Month: May 2014

This movie reminded me of a Sufi story I commented on once, I think on this blog somewhere: the Paradise of  Song, as told by Idries Shah in “The Wisdom of the Idiots”, which is one of my favorite books.  As I think I have said, roughly, I identify emotionally with Sufism, even if I tend to express myself intellectually as a Buddhist.  In practice, of course, I am neither.  I am an American mutt, but one seeking a new way into the labyrinth, for my own shot at making it through.

Who are we, really?  If you woke up, as Hari (surely that name is not unintentional?) did, not knowing who you were, how would you deal with it?  Could you stand the notion that many “you’s” exist across the universe?

I stood in this emotional flood, and I was able to breath.  I count this a good thing.  My quasi-Choed practice seems to have helped.  This movie was a type of Shugyo, one that was needed and useful.

Second point: I was also reminded of my Bubble image/dream, which I shared in my “Goodness Sutra”, which so help me God was the best I could do at the time (that was an apology).  Here is a cut and paste:

Years ago, while pondering the depths of the decay in our philosophical
certainties, I happened in my mind upon an image, which has remained with me.

For most college graduates, you will have been exposed to ideas which state in
effect that there is no up and down. We float, as individuals, like tiny bubbles in
an endless dark ocean, unable to see where the surface is, or even if there is
one. Am I upside down, or is that person over there? We cannot know.

Some people curse the darkness, and out of sheer frustration curse their
neighbors. If they cannot know what is true, then all is lost, all is futile.

Others, with more wisdom, see a lot of others like them, and realize that we are
all alone together. We may not be able to know which way is up, but we know
in what way we relate to one another. By giving to one another, by using one
another as reference points, we can feel less alone.

And then the darkness is not so bad. It is warmer, and a little light intrudes.

Our task is to expand that light. We can’t know what will happen, but love feels
good, and that much is real. 

We have Sartorius, who embodies the idea that “truth” is what science conjures, and that only that truth matters, and that only pursuing that truth matters.  Morality, decency, humanity: all expendable.

For his part, Dr. Kelvin finds in love–a new love, one he was unable to express on Earth–the only useful meaning of life.  He does not care which way is up, and which way is down.

His madness: ah, I will need to ponder that.  Who was who, where?

You know I wander, if you read this blog (do I get pretension points for spelling it Blogue?) regularly.  Look in a mirror: who are you?  Who were you yesterday?  Will you be the same person tomorrow?  Can you finish this paragraph as the same person?

I will add (perhaps I missed my calling as a Baptist preacher) that I watched “The Abyss” the other night.  It is a paradigmatic Movie Yoga movie.  I was watching Ed Harris get ready to jump into the abyss, the darkness, and it came to me that the Buddha had surmounted that darkness too, the infinite abyss, the infinite unknown.

We want spirituality cheap.  We want it “to go”.  We want to hire smiling apostles of the New Age to tell us something easy, something simple, that will enable all our existential angst to disappear.

I have little good to say about the Existentialists.  Almost to a person they were bullies, totalitarians, fools.  But to the extent that they said you have to pay your dues, I would agree with them.

Oh, there is a bigger picture here, but I will leave it at that.

I will say that I sincerely hope that someone reading this benefits in some real, perhaps even measurable way.  It is in some respects an exercise in narcissism that I post my thoughts and emotions, but not fully.  I sense, I feel, the hopelessness, despair, hate, loneliness, and disconnection out there.

It is not only me.  And it is not only you.

Look: there is an ocean.

Just watched Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris, and what I feel I cannot reduce to words.  I will say simply that watching–participating in–his movies always feels like an act of authentic religious piety.

I have mixed feelings about Alex Jones.  On the one hand, I’m glad he exists, and does what he does.  He covers stories and says things nobody else will touch.  At the same time, he goes a little off the deep end from time to time.

Having said that, I bought the documentary “A Noble Lie” from Infowars, and recently watched it.

Most of it is crap.  It is hearsay, and third hand “somebody once thought they saw so and so doing such and such.”  It is poorly organized.  A good argument is trenchant, it hits hard, like a rock hitting eggs, as Sun Tzu put it.

