Month: January 2013

Generally speaking, they seem to censor all posts to do with Global Warming and any editorials written by celebrities determined to exercise their mediocrity in public.  Matthew Modine is a celebrity, so I assume it will not get through, so I’m reposting it here. Here’s the original article.

If someone is trying to rape you, you WANT something “specifically
designed to kill people” don’t you? Or is the concept of self defense
something that never enters your mind? Why do cops carry guns? Because
they are effective.

You seem barely able to see 1789 through the mists of time. What about,
say, the year 900 in Spain, when only Muslims were allowed to carry
swords? What about 1650 in Japan, when only Samurai were allowed to
carry swords? What about most of British history, where only elites and
the military were allowed to carry guns? What about the Jim Crow era
in the American South where only white people were allowed to own guns?

History is clear that a monopoly on the effective use of force leads to
and supports tyranny. That fact had not changed in 2,000 years, much
less 200.

Logically, if there is a psycholiterary field of study, there ought to be practitioners.  These would be people who prescribe art.  Could art museums be segregated by emotive outcome?  Could literature generally?  Music?

I think everyone should watch “The secret life of plants”, which should be a part of all core curriculums, or at least the part dealing with Cleve Backster’s work.

In moving through life, there is really no more important initial question than whether we are machines happening to possess apparent sentience, or actually conscious beings which interact directly with our surrounding universe. 

Once a firmly positive, and scientifically founded context of connetion is established, the way forward becomes subjective and unique to each actual in-dividual. Psycholiterary therapists can help with this.

I reject self pity.

I recognize that most happiness comes from choosing my work, or from accepting work which chooses me.

I dedicate myself to cultivating an ever-increasing capacity to take large pleasure in small things.

I resolve to regularly move between abstraction and personal observation, and to seek both the most concise abstractions, and the most perceptive and specific observations.

I resolve to always recognize that all reality exists on a continuum, and to place all observations in context.

I resolve to always remember that Acting For does not necessarily equate to Acting To.

I think a better word might be “effortlessness”, as in “unable to make an effort”. Or perhaps “optionlessness”.

If you think about it, if you are mowing your lawn by yourself, you are help-less.  No one is helping you.  But no one NEEDS to help you.  You can do it by yourself.

Or powerlessness, although given that I recognize both qualitative and quantitative power I would submit that you are never powerless when conscious.

As I think about it, it just seems to me that the word, itself, weakens people.

All of us have within us the capacity for irrational anger.  I say irrational, because the only rational use of anger is when you are actually under attack.  Often, though, we will be angry about one thing–one valid cause of anger–but wind up instead directing at someone or something else that has nothing to do with it.

I love babies, but for some weird reason I occasionally feel violent towards them.  I think it is because they are so small and innocent, and I was small and innocent once, and it got me hurt.  It’s a deep rooted psychological thing.

But all of us have a shadow side.  All of us are potentially capable of irrational violence, violence which appeases some inner demon.

Look at the success of the most recent “Texas Chainsaw Massacre”.  All I know of it is that they showed images on normal evening TV of a women bound and gagged, and a chainsaw poised to cut off her arm while she screamed.  This passes for “entertainment”: the solipsistic consumption of the pain of others.  For such people, some inner recess of their souls says that “what is out there, doesn’t matter”. They are alone inside.  Violence does that.

And the thing is in 3D.  Tell me this is not tweaking some young and impressionable minds.

I’m off topic. Ahimsa, to me–and I feel I’ve said this before, but I am not sure here–is the eradication both of pleasure in violence, and in irrational violence. The two are roughly the same thing, with the difference that I think all people are born prone to the second, and only eradicate it through constant vigilence.  I do not feel it need mean the eradication of violence outright.

 From here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/11/national-climate-assessment-global-warming_n_2458905.html?show_comment_id=221314116#comment_221314116

The lack of response makes me wonder if others can see it, but I cannot say definitively it was censored. It was pointed out to me as well that I did add the category “if it is happening, and if man is causing it, is fixing it still cheaper than riding out the effects?”  This is far from clear.  There have been periods when we had no polar ice caps and life THRIVED, and of course no one is even remotely suggesting this will happen again.

