicking the models of fulfillment and accepting we just hadn't yet found the readily available keys. In our rush to grab these assets we left out things we shouldn't have.
What a page [fall like lightening]
https://books.google.com/books?id=wUB6Q_8e0PcC&pg=PA24&lpg=PA24&dq=mimetic+crisis+%22war+of+all+against+all%22&source=bl&ots=8vJkootMdt&sig=30DcvlHykvCvRTRJWxd8g_5iOU4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=4IV1Vb34FsqyggSnkIDwBw&ved=0CCkQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=mimetic%20crisis%20%22war%20of%20all%20against%20all%22&f=false
I have assumed that Disqus itself is pretty unpolitical for some time. Something's happened in the past two days, though, that's caused me to hypothesize that partisan elements could be staging comments in order to associate an ideology (of said comments) with folks prone to read [have interest in, endorse] an article. Part two of my hypothesis is that the stagers (whoever they are) are able to block posts that credibly deconstruct the ideology filling up space under whatever article. If the ideology or POV is deconstructed, fewer will pile on. The particular article in question was followed by a slew of truthers arguing their minutiae...not really germane to the subject. IMO this tainted the impression a newcomer might get of the kind of readers interested in the actual POV of the article's author. Or, those writing the comments may take themselves seriously, and simply block (via hack) objections they view as supercilious.
https://disqus.com/home/channel/discussdisqus/discussion/channel-discussdisqus/susbect_hack_on_disqus_votes_and_told_to_talk_with_sam/
Disqus has totally screwed up here the order of posts & respective replies.
Munro said this: We have to agree to disagree on what they used...
And rltmlt responed: Robert, I would say that you have just accomplished a slam dunk!
Now look at the order of things as Disqus has represented it.
I'll respond to Munro re his contention that "J6daism" is "Satanism."
Maybe the believers have not demonstrated well the values in the OT that dialectically ended up what they are in the NT. Maybe have made such a horrible witness that it seems to much of the world that there was never anything that kept any continuity throughout OT & NT. Yet, I have been over the material a bit, and I believe there is. If whatever group doesn't agree, what am I supposed to do...call them "satanic"? Maybe re Gaza, but all Jews aren't responsible for the insanity unleashed on Gaza last summer. For sure, as a group...Israelis don't strike me as satanic. I'm the child of a mother who went without in the Great Depression, and I have a difficult time throwing things out just like she did. Can you think of any reason why Israelis might have ended up a little hypervigilent?
Forget "satanic." What's fascist is to kill large numbers of humans.
How many times did Jewish kings gather a hundred "prophets" for advice in the OT, and only one made sense?
The Politics of God & the Politics of Man by Jacques Ellul [sorry about the gender thing] http://www.religion-online.org...
I see Robert's comment goes up in 25 minutes, but mine doesn't go up in 10. Guess I can understand, but it is a bit mysterious as to how the host can't scan any faster my brief reply for anything as specious as what he's allowed to say. Likely I could be wrong, and the host actually was still scanning Robert's already finished post when I was reading "Someone is typing." Anyway, since I'm afraid it was lost...or hacked out by truthers trying to troll un-American statements from whomever...I will put it up again. Not meaning to spam.
We believers have not demonstrated the values in the OT that dialectically ended up what they are in the NT. We have made such a horrible witness that it seems to much of the world that there was never <i>anything</i> that kept any continuity throughout OT & NT. Yet, I have been over the material a bit, and I believe there is. If whatever group can't see it, what am I supposed to do...call them "satanic"? Maybe re Gaza, but all Jews aren't responsible for the insanity unleashed on Gaza last summer. For sure, as a group...Israelis don't strike me as satanic. I'm the child of a mother who went without in the Great Depression, and I have a difficult time throwing things out just like she did. Can you think of any reason why Israelis might have ended up a little hypervigilent?
Forget "satanic." What's <i>fascist</i> is to kill large numbers of humans.
How many times did Jewish kings gather a hundred "prophets" for advice in the OT, and only one made sense?
<u>The Politics of God & the Politics of Man</u> by Jacques Ellul [sorry about the gender thing] http://www.religion-online.org/showchapter.asp?title=1506&C=1334
2/22/15
What happens is that, say, when you're in college you discover the pressure to come up with accurate words for the "system." I say "pressure," cause progressive ideas and books are suddenly available to you, but you've also gotta deal with the college system and make the grades. But this goes on all your life, whether in college or not. If you think it doesn't matter if you come up with accurate words, or accurate analysis, or a decent "rap" on the subject...YOU'RE WRONG! Of course it does. If it didn't why are you reading this? If you think there is no "system," just some little racist glitch aberration [that a few months of facebook tete tetes will change], guess again. No, you gotta know WHAT the system is. When you enter into these discussions...WARNING...then comes a prejudice that's even heavier than racial. Intellectual prejudice. OH, I have eaten the magic fruit and I have the KNOWLEDGE of what's right and wrong...and henceforth I need no further help distinguishing the two. If you're not careful you can pick this up from listening to one speaker, from reading one book. Just imagine how much from one, two, or three degrees. Not like there aren't reinforcers. The system's quite happy when we're at each others' throats. René Girard says we emulate models. I'll paraphrase: when too many are looking or acting like the model(s), then rivalry sets itself up in society. Let's say I want to emulate intelligent black dudes...Obama, Colin Powell, Michael Powell. Well, ends up these dudes get totally wrapped up with white de-regulation/shock doctrine and/or the white warrior intellectuals. Later on they'll admit they made mistakes [it's not up to me to decide how either the mistakes or the admissions impact their karma]. But the fact is we have analyses of the system from guys like King to help us small people live BETTER lives. You have to get to the point where you KNOW you can live a better life than those with the noteriety. You can. The limelight signifies merit in our system...meritocracy. But it's phony merit. We've gotten totally away from democracy. In democracy it's EVERYONE's lives that matter, not just those in the limelight. This has to be believed. This has to be known.