The latter half, roughly, though, is useful.

I will offer what to me are the most salient data points which CANNOT be ignored.

The first, and most important, is that the dominant narrative as far as the Ryder truck with 4,800 pounds of exposives CANNOT be true, or at least that is the opinion of people who are clearly experts.

Read this: http://whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/OK/PARTIN/okm.htm

It is the analysis of Brigadier General Benton Partin.  As I understand the matter, explosion analysis was his specialty when he was in the Air Force.  Obviously, the Air Force is engaged in dropping bombs, and it only makes sense to have a very good grasp of what sort of bombs and  what sized bombs you should use, and where you should drop them, and what you can expect if the job is done properly.  Towards this end, the Air Force no doubt has tested a variety of explosives delivered in a variety of means to a variety of targets.

It is very possible to calculate the explosive yield of a truck filled with ammonium nitrate and fuel oil.  You can figure out how many blast pounds (I think is the term used) there will be per square inch at a given distance.

And the math yields a very simple and as far as I can tell absolutely incontrovertible result: the amount of force that amount of explosive would have been able to generate was only perhaps 1/10th of what would have been needed to sheer a rebar-reinforced concrete column, even for those CLOSEST to the blast.

This is math.  This is physics.

And in point of fact, the Air Forced TESTED THIS scenario, according to the documentary.  They put a truck or equivalent full of explosives and blew it up in front of a building.  What such an explosion will clearly do is remove or greatly damage the outer walls.  All the windows blow in explosively, and anyone in the blast radius will suffer.  Most or all of the facing is removed.  But structural columns are not damaged.  Were not damaged, in the attempted recreation.

The conclusion the general–the specialist, the expert–reaches is that locally placed explosives HAD to have been in place.  As he notes, not much would have been needed.  The rest of the building was brought down by less than 200 pounds of explosives.

And here is the interesting part: even though the architect of the building certified the building could be rebuilt and was currently safe and stable, even though the building had not yet been inspected by civil engineers capable of determining its safety, and even before all the bodies had been removed, the decision was made to demolish the building.

And the “remains” of the building were removed under armed guard and buried.  Why?  To what purpose?

It was reported both by news agencies as well as in official police reports that 2 further bombs were found and defused.  This was reported only on the first day, and then disappeared, made to vanish down a memory hole.  Why?  Who determined they needed a new narrative, and who was so effectively able to push it?

I will add to this the testimony of Jane Graham, who was a HUD employee, and President of the local union.  As a career member of the government, it would be hard to accuse her of an intrinsic paranoia of government.

She reports having seen men in GSA uniforms looking over blueprints in the parking garage, and having seen a spool of wire and a block of putty, which of course is what people setting explosive charges would look like.

She also reported seeing two different men in GSA uniforms the morning of the bombing, then seeing them in civilian clothes in a video after the bombing, outside the building.

Finally, she herself survived the bombing.  I have visited the Memorial, and if memory serves her testimony is featured relatively prominently in the news reel they play there.  She says that there was a rumbling, first, then only about 8-10 seconds later was there a blast wave, which broke all the windows and knocked her unconscious.  This would be consistent with columns being blown prior to the truck being detonated.

Now let us layer on what appears to be a fact: NONE of the surveillance videos from perhaps a dozen or more cameras inside and outside the Murrough building have been released to the public, despite repeated FOIA requests.  The FBI says it can’t find them.  Here is a longer version of the story: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/07/trentadue-fbi-oklahoma-city-bombing-evidence

Self evidently, given the footage, it would be quite possible for Graham or others to identify the men in the GSA uniforms, which in turn would allow them to be identified, and very likely implicated.  We can, from this fact, infer reliably that SOMEONE with the Bureau has both the power and the motivation to keep this footage out of public hands.

I will add one final piece to the mix: the torture and murder of Kenneth Trentadue while in Federal custody, approximately four months after the bombing.  He had multiple wounds on his head, had had his throat cut, and had had his feet beaten.  He was also strangled, with death by hanging being declared the official cause of death.  He has been pumped full of caffeine, which apparently increases the pain of torture.  All his transfer logs, and video footage of his cell area disappeared.  The Feds tried to have him cremated, but failed.