 

Intelligent people–which excludes most journalists and academics–will ask three sorts of questions:

1) Is the Earth warming? If we are making that claim, what metrics are
we using, and how does this warming fit within broad climate contexts?
Based on the past record of these people–and there is clearly a
type–they are cherry picking data that excludes actual measurements of
temperatures on both poles.

2) Is anthropogenic CO2–as opposed of course to the CO2 the dinosaurs breathed–a principle cause?

3) Will cutting down on emissions NOW do anything?

I have studied this topic extensively–MUCH more extensively than the
many silly people who unknowingly do nothing but repeat talking
points–and it seems clear to me that even if we DID cause an increase
in temperature, virtually nothing we do now will make a bit of
difference, since the relative role of CO2 diminishes as its
concentration increases. Each doubling causes half the effect.

I deal with this topic at length here: http://www.moderatesunited.blogspot.com/2008/01/global-warming.html

It seems obvious to me that the threat–the manufactured threat–of Global Warming is trojan horse for global governance

As I suppose many people do, I sometimes fantasize about what I would do if I had unlimited power.  What policies would I pursue?  In my case, I would in general eradicate most large scale restrictions on freedom, and trust that people could self organize in either better ways, or at least THEIR ways.

But tonight I was thinking about universities.  I have of course often criticized Humanities professors for being morally obtuse, and in general intellectually destructive.  So of course I would abolish most Humanities departments, at least as currently constituted.

As one example, though, would it make sense to return to the “classics” of Western literature?  Are these “classics” not in part the REASON our tradition has devolved to the point of collapse?  Does “Pride and Prejudice” help mold better characters?  Who knows?  I see no reason to reflexively to return to what never was, and would think it more intelligent to move forward to an considered use of literary and other art.

Thus, it occurs to me it would make sense to develop a discipline which has as its focus and goal the development of ideas and principles–which of course it would test, as I fully envision this being a scientific enterprise–on how to create art which both ennobles the artist, and either helps lessen the burden of the co-participant–the viewer–or fills them with a broader happiness and sense of possibility than they already had.  Or both.

Our literary tradition is filled with all sorts of literature.  Take Edgar Allen Poe.  How do you make him useful?  I won’t say it can’t be done, but I will say it is not clear to me HOW and in what contexts it can be done.  Someone should study that.  I could get behind something like that, if done sincerely.

Our entire problem is that our great orienting principles, like human rights and equality before the law, are being desecrated by those for whom egalitarianism is the only creed which they can justify.  This can be reversed and MUST be reversed if what is good in humanity is to survive the on-going onslaught on common decency being launched on us by the post-moral intellectual aesthetes.

Rather than calling Keynesian economic “Demand Side” we should call it “COMMAND side economics.”

I trust my meaning is clear.

Think back to a glorious day you have had.  For me the temperature is perfect, I am outside, and everything is in harmony, between the sun, the clouds, the breeze, the feel of the air.  You feel good, really good.  Go back to this feeling in your memory and let it grow.  If you do not oppose it, it will tend to grow naturally.  Simply let it be.  Let it grow.

Now imagine you are radiating light, like a jewel with expansive powers, or like a sun.  It simply flows through and radiates.  If you keep the happiness and pleasure going, the light will seem to come too.  It goes with happiness, with joy.  Let it shine.

Now imagine you and your light are on a parade float, and your whole experience begins to move.  You are not moving yourself, but you are being moved.  Go slowly.  You may feel a bit unsure at first, but relax and flow into it.  I suspect with a strong root in the experience, you can work to moving very fast, but I have not done so myself.  Any movement is good movement.

To my way of thinking, this is the root feeling of Windhorse.  It is the essence, the root, the beginning point of the best sort of Goodness.  Remember it from time to time, and bring it into your life, wherever you are.

Have you ever noticed that what your ribs and diaphragm and chest do are quite similar both in sobbing and laughing?  Both are cathartic releases of emotion.

I am increasing inclined to view the root repository of tension and anxiety as the intracostal muscles and the diaphragm.  It is for this reason that deep breathing over a long period, as in Wholotropic Breathwork, stimulates and releases emotions, when it happens in a supportive environment.

I will add, too, that I think what the breathwork does is get you into a space without movement–a trauma, or perhaps even a mystical experience–and then add movement, through the evolution of music. 

I may have made that comment earlier, but can’t remember.