Illsley with group live
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjZM57YM3sI
quiz on hezbollah
http://www.juancole.com/2012/07/can-you-pass-the-hezbollah-quiz-rudolph.html
sogyal rinpoche
"You can also think of the nature of mind like a mirror, with five different powers or 'wisdoms.' Its openness and vastness is 'the wisdom of all-encompassing space,' the womb of compassion. It's capacity to reflect whatever comes before it is the 'mirror-like wisdom.' Its fundamental lack of bias toward any impression is 'the equalizing wisdom.' Its ability to distinguish clearly, without confusing in any way the various phenomena that arise, is 'the wisdom of discernment.' And its potential of having everything already accomplished, perfected, and spontaneously present is 'the all-accomplishing wisdom.' " Sogyal Rinpoche, "The Tibetan Book of Living & Dying" p. 157
Oct 19-20 2014
Regarding this article, seems to me it's added just so much to common knowledge.
Why adapt H5N1 to ferrets? It could get out.
"The result—that the altered virus was lethal to mice—was unanticipated by the researchers. In other words, it was not planned."
Likely, this points to the biggest danger. Eventualities aren't thought out, though there is
plenty of planning dedicated to obtaining patents. Regarding synthetic bugs and intensive animal farming (in which we merely augment nature's adaptation process), both cause me to have concern.
Dept of The Ball of Confusion (globalization)."Dr. Robert Webster explains: 'If you use a good vaccine you can prevent the transmission within poultry and to humans. But if they have been using vaccines now [in China] for several years, why is there so much bird flu? There is bad vaccine that stops the disease in the bird but the bird goes on pooping out virus and maintaining it and changing it. And I think this is what is going on in China. It has to be. Either there is not enough vaccine being used or there is substandard vaccine being used. Probably both. It’s not just China. We can’t blame China for substandard vaccines. I think there are substandard vaccines for influenza in poultry all over the world.'" I figured few would click "See More" on my Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists share.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intensive_animal_farming
Google "truthout" & "Dengue Fever."
See #3. "Organic food is produced without using most conventional pesticides; fertilizers made with synthetic ingredients or SEWAGE SLUDGE; BIOENGINEERING; or ionizing radiation." [emphasis mine]
http://www.nal.usda.gov/afsic/pubs/ofp/ofp.shtml
Make room, clear out the television-drama-space in your mind. Vijay Prashad's talk (Real News) is just as clear, if not clearer, than truthout's read. Seems our "allies" won't iron out on going quarrels with IS's most formidable opponents. The moderate opposition in Syria (opposing Assad) is stressed with fighting Assad plus Jabhat al-Nusra in addition to IS. Iraq's Sunnis opposed to IS [an important component of opposition to the IS] are STILL dealing with ethnic persecution from the Iraqi army and Shia militias. As for the Kurds (the heaviest enemy IS contends with), they got bombed by Turkey a week ago for the first time in two years. Jabhat al-Nusra is not gonna leave the moderate Syrian opposition alone if Riyadh (SA) doesn't tell'em to. And apparently Iran is not gonna fight alongside the Jabhat al-Nusra terrorists as one day such Saudi-funded groups might directly attack THEM, a big enough concern.
10/3 Vijay Prashad: If the West is serious about tackling ISIS it must lessen the chaos within Syria and seek a political solution https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVokzI42iHI
9/24 Patrick Cockburn interview. Without a Truce in Syrian Civil War, U.S.-Led Strikes Threaten More Chaos for World’s Worst Crisis http://www.democracynow.org/2014/9/24/without_a_truce_in_syrian_civil
10/16 Phyllis Bennis "U.S. Will Fail In Attempt to Create Proxy Army in Syria" http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=12530
10/9 Iraqi Journalist Who Embedded with Shia Militias on Fighting ISIS & Why US Strategy is Bound to Fail http://www.democracynow.org/2014/10/9/iraqi_journalist_who_embedded_with_shia
10/18 http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/26900-islamic-state-no-one-wants-to-talk-to-terrorists-but-we-always-do-and-sometimes-it-works
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=12003
I'm not a Marxist, but it does seem the great taboo amongst the non-BRICers seems to be improving the lot of common folk (yeah, BRICS members have their cronyism too). Don't mean to over simplify, but what really at root is preventing what Ghaith Abdul-Ahad is suggesting here?
Ghaith Abdul-Ahad: "You can, you know, march the planes into the air, bomb the cities of Fallujah, Ramadi, and I can assure you, you will come back in the next two, three, four, five years, and you will bomb us again. I was bombed the first time when I was six years old by the Iranians, and I was bombed by the Americans again and again. This is the same cycle—I mean, unless you have a grand solution, a redistribution of wealth, a social solution, a solution that shows the Sunnis of Iraq, you know, this is—you’re part of this entity; you like it, you don’t like it, [but] <i>you’re part of it.</i> Otherwise, we will continue this cycle".........."Well, you know, Haider’s been making all the right noises. You know, he disbanded all these authoritarian practices of Maliki. He’s disbanding the supreme military command post that he was holding, that Maliki was holding. So he’s doing all the right noises. But the problem in Iraq—and Patrick knows this probably more than I do—is it’s not a problem of one person. It’s not Abadi versus Maliki. The whole institution, the whole system, is so rotten to the core. <b>Every single soldier is appointed after paying a bribe. Every military officer is appointed after paying a bribe. And the bribes are still being paid.</b> So the system of Iraq is a rotten system based on corruption."
http://www.democracynow.org/2014/10/9/iraqi_journalist_who_embedded_with_shia
10/3 Vijay Prashad: If the West is serious about tackling ISIS it must lessen the chaos within Syria and seek a political solution https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVokzI42iHI
9/24 Patrick Cockburn interview. Without a Truce in Syrian Civil War, U.S.-Led Strikes Threaten More Chaos for World’s Worst Crisis http://www.democracynow.org/2014/9/24/without_a_truce_in_syrian_civil
10/16 Phyllis Bennis "U.S. Will Fail In Attempt to Create Proxy Army in Syria" http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=12530
which one it's posted at I dunno
http://www.truth-out.org/progressivepicks/item/27962-south-of-the-us-border-the-war-on-drugs-is-really-a-war-on-people
Absolutely right on, and getting to the real nature of the fascist paradigm engulfing us.
