Month: September 2013

The cure for economically productive greed–which is the default in free market economy for all but banks–is wisdom. Work until you have enough, then stop.

The cure for Statist greed, which is intrinsically economically UNproductive and which leads to huge inequalities of outcome unrelated to performance, is more laws restricting the ativities of the State.

This is more or less the opposite of leftwing rhetoric. I want more laws to chain the State. They claim that granting power to the stae is inherently moral. No group or sociery can be moral, though, which is not composed of people who as individuals are moral.

The Left has created so much unnecessary confusion.

I think it would be useful to stipulate thst whenever you see a large ego, you are seeing an unusual amount of fear. Vanity is a type defense, I think agaist the fear of nonexistence.

Practically, if you can live happily on your own, as you are, you need not develop an unrealistic, exaggerated, and false sense of your own abilities and importance.

I would like to relink my two primary treatments of this topic: https://moderatesunitedblog.com//2010/10/plausible-911-conspiracy-theory.html

and https://moderatesunitedblog.com//2010/11/tower-7-thoughts.html

Here is the crux of my argument: steel I-beams do not collapse as a result of anything but extremely high temperatures.  Jet fuel may reach the levels needed, but nothing in an office–no desk, not the carpet, not books (Fahrenheit 451), not computers, not cable, NOTHING–burns hot enough to come close to compromising an I-beam.

Yet, this is what is claimed in the official report on the collapse of Tower 7.  I have not read the report, but it seems likely no plausible means CAN be claimed for how the fires started, how a building full of flame retardant furniture, ceiling tiles, etc, was able to sustain a fire for 8 hours, why the sprinklers failed, or how even if one single I-beam collapsed the building would fall straight down at the pace of gravity as if it had been blown.

A friend of mine involved in counter-terrorism suggested that the bombs may have been placed by Islamic terrorists.  Since we don’t know who did it, all possibilities are on the table, but I have two principle objections to this:

1) the amount of sophistication and intelligence needed to pull this off would have been considerable, and if wreaking havoc and killing people in spectacular ways was their sole goal, they would have committed more attacks by now.

2) More importantly, the goal of Islamic terrorists–or so we have always been told–is mass death, the more the better.  If they got bombs into the buildings, why not collapse them without the planes?  Many, many more people would have died.

Thus, it seems most likely to me that the whole thing was staged theatrically, to generate as much raw emotion, as much horror and anger, as possible.  Why?  We can’t know, but it seems now likely to me that it was to create public support for the creation of a surveillance state, in which all communications are recorded, our genitals groped in public, and wars are staged that would otherwise have been unnecessary.

Some people want us always at war.  Some people want our freedoms subverted, and a pervasive command and control apparatus set up.  Some of these people have power and influence.

Certainly, I am a bit paranoid.  I have reasons for this which any regular readers of my blog can readily grasp. 

But the fact remains that many of these people put their thoughts on paper, and are taken very seriously.  As I tend to do, I will post as one small example the excellent essay on the environmental movement from the Claremont Institute: http://www.claremont.org/publications/crb/id.1588/article_detail.asp

I will the oldie but goody Report from Iron Mountain.

As I have stated before, satire needs to be funny.  The claim that this book was intended to make people laugh is itself risible.

The thirst for power has existed forever.  It is not behind us.  The potential size and scope of consolidated power, quite to the contrary, has never been greater.  A world government ruled by a small junta or even individual is not inconceivable, and is routinely proposed by science fiction authors.

I’m in my forties, a time when I am supposed to be heavily focused on my career, the next promotion, earning prestige.   It would likely strike some as odd that someone my age would spend a considerable amount of time working on personal growth.

“Just get over it” is, I think, a common refrain.  The Eagles wrote a song with that as a title (interestingly, on at least their first reunion tour I read they had to pay someone to pass notes between one another because at least some of them refused to talk with one another.)

I like to work from first principles, though.  What is the purpose of life?  In my view, learning how to give unconditional love.  I am not good at this, ergo I need to do more work.  This is a simple and very short process of logic.

In practice, I think many people carry wounds, or unactivated potentialities, with them their entire lives.  The wounds are hidden in areas they simply don’t visit, but which are always PRESENT.