It seems clear that FBI agents tortured him and killed him and then covered it up.  It also seems likely that they thought he was Richard Lee Guthrie, Jr., who was a white supremacist, and also (like Trentadue) a bank robber.  It was not entirely clear in the documentary, but apparently they both have dragon tattoos, I believe on the left arm.  Guthrie killed himself in the same manner Trentadue did: hanging via bed sheet in his jail cell.  This one seems legitimate, but it also appears, circumstantially, to have been in response to threats.  His letter to his brother read:  “I’m sure that you’re going to question my motive, but the fact is that I have no intentions of putting our family in harms (sic) way.”

Let’s think about all this.  Four months in, the FBI was, I believe, still looking for a John Doe number 2.  Multiple people reported seeing McVeigh with another man who fit the description of both Trentadue and Guthrie.

If Oklahoma City was completely a government job, the FBI would know who did it.  The fact that they felt the need to do a Jack Bauer on some guy they assumed to be guilty would imply they wanted quite desperately to find someone, or get someone to confess to something they genuinely believed they did.

One allegation floating around is that Oklahoma City may have involved government operatives who were pretending to be white supremacists, but that bombs that were never supposed to have gone off, went off.

Why would this be, though?  How could an informant not know bombs were being placed; or, knowing it, fail to report it?

It is possible that the FBI is covering up a major fuck-up.  Some of their people may have been involved.

I will have to ponder this for a bit longer.  Here is what seems clear, though:

1) The bulk of the structural damage to the building, which caused most of the casualties, was the result of bombs placed on structural supports.

2) This fact has never emerged in a public way.  It played no role in the coverage of the bombing, and has to this day never been acknowledged by the government agencies responsible for the investigation, even if some FBI employees did report being pressured to alter lab findings and doctor reports.

3) It appears overwhelmingly likely that the FBI is concealing video footage which would provide us a much better picture of who was involved, and that that picture would involve a lot more people than were arrested and prosecuted.

4) The bombing almost certainly worked to help Clinton demonize the far right, and win reelection.  It also served as a model for public acceptance of increasing government surveillance, and erosion of personal rights.

5) In its use of what I would argue was a patsy to cover up a much deeper plot, it bears clear similarities with 9/11.  In the first case, you park a truck, blow the building, then blow the truck (although of course I’m sure both were supposed to happen at the same time).  In the latter, you fly a plane into a building, then blow it.

6) In Kenneth Trentadue’s case, the FBI appears to have gotten away with murder.

My gut feeling–take it for what you will–is that in the early days of the bombing the FBI really did not know who was responsible, but that it quickly assembled the dots, and realized that the responsible parties were people they were supposed to be watching, that the number of people involved greatly exceeded Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, and that it would be a major scandal if their role in this were revealed.  Specifically, they likely had informants at a place called Elohim City, which was a right wing extremist group in Oklahoma, and people from there likely carried out the bombing.

It should be emphasized that security back then would not have been anything remotely like what it became post-Oklahoma City, and reasonably intelligent civilians likely could have infiltrated the building to place explosives.

At a rock bottom minimum, the FBI knows more than it has publicly acknowledged, and to the extent their role is as a servant of the people–as a collector and disseminater of information–they have very blatantly not only failed in that role, but repudiated it outright.  This very clearly constitutes a conspiracy conducted at a very high level to break the law.

As with 9/11, it is past time that a body be convened to assemble a rational narrative that does not violate the laws of physics.

Given the situation in Nigeria, it is worth noting that there is NOTHING in Islam which prohibits or even frowns on the rape of non-Muslim women.  On the contrary, Muhammad’s own example ENCOURAGES it.

Here is a good link: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/jamie-glazov/islam-slavery-and-rape/

Muhammad himself was clearly a serial rapist.  It is recorded in Islam’s sacred texts. Why wouldn’t it be?  They see nothing wrong with it.

I ask you: what other religion explicitly sanctions and rewards sexual violence?