The war machine needs enemies (scapegoats), but not just the war machine. A certain mindset or zeitgeist needs scapegoats. More items will follow this one with the hours on this page, but this one's get'n down to the real nitty gritty. It was the ostensible War on Drugs which set the stage (excuse, rationalization, precedent) for jailing or offing anyone suspected of thought crimes in Honduras and Mexico.
Yep, the article's worth comment both here and at truthout, so that's what I've done. I said more over there, but I'll include my two links here as well.
"Mexico’s drug wars: made in USA"
http://www.iacenter.org/lacsc/mexico/
I have jumped in here, but I would definitely like to thank <b>James Estrada-Scaminaci III</b> for his input, 12 hrs ago at this point.
"The drug war has cemented new relationships between the state and shadow powers, with complex alliances between security forces, a greater number of criminal groups and economic interests." This Laura Carlsen says is true of Mexico, and I believe it. http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/12/04/mexicos-youth-under-siege/
It is funny how all this firepower isn't being deployed in confrontations with those possessing similar. This was ultimately the big excuse for the upgrade (militarizing, this and the onset of some blowback back in 2001)...the great War on Drugs. But it looks as though the means (the war) has become the end <i>here in this country as well.</i> To me it seems our society has adopted a number of intersecting and mutually symbiotic rituals. Huge rituals. As I wrote last night in another place...yes, the word "inertia" does indeed come to mind. The system brings in prisoner bucks for Prisons Inc. With no legalization, it benefits the cartels. It stifles the voice of minorities. It stimulates manufacture of war paraphrenalia. It steals property and turns it over to corporations. A whole lot of positive feedback loops dependent on one another. It's an inertia of pawns moving in loops. A crazy version of something like the Krebbs Cycle.
<i>Concepts</i> have an influence on actions. And concepts accrue in collages. For any individual they don't deliver omniscience. The Dems were as stupid as hell right up to the day of the midterms, and yet apparently some were influential in opposing the craziness, for instance, we're attempting to perpetrate down in Venezuela; possibly there was decisive opposition from the prez himself. So, human leaders act imperfectly according to imperfect concepts.
One of the biggest nightmares in starting over [James wrote that it's time to do so] is that that perfect four years as an undergrad where you're supposed to <i>get</i> your concepts...isn't gonna come. And <i>when</i> you land in college...that it isn't coming. What I had to do in terms of getting a relevant education civics-wise on my own is what so many others are going to have to do. And, on this account, I feel dread and pity for them. The money they've shelled out for their 4 yrs in this era may make the nightmare even worse. But then there are other dreams these sojourns of ours must teach us are illusions too.
Compared to what we had hoped for (the vast knowledge), what's useful ends up as virtually things one picks up on the fly. You won't be there in your graduation gown with all the tools and life's big program all laid out. But we begin this brief and crammed education with the truths we read; and, have mercy, they <i>do</i> actually lay a foundation for similar truths that follow. Actually, they're well spaced; it's just our presumption that assumes everything will come in some package at the beginning.
We begin with concepts that describe where we are, just like the ones Giroux has laid out here. Maybe we don't know enough about real life individual narcissism cases or sadism, but if one doesn't act fast on such things...one will carry ones ignorance to ones grave, and will have to reconcile with it. I think, though, we pick up <i>some</i> kind of working sense of such things anyway.
One big mistake we could make at this point in history, is thinking social media makes each one of us profound...each one a leader. No, each one of us is just a dialoguer who must confront fellow/sister humans either hopefully or honestly or mindfully or prayerfully. That way we as group <i>will</i> come to trust someone else to represent us. Cause we all aren't gonna end up representers. And.....if you're going into some action, ya gotta cooly analyze (count) the cost. Doing it cooly is exasperating, but that's life. Ya gotta sleep on it like John Heider the Taoist psychologist said [you, yes <b>you,</b> might end up more productive utilizing valuable concepts...knocking on doors or doing surveys carrying some clipboard]. Don't think you're <i>riding</i> a wave. No, realize you're creating the wave. You're carrying into whatever movement the sane kid in yourself. If no one seems to be recognizing that respectful, open, and understanding kid...respect him or her yourself! There's no "wave" that's gonna end up a successful Arab Spring (just look at the social media induced thing itself over there). No, but put your most patient, attentive, and humane self into the thing. Keep a schedule and value your sleep...just as you value your ocean waves. What's positive in the unconscious is allowed "out" in both modalities.
It's a great experience to read what's new from Giroux wherever and whenever. It could be, though, that I am reading him incorrectly (or incompletely) and seeing something I differ with him on...which however might be something, ribeekah, which jives with what you have written.
It seems that I may differ with Giroux on the relative importance of "symbolic violence" [mentioned in essay linked at end of this para]. Yes, the disinformation machine may crush remembering, agency, ethics, and collective resistance. But to me it seems there's a violence in envy. The envy is in regard to embodying "social" idols. The envy is with respect to significance and "being" (media idols or political idols having more being). It's not just something the state or corporations perpetrate; to me it's a violence we average folks participate in. This is evident on Black Fridays when folks entangle to acquire <i>what they believe the idols or model-people desire.</i> As René Girard says, they want to desire what the imitated desire. This, ribeekah, I think is especially the case in regard to "smart" technology...computers, iPads, MP3 tech, and phones. These items don't just access sales wherever. They access information and positions on scandals...significance [and 'celebrated analysts' of course]. But in as much as the items that channel such are extremely limited in nature (cyber stuff), there does seem to be that intense conformity crescendoing...something [if, say, I'm right in seeing it in this instance] which Girard points out occurs in either a war of all against all, or prior & right up to the sacrificing of a scapegoat (to me it seems we have both at once going on; we sacrifice the demographics Giroux mentions and whole neighborhoods).