Ironically, the way to heal them is in my view to bring them consciously into the present, and accept both the hurt and the violent anger you felt in response.  You cannot get hurt without yourself feeling hate, even if you deny it consciously.  The purpose of anger is to protect you, and we are wired for it to do its job.

I get angry on occasion.  The task is not to prevent it from happening, but decreasing the number of things which cause that emotion to activate.  Logically, this involves an increase in a sense of control, such that anger is needed less for protection.

As I think I have said before, anger exists as a sort of watchdog, that will bark at anything it thinks looks threatening.

For myself, my Kum Nye practice currently involves activation of the Navel Center, and they warned that it might churn up some strong and unpleasant emotions.  This has in fact happened.  I spent almost all day yesterday in a foul mood.  Yesterday morning, in my practice, I felt FULLY the emotions that confronted me as a small child, and it felt like a blast of fire, hard to take.

But as I figuratively stood there in this hot wind, I realized that I can take this, and that if I take it long enough, it will diminish. I can see this.  And if it diminishes, it will leave room for all sorts of pleasant emotions.

A great many of my dreams are, as I think about it, about control.  I have developed, I guess, control over my worst emotions, but that is not at all the same as integrating them, and releasing the chronic bad ones.  It is keeping them in place.  I fear no monsters, and I can do everything in my dreams, including flying, walking through walls, levitating and moving objects.  But none of this is PARTICIPATION.

Last night I had a hint of what I hope to see more of, which was a sense of belonging and participating in a very pleasant scene.

The Buddhists have a series of virtues they believe are needed for achieving Nirvana.  I have had for some time several points I want to make about this, but one of them is Virya, which is related to our virile, and which translates roughly as courage or manliness.

It takes courage to face your inner demons, your inner darkness, the ways in which you are constrained.  It is in all respects more painful to be chained and know it, than to be chained and blind to the fact.  To become free, though, the first step is to recognize your constraints, knowing full well that you cannot fix them immediately, and recognizing consciously that deciding to bring this into awareness is going to entail a very long process of accommodation.

If you stand for nothing, you can’t ask others to stand with you.

Occurred to me just after I hung up on  an RNC solicitor.

As I get deeper into some very primal emotions, which seemingly come from perhaps before birth through about the 4th year of my life, I wonder where this ability to hate a small child comes from.  That is all I feel, is  hate.  I don’t remember ever feeling a sense of belonging, of being loved.  I had a dream once of raising my children, guiding my children, and there was a point where I literally walked on water to carry them across a river.  This is, I think, more or less what I did, because I had no analogue in my own life for the giving of love and nurturing.  The difference between me and my parents is that I am capable of empathy.

And it occurs to me that the motto of their generation is “spare the rod and spoil the child”.  According to my baby book, I got my first spanking at 12 months, for touching an electric plug.  I don’t know how hard I was hit, or how often, but as I dig deep into my affective memory, my kinesthetic memory, I feel this terrible fear of being punished, seemingly at random, and lacking the cognitive advancement to understand why I was being hit.  If you are going to use corporal punishment, it seems the child needs to at least be old enough to understand well enough why he is being punished to not do it again.  I wasn’t old enough.

But in their own minds, and this is the core point I want to make, my parents were doing me GOOD.  They were being good Christians.  They were doing their duty–this is what they told themselves–even as they took their resentments out on me, of my frequent crying, my neediness, of all the things ALL children do.  I well understand getting tired of little children.  I have been there. I  have often said that any parent who claims they don’t occasionally fantasize about killing their kid in the first couple years is lying.

At  the same time, most kids get through that period, because their parents exercise self restraint, and also learn to value all the countless HAPPY moments, JOYFUL moments that little kids also bring.

But think of all the evil committed in the name of the church, of Goodness, of God.  Sade could plausibly argue, as he did indirectly, that no God that was not evil could inflict on humanity anything like the Catholic Church, which for many centuries ROUTINELY tortured anyone who questioned them, and quite often murdered them in a very painful fashion. This church also routinely excused the worst crimes of kings and others, when it was to their benefit.  Even today the Vatican is, in my understanding, the richest nation per capita on the planet, because of all the gold in its vaults, gold stolen from many places, gold and other treasure with blood on it.