Love might be defined as: “the ability to see another person both as they are and as who they want to be, and to be able to accept both with an open and generous heart, wanting for them what is best for them with the same eagerness–or perhaps more–with which they pursue their own dreams.”

Not concise, but in the right zip code, I feel.

Logically, then, indifference is NOT having the ability to see people as they are, but not caring.

If we define hate in advance as the opposite of love–which is an artificial, but not necessarily inaccurate or useless operation–then it would be “the insistence that individual people conform to specific cultural and behavioral patterns, regardless of their instinctive or affectual inclinations, capability, or intentions.”

What, in this definitional world, would be the proper relation of hatred and evil?  Evil I have defined, in a definition I am comfortable with, as “A volitional character disposition in which one is unable to live happily on ones own, and takes pleasure in the suffering of others.”

If we consider confinement of others to be the chosen activity of those who are evil, as most conducive to the creation of suffering, then properly hatred is the affective method of evil.  From a dark place–a relatively if certainly not absolutely unchanging place–a stuck place, devoid of growth or even the thought of growth–comes a means by which to achieve relative liberation through the vicarious experience of pain.

These are sketches I have done many times, but every time a small bit becomes more clear to me.

Let us consider global culture.  Read and consider this article: http://www.grahamhancock.com/forum/SamsG5.php

He reminds me of Ayn Rand without the organic dogmatism.

We can and should believe that human cultural evolution is possible, and that our task, at this moment, at this stage–indeed at every stage–is to figure out what’s next.

Human history is of course filled with governments growing larger and larger.  When Europeans first arrived in North America, there were many hundreds of Indian languages and thousands–likely tens or even hundreds of thousands–of local governments, among peoples smaller in number across the continent than exist today in a large American city.

Now, in the continental United States and Canada, we speak one language in–say– 98% of the land mass, and 3 (add French and Spanish) in statistically 100%.  We have one national government in America, 50 State governments, and perhaps several thousand county and municipal governments.

There are those who see in larger and larger government the evolution of humanity.  There are many who see the imposition of a global government the next logical step.  It will lead, they think, to the “rationalization” of resource utilization, the globalization of what they call “science” (which is to say the conflation of truth and the dominant narrative within the professional ranks of those we might call “the keepers of the truth”), and of course the eradication of wars between nations.

But no government can be more moral or more honest than the people who compose it, and if these people are morally and emotionally undeveloped–and in my view the atheism of most of them makes this inevitable–then the task becomes one of imposing conformity, and not liberating humanities creative instincts.

As defined, the task becomes one of evil expressed through hatred, and not goodness as expressed through love.

Consider this: between World War 1 and World War 2, there were approximately 40 million military deaths, which is to say soldiers killed in battle. If we add all the other wars together we might get 60-70 million dead.

There were approximately 169 million killed by various governments: https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/DBG.TAB1.2.GIF

This would include, as examples, the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, the famines caused by Mao and Stalin, and the widespread horrors perpetrated by the Japanese wherever they went, but most notably China.

THE definitional war in the 20th century was not the war between nation and nation, but between those running the country, and the populations under their control.

A global government would, self evidently, not prevent this sort of abuse.  It would ENABLE it.

Consider Robert Redford’s character in the most recent Captain America.  His logic is simple: kill the 20 million or so people capable of independent thought, likely to be leaders against a planned totalitarian regime, and unlikely to be bought off or scared into silence.  Everybody else will follow like the sheep they are.

But if this is an acceptable means, by what criteria is war, itself, objectionable?  What is the difference between right and wrong?  What possible morality could justify such means, for such ends?

And if one looks at the history of central planning, it is at a minimum one which constricts individual freedom and choice, and practically always one which results in shortages and failures.  People do not like to work in cages.  They do not like being slaves.  This is an instinctive and healthy response.

And if the response to this is brain washing, mass conformity, unity: of what value is human existence at all?  Why make it more “efficient”, if it means nothing anyway?  If growth is a chimera, and we have no more value than chipmunks?

No leftist can answer this question properly.  Any intelligent person can use words and phrases for obfuscation, but the reality is that these people are sick at their cores.  They are evil.  They teach and express the hate implied by the universal cage, the same cage they live in. If they can’t be free, then neither can anyone else.