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/11/24/neoliberal-violence-in-the-age-of-orwellian-nightmares/
You are probably very right regarding too much dwelling on 'celebrity analysts' (for example, Edward S. Herman commenting on Krugman). Giroux is interviewed by Moyers, but that doesn't make him a celebrity. He's not interviewed enough elsewhere to make him such [actually Moyers isn't quoted enough in MSM to make him a celebrity]. Some of us are gonna continue reading mildly-celebrated-analysts because we can't <i>afford</i> to be at the demonstrations. Maybe it's because, due to working our butts off, we can't afford to eliminate the rest time or down time. It's also hard work to find the analysts that motivate one, and to stick with'em. Almost as hard as returning to "a job" once the teach-outs or teach-ins have achieved whatever specific goal...if one keeps searching both diligently and with enough moderation that is. Keep'n the keel even is what's hard. Maybe there are scads of workers who, like the striking nurses in CA eg, already realize something that would blow the minds of three quarters of the activist-theorists out there...that if we doubled our investment in the "social safety net"...or cut the size of the gaps in half...still, due to no-empathy-in-the-land-solidarity, there would be not nearly enough caring and seasoned workers around to utilize the bucks. But you are absolutely right IMO that ultimately we will have to engage with fellow or sister activists face to face...to get anything accomplished. More about Arab Spring type media
let-downs below.
I have jumped in here, but I would definitely like to thank <b>James Estrada-Scaminaci III</b> for his input, 12 hrs ago at this point.
"The drug war has cemented new relationships between the state and shadow powers, with complex alliances between security forces, a greater number of criminal groups and economic interests." This Laura Carlsen says is true of Mexico, and I believe it. http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/12/04/mexicos-youth-under-siege/
It is funny how all this firepower isn't being deployed in confrontations with those possessing similar. This was ultimately the big excuse for the upgrade (militarizing, this and the onset of some blowback back in 2001)...the great War on Drugs. But it looks as though the means (the war) has become the end <i>here in this country as well.</i> To me it seems our society has adopted a number of intersecting and mutually symbiotic rituals. Huge rituals. As I wrote last night in another place...yes, the word "inertia" does indeed come to mind. The system brings in prisoner bucks for Prisons Inc. With no legalization, it benefits the cartels. It stifles the voice of minorities. It stimulates manufacture of war paraphrenalia. It steals property and turns it over to corporations. A whole lot of positive feedback loops dependent on one another. It's an inertia of pawns moving in loops. A crazy version of something like the Krebbs Cycle.
<i>Concepts</i> have an influence on actions. And concepts accrue in collages. For any individual they don't deliver omniscience. The Dems were as stupid as hell right up to the day of the midterms, and yet apparently some were influential in opposing the craziness, for instance, we're attempting to perpetrate down in Venezuela; possibly there was decisive opposition from the prez himself. So, human leaders act imperfectly according to imperfect concepts.
One of the biggest nightmares in starting over [James wrote that it's time to do so] is that that perfect four years as an undergrad where you're supposed to <i>get</i> your concepts...isn't gonna come. And <i>when</i> you land in college...that it isn't coming. What I had to do in terms of getting a relevant education civics-wise on my own is what so many others are going to have to do. And, on this account, I feel dread and pity for them. The money they've shelled out for their 4 yrs in this era may make the nightmare even worse. But then there are other dreams these sojourns of ours must teach us are illusions too.
Compared to what we had hoped for (the vast knowledge), what's useful ends up as virtually things one picks up on the fly. You won't be there in your graduation gown with all the tools and life's big program all laid out. But we begin this brief and crammed education with the truths we read; and, have mercy, they <i>do</i> actually lay a foundation for similar truths that follow. Actually, they're well spaced; it's just our presumption that assumes everything will come in some package at the beginning.
We begin with concepts that describe where we are, just like the ones Giroux has laid out here. Maybe we don't know enough about real life individual narcissism cases or sadism, but if one doesn't act fast on such things...one will carry ones ignorance to ones grave, and will have to reconcile with it. I think, though, we pick up <i>some</i> kind of working sense of such things anyway.
One big mistake we could make at this point in history, is thinking social media makes each one of us profound...each one a leader. No, each one of us is just a dialoguer who must confront fellow/sister humans either hopefully or honestly or mindfully or prayerfully. That way we as group <i>will</i> come to trust someone else to represent us. Cause we all aren't gonna end up representers. And.....if you're going into some action, ya gotta cooly analyze (count) the cost. Doing it cooly is exasperating, but that's life. Ya gotta sleep on it like John Heider the Taoist psychologist said [you, yes <b>you,</b> might end up more productive utilizing valuable concepts...knocking on doors or doing surveys carrying some clipboard]. Don't think you're <i>riding</i> a wave. No, realize you're creating the wave. You're carrying into whatever movement the sane kid in yourself. If no one seems to be recognizing that respectful, open, and understanding kid...respect him or her yourself! There's no "wave" that's gonna end up a successful Arab Spring (just look at the social media induced thing itself over there). No, but put your most patient, attentive, and humane self into the thing. Keep a schedule and value your sleep...just as you value your ocean waves. What's positive in the unconscious is allowed "out" in both modalities.
fracking plan conspiracy plan
2/15/15 ?
Were falling oil prices part of a US-Saudi plan to inflict economic damage on Russia, Iran and Venezuela? I remember "land fever" from "A Plague of Doves." Hey folks...yeah, matter of fact, THIS IS NOTHING OTHER THAN FRACK FEVER. From whence the glut? Why is grain sitting rotting having been bumped by fracked-oil trains? There are intentions and designs amongst individuals in various branches and agencies of our government [yes, of course, I realize that constitutionally WE are the government]...IOW amongst a given set of U.S. public servants (think in the Dept of State eg)...that want Ukraine in the NATO orbit...and/or who are quietly or staunchly REAL copisetic with any INSANE economic or geopolitical technique to GET Ukraine on the IMF treadmill. Save for one little thing on NPR, it hasn't been acknowledged in main stream media; but of course I've been through many articles that have pointed unmistakably to a price-drive-down-campaign-to-influence-Ukraine-and-Venezuela (Obama acknowledged the impact on Ukraine as an advantageous "effect" in an NPR interview). Enjoy cheap gas while it's around cause guess what? The best frack sites HAVE DONE BEEN FRACK'D!