Thus I would argue that the fundamental mechanism of most evil on this planet is that of RATIONALIZATION, of having a mechanism whereby the basest impulses of greed, violence, lust and all the rest are made VIRTUOUS.  Islam is perhaps the most conspicuous example, in that men were encouraged directly from their holy book to go out and rape women and enslave them, to attack their men, kill them, and take all their possessions.  All of this was rationalized for them.

With regard to the Bible, nothing in the New Testament allows for violence.  Historically, that is what the Church was for, and the effects in many cases not all that different from those inspired by the Koran.

Few thoughts.

1. Given a non-zero velocity, all new money introduced into an economy dilutes the value of existing money.

2. Given the theoretical possibility of price stability at any given quantity of money, the sum purchasing power of all money in existence does not thereby diminish.

3. This means that those who create money take value–purchasing power–from those who previously had it.

4. Money has no inherent economic value.   

Conclusion: the process of creating money is parasitical.

The other day, when linking to this blog, a message popped up that a virus was on this website.  Since it is run by Google, I cannot say with complete confidence that there is no virus, but it seems unlikely.  This is one trick “they”–and I do in fact conceive of many and heterogeneous possibilities for the referent–use to reduce the number of people accessing media which is not approved.  I know Michael Yon had this problem, and I constantly have problems at lucianne.com .  Drudge is probably just too big and well protected for successful assaults, although I think even he has had some downtime.

I bought myself an itty-bitty seated Buddha in Santa Fe, New Mexico a few weeks ago.  I had intended to buy a more expensive one, but it didn’t work out.  Since if I had to claim a “faith” I would check Buddhist, I thought having a little icon might bring me inspiration. 

Nearly immediately, though, I realized that Buddha in a seated position didn’t work for me.  I don’t sit most of the day.  I can’t make a living sitting most of the day.  And since I am on my feet most of the day, that is where I want to manifest the Buddha Spirit, or Gestalt, or Wisdom, or Mind or whatever word we use which falls far short.  Thus, this icon does not speak to my aspirations.

As I pondered, it seemed to me that Shiva Nataraja comes closer, but he is dancing on a vanquished foe, which certainly is to be understood metaphorically, but which easily shifts emotionally to a sort of dualism.  I don’t want that either.

The icon I want is that of a spiritual figure walking.  Walking, to me, symbolizes life, and the process of living.  I want to walk well (not walk hard: that is another matter altogether for John C. Reilly).  That is the icon I want.

Yes, I know there are several thousand years of tradition working against me.  I don’t care.  I am an American, which means I can be as stupid as I want, am willing to break things that don’t appear broken, and am willing to dedicate my soul to the perfection of what can be perfected.

Those who know me from my CrossFit days know I am a little cracked, and that my brain is always going.

Here is an example of the sort of idea which brings me pleasure (I saw a quote from Einstein the other day to the effect of “Creativity is Intelligence having fun/playing”; I agree with that): what if you had a two tier pool on a hill?  I have long thought it would be amusing and unique to have a pool AROUND my house, built as a sort of moat, such that you swim in a quarter mile (or whatever circle).  It has always bothered me that I would constantly have to skew to the right or left.  I could set up long straightaways like on running tracks, but you would still have curves, and if it was build on right angles it just wouldn’t be as much fun.

Then just now I got to wondering about the logistics of building the thing on a hill.  The water would flow down, then have to be pumped back up.  What if, though, you got out at the end on the bottom, sprinted up a steep hill (or even  had some kind of track, and a cart you had to hand-crank), swam the top portion, then maybe slid back down?  That would be interesting.

Or you could have a series of platforms, such that you jumped down, in what would amount to a series of depth jumps.  Or, since I just watched a Saw with all the mechanical devices, you could have gear system in which you rode a cart down, but had to hit something with a kettlebell swing for each gear. Or pound it with a hammer.

This will almost certainly never be built by anyone, and the idea unknown to all but a few. Still, I ENJOY bringing into the world possible material configurations I have not seen, and have always believed that most of the best ideas are the indirect product of bad ideas.  This means no idea is inherently bad, because it could lead somewhere.