Again, if we return to my simple definitions, it is a morality of evil expressed through the violence of hate.  Sade, as I say over and over, is who connects the abstractions of morally unhinged, emotionally sick, psychologically deranged people who embrace Leftism with the logical consequences of their obsession with conformity, which is to say the expression of evil through hate, which is to say the opposite of the goodness which instinctively seeks diversity, alterity, difference: love.

Let me propose this: the same possibility of a global government also creates the possibility of global CULTURE. In some respects this was the dream of the English. They did not just want to dominate the world, but also to Christianize and liberalize the world.  In a great many places they went, they left behind the idea of democracy, of parliaments, of votes, of human rights.  India is a (relatively: we will ignore for the moment the mass violence that attended partition) unified nation, and has a Prime Minister.  We can argue the merits of this, but this is something the Indians are doing for themselves, and not something that Britain is requiring.

Global media creates the possibility for an organic spread of ideas like Goodness.  This is my hope for the future. This is what motivates my work.

As I say in one of my essays, my hope is a world which values both diversity and empathy.  My vision is a genuinely Liberal world which NEGOTIATES diversity, using certain universal principles including the idea of human rights, the notion that all humans are created equal before the law, and RESPECT.

Leftism rejects all of this.  If you doubt me, simply try and have a civil conversation with a leftist on virtually any topic.

Everything has to start somewhere.  Part of our problem is we are lost in reflective mirrors.  How can I respect you if I don’t know who I am?  How can you respect a ghost?

Who you are is what is left over time after you allow the free operation of three principles: 1) rejection of self pity; 2) perseverance; 3) perceptual breathing/motion.

These three principles will allow both motion and confinement.  You have to have rules, a code, or you are nothing.  At the same time, if you can only tolerate one way of behaving–which is the case for leftists and many Muslims–then you cannot grow as a person or a culture.

As I say, these principles create an interesting chaotic system, a sort of self-evolving etch-a-sketch.

And they WILL lead to growth if you set as a defining goal, a parameter, that of increasing the capacity to give and receive love.  I would argue that learning to love (which will always include both giving and receiving) is an ontologically grounded principle reason for our existence, but this is not a necessary premise. I can say simply that you will be HAPPIER if you pursue this, and happiness is as good as any other reason in the room to exist.

As I have said in previous posts, you can pursue misery that is YOURS.  I understand this. I do not reject it as a goal.   But true love obviates the reasons a person would do this, and this can be particularly true if it is only your own love directed–“improbably, impossibly”, you say–at yourself.

Now, these are of course my own specific cultural forms.  I am arguing for their UTILITY, which in my world more or less conflates with psychological truth, because as a map, they lead to the places you want to go, in my experience.

But the ESSSENCE of what I am trying to do is encourage other people to generate their own codes, their own principles.  And even if you embrace mine, they are so wide reaching, that nearly anything is possible.  But all of it will be good, or such is my hope, my dream.

That is enough rambling for now.

Be well.

Left: A relic of white European hegemonic discourse which works to frustrate Progressive rhetorical narrative strategies.

The Sane: something which is–or which clearly tends to be, over time–whether you want it to be so or not.

It seems likely to me that some of the personality tests floating around the internet may well have been put out by the government.  Creating predictive profiles is something they are apparently spending an enormous amount of money on, with something like the Minority Report (Philip K. Dick was a true visionary, was he not?) as a goal.

Can any of us even begin to fathom the size and scope of the databases that are being made possible by the intersection of open disclosure of personal information on the internet with a nearly infinite capacity to match varying strands of connection?

It likely doesn’t matter, but I’ve stopped answering those tests.  In my own case, of course, I would hope I have a very thick file, and am high on the arrest list.  That would mean my writings matter.

Why is racism wrong?  Because it treats people en masse, by defining all individuals in terms of their group membership.  It consists in prejudice: pre-judgement.  Inherently, it makes mistakes because not all members of ANY group are homogeneous, even if some members of that group often display the traits associated with them by others.