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/12/29/irreversible-decline/
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php…
http://www.democracynow.org/…/10/playing_with_fire_a_debate
2/10/15 ?
Google Advanced Search finds 406K citations for "spirit being." Maybe Father Richard was attempting to emphasize what Advaitins call the "impersonal" aspect of Brahman. I could never go with Advaita (try as I have), sticking with qualified non-dualism myself. I do go with what humans perceive as a feminine quality and a masculine quality...or corresponding personas (of God). But those are our "perceptions." Two of the three people I am closest to at times I suppose might think God is not a "being," which at times causes me sadness. There are concepts like Jung's of the "pleroma"...the pleroma being a collection of phenomena not conscious of itself. I tried to get into it, but I can't accept a Great Spirit not conscious of itself nor generally of its constituent parts. Pascal inspired awe theorizing about God's level of awareness; but that we can't imagine it...to me doesn't mean it's so different that S/He's not a "being."
I was impressed that Oprah remembered something from Zukav (pleasantly impressed), another guy unfortunately I can't go along with on everything.
While I'm spouting off, I hope Father Rohr will sometime differentiate between legalistic/merciful dualism and metaphysical dualism. During a few moments in this sojourn of mine it seemed to me that "energy monism" eg made sense, but humans get carried away with concepts. At some level the energy of an aura and the energy, say, possessed by one photon are the same; but since many haven't given it much thought (and don't respect the difference) I believe I will continue paying the difference respect.
mar '15
If Jackie Brown is right, it's too bad Amin didn't explain where he got it wrong at some point during this interview, even if briefly. When it comes to "ideas," few can bring any to bear on the actual world we live in [their own unique ideas]. There are the Englehardts and the Greenwalds and the Chomskys and the Bennises that have managed to keep a handle on a great MANY ideas and sythesize them so as to come up with plausible (and eventually popular) suggestions for adjustments to policy. But for most of us...when it comes to "ideas"...we get in ruts. It may be the case that it's best for some of us to practice "Karma Yoga" rather than "Jnani Yoga" (emphasizing change in terms of our daily lives rather than specializing in "knowledge"). But even if we try to restrict ourselves to Karma Yoga and random kindness in the process...even those of us who do this can see that the bearers of the great ideas sometimes make mistakes. Amnesty seems to be making one now in regard to Venezuela. What I see in the idea of the World Social Forum anyway...is flux. If the opinions of all folks there matter, then what will emerge is unpredictable. If there is no blueprint (or special realization) that made everyone there right about everything in the last 10 years, is that so unusual?
Yes, Amin mentioned "blueprint." It's occurred to me lately that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is deeply archetypal. Whatever faith or school of enlightenment, you have those who come to emphasize the WRITTEN RECORD of whichever's beginnings. Actually, in that sense the written record of the revelation or the covenant or whatever can become more finite than associated traditions. When the finite, or legalistic, aspects become paramount...I sometimes wonder if there's any hope for the traditions at all. There's history, which one can study; or, for example, one can put ones focus on political philosphers, and develop ones entire notion of viable politics from Plato or Locke or Ayn Rand or whomever (ignoring the history and going this route to me means legalism...making a god of some blueprint). The "rules" of whatever institution...gov, church, education, research, psychology...are conceived by many who've learned them as a hard weight to bear...that is, the learning they conceive as arduous. And then there is a trend of knowing a certain sphere of the rules germane in a given institution, and believing the whole institution rests on that given sphere. But, as time goes on with democracy, there should develop a means to recognize, on the part of everyone, that there are arduous chores in other sectors besides the knowledge sectors (the rule-knowing-sectors). Other than the John Galt sectors. The rules don't tell us everything. Plato's Republic doesn't tell us everything. Sometimes we need to "wait" for the knowledge of what the right thing to do is.
3/23
http://samvak.tripod.com/narcissistboredom.html
http://www.narcissismfree.com/art_did-the-narcissist-ever-really-love-me.php
http://www.psychforums.com/narcissistic-personality/topic25667.html
5/27 As long as one holds that the sensory input is travelling along with an end point in whichever brain lobes that create consciousness (an epiphenomenalist point of view), then what keeps one from a notion of "neurally encoded" images that actually have to have the equivalent of pixels...to save the complete image? Well, what chemical apparatus is there in nerve cells that'll keep a record (or a value assigned) at each of their pixel-equivalents associated with the encoding germane to whatever image (that is the shading or color for each pixel-equivalent)? An even better question is WHAT ARE the pixel equivalents??
Monday 6/8
Sort of ashamed to say I don't have a copy of "I See Satan Fall Like Lightening." I feel like some hard working pauper in China or India using spare minutes to look at my cell phone and discover what's hip among those with time to think. In my case the cell phone's a laptop, and some of the heaviest things I've come across have been via searching phrases whereby I'm led to pages Google Books has access to.
My personal take on why American progressives find it hard to join together and oppose corrupt politics...you might find a bit convoluted. Right now I'll mention just one factor that strikes me. We've been hit by a lot of propaganda: There's training if your specialized job's been subsumed by other slots; There's training if your job's been off-shored; If you can't make it here you can't make it anywhere; Some library hours needed to be sliced off but THE INTERNET CAN KEEP YOU INFORMED; The more portable your internet platform (and the faster) the better you can know EVERYTHING a responsible citizen should know, or experience everything an entertained citizen should experience. We've heard all this, and consequently because we think the net can deliver all this WE BELIEVE IT IS DELIVERING ALL THIS, AND THAT WE ARE DISCOVERING EVERYDAY EVERYTHING WORTH KNOWING. For example, if someone else can't plainly see that Hillary is the best bet for getting "dark money" out of politics, that's their problem. There are infinite like permutations germane to entertainment, humor, etc.
I could say that sociologically, psychologically, demographically, politically, and ideology-wise...there is sort of a "war of all against all" going down in America...all Americans versus all Americans (or amidst the set of the lower 99%). This is sort of phase of a [mimetic crisis] described by Rene Girard. To prove it you could, say, draw from observations from folks who understand political "science" AND who also understand economics [actually it might be a good thing we can't point to a handfull of geniuses who meet these qualifications best]. You'd have to demonstrate that the only Americans who are in solidarity with one another are the top 1% [maybe some outliers like Warren Buffett]. That is, if you resorted to the numbers and those numbers indicated the bottom 99 were getting royally screwed...and meanwhile said bottom-99 weren't paying attention to "how" or didn't really care that much...then one might conjecture that the bottom 99 were distracted by trivial items and/or myriad single-issue-items magnified by media controlled by the 1%.
We were supposed to have been informed, but most of us have let many issues go unexamined. No, the net in general didn't scream many warnings. So, we're all compromised. We thought we knew (and cared) more than the next guy, but we didn't. Events and developments proved this over and over. So, we endeavored to squeeze in even more knowledge. We mimicked those who KNEW. But to handle all this knowledge we had to have fulfilled drives, so mimesis there too...mimicking the models of fulfillment and accepting we just hadn't yet found the readily available keys [this is not my beautiful wife; this is not my beautiful house].
Whitey here. Good as always to read Giroux, not cause the content's "good" but because it's true. Giroux mentions the drug wars, so he gets close to mentioning the trafficking of humans too; but IMO he shouldn't leave that out; cause, for example, the flag issue goes back to slavery. It's pure bona fide slavery, and if any activist fails to see its presence...then that activist is only seeing part of the equation and part of the monstrousness. IMO Giroux's right that we're moving into totalitarianism. We don't have to watch a "two minutes hate" film featuring some foreign enemy. Perhaps they feel we're so freaked out by the self proclaimed "Islamic State" that we need another closer enemy we can get our hands on. There's another element besides "totalitarianism" in all this IMO...austerity (banks vacuuming up all the capital that would otherwise enable expansion and jobs). This was basically what happened after WWI as a result of the Treaty of Versailles (war debt imposed that was too heavy), which rendered things ripe for Nazi totalitarianism. Trust me, they could create enough credible dough now to improve infrastructure and hire a few more teachers, nurses, and vet/prisoner counselors. Creating dough for more bonuses at the bank isn't "credible" dough...cause it will never enable the creation of something that equals its value. The rise of Nazism was a time of crisis (and thank God it never graduated to a well oiled laid back control over Europe). In such crisis times the prevailing power structure can only keep remnants of itself by means of scapegoats. They are the chattel. On them is projected the guilt. On them is projected death.
"According to Girard, in periods of collective crisis the phenomenon of scapegoating flourishes: specific groups of people (as a rule minorities) or even (marginal) individuals are identified, judged/condemned and persecuted as dangerous subjects, responsible for society's potential or actual disintegration; majority or authorities accuse, expel, or even eliminate them (morally or physically), in an attempt to 'remedy' the 'miasma,' which is supposed to have contaminated the previously immaculate community, and to reverse crisis." Panagiotis Roilos
The 60s were a reaction to something that was wrong. And the 60s didn't fix it. Way prior to that the loudspeaker helped fascism a great deal. And then television broadcasted idealists' notions of happy-ever-after (not a bad thing really) to a lot of people who said: Hey, that is not the society we've got! Many got irate about it. There were some who worked to make it happen. "I assume that the reason for the attractiveness of the narcissistic person lies in the fact that he portrays an image of what the average person would like to be: he is sure of himself, has no doubts, feels always on top of the situation. The average person, in contrast, does not have this certainty; he is often plagued by doubts, prone to admire others as being superior to himself. One may ask why extreme narcissism does not repel people. Why do they not resent the lack of real love? The question is easy to answer: real love is so rare today as to be almost outside the field of vision of most people. In the narcissist one sees someone who at least loves ONE person, himself." Erich Fromm "Greatness and Limitations of Freud's Thought" p. 49
July '15 Moyers
The 60s were a reaction to something that was wrong. And the 60s didn't fix it. Way prior to that the loudspeaker helped fascism a great deal. And then television broadcasted idealists' notions of happy-ever-after (not a bad thing really) to a lot of people who said: Hey, that is not the society we've got! Many got irate about it. There were some who worked to make it happen. "I assume that the reason for the attractiveness of the narcissistic person lies in the fact that he portrays an image of what the average person would like to be: he is sure of himself, has no doubts, feels always on top of the situation. The average person, in contrast, does not have this certainty; he is often plagued by doubts, prone to admire others as being superior to himself. One may ask why extreme narcissism does not repel people. Why do they not resent the lack of real love? The question is easy to answer: real love is so rare today as to be almost outside the field of vision of most people. In the narcissist one sees someone who at least loves ONE person, himself." Erich Fromm "Greatness and Limitations of Freud's Thought" p. 49
parking draft of share here...
Find myself in a mode currently very much in resonance with this essay and the overall orientation expressed in the share prior (but I've been in line with the previous share's direction almost all my life). Whitehead's ideas by their nature are probably not ideas that will lend themselves any time soon to "pop" versions. On the other hand, I'm finding most overviews sort of encased in epoch-bound styles. It's great IMO that this essay was at the top of this page, cause it's definitely not.
The Great Spirit being "outside time" has, for an extended period, not set well with me (nor predestination). I can't see any other plausible outlook other than that the Great Spirit enters whatever time flow the Great Spirit chooses...ours for instance, or any black hole's.