Further, race can be used as a means by which to deny entire populations, within a larger group, the rights which everyone else expects.  We consider this wrong, because we believe in universal and equally available human rights.  Segregation was wrong because it treated one group differently than others.

Racism is wrong because it can be and often is cruel, and as a culture, we reject cruelty.

Put another way, racism is wrong for exactly the same reason Political Correctness is wrong, in that the latter consists almost entirely in treating groups–political conservative–as absolutely homogeneous, and susceptible to pre-judgement en masse, without any fact gathering, without any effort at establishing a mutually empathetic and connected bond, and without ever looking back, to see if any mistakes were made.

Practically, why does the Left obsess about racism, over and above the obviously useful propagandistic uses to which the word “racist” can be put?

If one looks carefully, the charge of racism actually serves as a focal point for hatred.  Hatred, itself, comes to provide a sense of meaning in those fully infused with it.

Conformity is the only true value on the left, but conformity is much, much easier to enforce when an external target can be created to mobilize the emotions of violence through group rejection of the Other.

Put one more way: looked at objectively, Leftism furthers and perfects all the social and individual malignancies which lead to and have always led to, throughout history, misery, death, destruction, poverty, and diseases of the mind and body.

It literally takes everything bad in human history, distills it, concentrates it, then reintroduces it as a panacea for precisely the ills it creates and fosters.

To call this madness is not an exaggeration.  All of our top schools are suffused with cognitive distortions so severe they should qualify as clinically schizophrenic.

I don’t think anyone, adult or child, should have a TV in the room designated for sleeping.  Physiologically, light before bedtime disrupts sleep rhythms.

More importantly, it is letting a dozen hypnotists in to your room, who are casting spells you cannot even see.  They are making you feel physically unattractive, more lustful, more greedy, more resentful, less patient, less observant.

Have we all not seen the ceremony of the “ritual balancing of opinions”, where the two alleged sides of a controversial issue are represented?  And have not the more perceptive among us realized that vast tracts of possible analysis have been ignored entirely?

When my children were young, we spent huge amount of time on the couch together watching TV.  I’ve seen Mary Poppins at least 30 times, and was a huge Veggie Tales fan.  But we were together, and as appropriate I would comment, making it a learning tool.

And neither of them got anything meaningfully electronic until they were 12.  I watch the zombification of our youth, and it is small wonder they can’t think.  Our only hope is their passionate attachment to freedom, of at least some sorts.

My youngest was complaining of boredom six months or so ago.  I have told them since they were little that only boring people get bored, but I got an Xbox (for me) and Kinect.  The Kinect remains unused.  What I found was if we make enough trips to the library, boredom is not a problem.  Quite literally, I cannot get my youngest to stop reading long enough to play video games.

I try not to lecture, but no doubt I do it constantly.  In my mind, there can be little doubt that the presence of TV’s in most all of our childrens bedrooms from very early ages plays a role in losing emotional connection within families, in cognitive and emotional shallowness; and it very effectively allows the distribution of various propagandas, most notably the consumption ethos, the latent appeal to authority assumption, and the notion that “sex” matters more than the capacity to exist.

It seems the propaganda operations at some of our allegedly best universities are reaching those one would expect in fascist nations.  Read this: http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/04/30/going-viral-princeton-university-students-bold-response-after-allegedly-being-told-repeatedly-to-check-your-privilege/

Here is the point I would make: this young man is CLEARLY  privileged, but not as a result of belonging to some racial, economic or social group.  He was privileged in growing up in a family which was close, and which preached the value of hard work and education.

Poverty is no barrier, in this country, to becoming rich.  Being black is no barrier. Laziness and a sense of entitlement are.  If you want the boat to swim in to you, you are, in the only sense that matters, underprivileged.

And we need to be clear that class-based thinking is the categorical antithesis of personal morality, personal responsibility, personal freedom, personal choice.  It quite literally teaches that you are HELPLESS unless one of these fascist thugs comes down from above and pulls you out by pushing someone else down.

This pattern of thought teaches ONLY ugliness, hate and greed.  It has no place anywhere that wants to use the word Liberal.