Apparently, as one gets older memories become vivid, valuable, and awesome in terms of their functioning. Perhaps I bumped into the "actual occasion" concept, or prehended it out there, because it's an aid to this overpowering awesomeness. Rupert Sheldrake talks about realizations descending [that's my word] out of the morphic field...basically ideas whose times have come. That to me sounds like actual occasions (but Sheldrake says surprising little about Whitehead in "The Presence of the Past"). Likewise it makes sense that samskaras could involve (or be) collections of actual occasions. I believe the Great Spirit interacts with our "4 dimensional realm" at times, but not in each and every one of our decisions. Because of the infinite genius manifested in biological life forms alone, for instance, I tend not to believe S/He is in need of improvement. Perhaps Whitehead's material will be only a help to me in terms of things like memories and samskaras, because I cannot equate or restrict the Great Spirit to the creativity-force or the novelty-force in our cosmos...even half the time.
("Talk" page, see upper left tab markers).https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Jun%C3%ADpero_Serra
Could it be some kind of message to us? (Did he have to canonize Serra in the US?) Maybe it's like: Little people, in your present disarray you're not gonna stop the transnationals [and their conquests] in their tracks. Be like this guy who tried to soften the thing a little; let me be the one to lay on the indictment.
You've buried your original thesis in the digression. Ford was saying that for Sanders to support mandates to SA to put a lid on Wahabism...demonstrated that the socialist/pacifist candidate was a hypocrite. Which is a bunch of crap. <b>His past support doesn't matter. At THIS time he's gone beyond all the other candidates (save Stein) and actually advocated <i>confronting</i> Saudi Arabia.</b> So, why do you keep going on about: this is the thing that would make him a disaster?? Chomsky has doubts about the effectiveness of a Sanders admin, but they're not due to Sanders' current position on SA.
Trust me, I can somewhat understand the resignation of "OA 206" (if my link below has any skinny on the truth). But, when you boil it down, the course they're adopting is just a romantic straw in the wind. It's too late for that "long haul" view of things. If you're concerned about ecology like you claim to be, it should be obvious that we either build solidarity, or the gung-ho clampdown hegemony will marginalize-out a big throng of alternate-anarchist-holdout-romantics prophesying (or anticipating) chaos/anarchy OR...baby-gov-drowned-in-the-tub. Yes, they still talk about "small gov," but note there has to be some agency <i>to give an official excuse</i> for things like arms shipments to the Mexican police state.
Now for qualifiers. You can worm your way around this link's hurdles, but they do make me a little suspect. When I first clicked this thing they weren't there. A very sad theory is forming in my mind that this host is a damage control tool for the Democrats. As the info seems not to be too far flung yet, the Dems may be (if this is damage control) finally giving a care about their outlier guy who just might end up winning.
http://www.politicususa.com/2015/08/10/real-black-lives-matter-wsnts-activists-publicly-apologize-bernie-sanders.html
Really good to see this because, if I recall correctly, the last thing I read from Girard re fundamentalist terror was his speculation that it might constitute an entirely new phenomenon. Did he make such a statement, or was it Ellul?
("Talk" page, see upper left tab markers).https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Jun%C3%ADpero_Serra
Could it be some kind of message to us? (Did he have to canonize Serra in the US?) Maybe it's like: Little people, in your present disarray you're not gonna stop the transnationals [and their conquests] in their tracks. Be like this guy who tried to soften the thing a little; let me be the one to lay on the indictment.
You've buried your original thesis in the digression. Ford was saying that for Sanders to support mandates to SA to put a lid on Wahabism...demonstrated that the socialist/pacifist candidate was a hypocrite. Which is a bunch of crap. <b>His past support doesn't matter. At THIS time he's gone beyond all the other candidates (save Stein) and actually advocated <i>confronting</i> Saudi Arabia.</b> So, why do you keep going on about: this is the thing that would make him a disaster?? Chomsky has doubts about the effectiveness of a Sanders admin, but they're not due to Sanders' current position on SA.
Trust me, I can somewhat understand the resignation of "OA 206" (if my link below has any skinny on the truth). But, when you boil it down, the course they're adopting is just a romantic straw in the wind. It's too late for that "long haul" view of things. If you're concerned about ecology like you claim to be, it should be obvious that we either build solidarity, or the gung-ho clampdown hegemony will marginalize-out a big throng of alternate-anarchist-holdout-romantics prophesying (or anticipating) chaos/anarchy OR...baby-gov-drowned-in-the-tub. Yes, they still talk about "small gov," but note there has to be some agency <i>to give an official excuse</i> for things like arms shipments to the Mexican police state.
Now for qualifiers. You can worm your way around this link's hurdles, but they do make me a little suspect. When I first clicked this thing they weren't there. A very sad theory is forming in my mind that this host is a damage control tool for the Democrats. As the info seems not to be too far flung yet, the Dems may be (if this is damage control) finally giving a care about their outlier guy who just might end up winning.
http://www.politicususa.com/2015/08/10/real-black-lives-matter-wsnts-activists-publicly-apologize-bernie-sanders.html
Really good to see this because, if I recall correctly, the last thing I read from Girard re fundamentalist terror was his speculation that it might constitute an entirely new phenomenon. Did he make such a statement, or was it Ellul?
Dave Atch Hmm...why brush off the question and act as though your piece answers it when it doesn't? If in a given moment you don't have the time to address a question under an article "you" happened to pen, why not assume someone else might have the answer and the time? Talk about "division of labor," may God help us if at this moment Girard followers see fit to enter into inheritiance squabbles or expertese-competition.
Dave Atch I see Girard's heaviest words re economic oppression will finally be quoted on facebook, and those who put them here will pretend they're at a book signing and the time is up for questions? It is indeed a strange world. 'However, Islamism is only one symptom of a trend to violence that is much more global. It comes less from the South than from the West itself because it takes the form of a response of the poor to those who are well-off. It is one of the last metastases of the cancer that has torn the Western world apart. Terrorism is the vanguard of a general revenge against the West’s wealth. It is a very violent and unpredictable revival of the Conquest, which is all the more terrifying because it has encountered America along the way. The sources of Islamism’s strength include the fact that it is a response to the oppression of the Third World as a whole.' RG
I'm sharing my friend Chris' post because I see things opposite. The issue can become involved, but the first thing I'm concerned about is the rat's nest of acquiring virus blockers and malware blockers. If you look at the links I'm putting in the first comment, perhaps you'll see what I see--crooks and syndicates would have access to programs, and no one would be able to determine (before the programs go on the market)...how they could be employed. IMO we have to start shooting for regulation, even if it appears those with total cyber control now could wangle their way around any regulation. The argument that more regulators can't be afforded is the old austerity approach. When it comes to ill conceived wars, there's money up the yin yang for contractors. Funny thing about it, these wars could bring humans on earth to complete ruin. And one of the ways they could do this would be via DIVERTING money from the real economy (if you can remember what that is).
http://www.wired.com/2015/11/trade-pact-could-bar-governments-from-auditing-source-code/
www.wired.com/2015/09/volkswagen-open-iot/
'However, Islamism is only one symptom of a trend to violence that is much more global. It comes less from the South than from the West itself because it takes the form of a response of the poor to those who are well-off. It is one of the last metastases of the cancer that has torn the Western world apart. Terrorism is the vanguard of a general revenge against the West’s wealth. It is a very violent and unpredictable revival of the Conquest, which is all the more terrifying because it has encountered America along the way. The sources of Islamism’s strength include the fact that it is a response to the oppression of the Third World as a whole.' RenĂ© Girard (not from this article)
"I am also of the opinion that logic and reason while they are useful and necessary to functioning in our world, are not all that useful in spirituality."
Sometimes it seems that in each incarnation steps having been made in past sojourns finally come to fruition again in the present sojourn (maybe in a sort of re-hash or re-realization of them)...so that yet another step can be taken. This is just a "theory" of mine. I've been talking to someone about language, and I've read recently about Nietzche's negative view on same (a philologist!). It seems it's inescapable, though, to me...the fact that often we think in words. Mind and vocal cords seem to be too specialized for some kind of evoloutionary "mistake." Reasoning challenges in ones life also hugely IMO impact the way one thinks when one is thinking in words. I regret not having become the scholar/prof often...but the fact is reading on my own I now realize has impacted the way I think to myself, even for instance if I'm talking to myself about things to do outloud (which I've noticed many, many people my age are prone to do). You put in much, much effort (countless hours), and the result is, whether you have a slew of degrees or not, one's thinking in words is improved a tiny smigen!
I misquoted Peterson in a way. What he said took decades to learn was "social sophistication," which however does involve listening appropriately. Whether we like it or not, I believe reasoning assists when we listen appropriately (with care, concern, respect). There has to be IMO discernment re who it is we're listening to, as I wrote above. But reason is an important element as well as discernment...seems to me. For instance, you might get into an involved exchange about the nature of brain and mimesis and language with someone
https://www.malwarebytes.org/
https://secure.ssa.gov/RIL/SiView.do
I'm sharing my friend Chris' post because I see things opposite. The issue can become involved, but the first thing I'm concerned about is the rat's nest of acquiring virus blockers and malware blockers. If you look at the links I'm putting in the first comment, perhaps you'll see what I see--crooks and syndicates would have access to programs, and no one would be able to determine (before the programs go on the market)...how they could be employed. IMO we have to start shooting for regulation, even if it appears those with total cyber control now could wangle their way around any regulation. The argument that more regulators can't be afforded is the old austerity approach. When it comes to ill conceived wars, there's money up the yin yang for contractors. Funny thing about it, these wars could bring humans on earth to complete ruin. And one of the ways they could do this would be via DIVERTING money from the real economy (if you can remember what that is).
http://www.wired.com/2015/11/trade-pact-could-bar-governments-from-auditing-source-code/
www.wired.com/2015/09/volkswagen-open-iot/
'However, Islamism is only one symptom of a trend to violence that is much more global. It comes less from the South than from the West itself because it takes the form of a response of the poor to those who are well-off. It is one of the last metastases of the cancer that has torn the Western world apart. Terrorism is the vanguard of a general revenge against the West’s wealth. It is a very violent and unpredictable revival of the Conquest, which is all the more terrifying because it has encountered America along the way. The sources of Islamism’s strength include the fact that it is a response to the oppression of the Third World as a whole.' RenĂ© Girard (not from this article)
"I am also of the opinion that logic and reason while they are useful and necessary to functioning in our world, are not all that useful in spirituality."
Sometimes it seems that in each incarnation steps having been made in past sojourns finally come to fruition again in the present sojourn (maybe in a sort of re-hash or re-realization of them)...so that yet another step can be taken. This is just a "theory" of mine. I've been talking to someone about language, and I've read recently about Nietzche's negative view on same (a philologist!). It seems it's inescapable, though, to me...the fact that often we think in words. Mind and vocal cords seem to be too specialized for some kind of evoloutionary "mistake." Reasoning challenges in ones life also hugely IMO impact the way one thinks when one is thinking in words. I regret not having become the scholar/prof often...but the fact is reading on my own I now realize has impacted the way I think to myself, even for instance if I'm talking to myself about things to do outloud (which I've noticed many, many people my age are prone to do). You put in much, much effort (countless hours), and the result is, whether you have a slew of degrees or not, one's thinking in words is improved a tiny smigen!
I misquoted Peterson in a way. What he said took decades to learn was "social sophistication," which however does involve listening appropriately. Whether we like it or not, I believe reasoning assists when we listen appropriately (with care, concern, respect). There has to be IMO discernment re who it is we're listening to, as I wrote above. But reason is an important element as well as discernment...seems to me. For instance, you might get into an involved exchange about the nature of brain and mimesis and language with someone
https://www.malwarebytes.org/
https://secure.ssa.gov/RIL/SiView.do
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