Month: January 2015

I just ran into a person incapable of distinguishing the two.  He was also characterized by a noticeable lack of empathy.  I suspect him of sociopathy. One can certainly be a law following sociopath.  Most of the Nazis were.

And I got to thinking: legalism is an anti-morality and authoritarian.  Inherently, it places the locus of decision making as to appropriate behavior not upon the individual, but upon a small group of people empowered to create and enforce laws.

And if such a body arises from a society itself characterized by legalism, upon what can they base their decisions?  What principle?

This is the role egalitarianism plays in the modern world.  It stipulates, fundamentally, that NO moral decisions are possible, and that the sole guiding principle be that all be equal in all respects.

I described this person as unable to effectively differentiate people and objects.  I have spoken often of the wax museum, static quality of the work of Sade, and it seems to me these things are related.  A Legalist renders homage to the object of a law.  One could make this concrete by referring the literal use of stone tablets in ancient civilizations, like the Roman Republic.

A moralist renders homage to PEOPLE, to concrete, actual, living breathing, suffering, hoping human beings.  It necessarily includes empathy and compassion.

Socialism, by this criterion, is not a morality.  Never forget that George Bernard Shaw called for the mass murder of all those he considered useless.

One can break ideational systems down in exactly the same way engines can be broken down.  It is of course necessary to employ abstraction, but this is quite acceptable when one grasps that one is dealing with ideas qua ideas, and not preaching about how to save the world, and acting on it.

Yesterday morning, lying in bed, as I often do, letting images and words come to me–it’s more or less a download–it came to me that “Evil is everything but Goodness”.  And Goodness is a condition of feeling happy, engaged, and completely unsure where you are going or what your next move will be.  It is absolute spontaneity.  Now, obviously your brain must be involved for you to do anything, and it’s best if your feelings and gut are too, but there is a WAY.  I have felt split seconds of it.

And if you think of it this way, Christ’s “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” acquires a slightly different meaning.  Not only has everyone sinned, but they sin most all of every day.

Sinning is falling short; that is all it is.  And seen this way, it is not something to be judged, but a situation to be rectified.  It is like teaching someone a flip turn in swimming.  Some people will get it sooner than others.

Morality is intrinsically the best way to live.  I define it that way.  It is what generates the most qualitative pleasure and happiness, and these are innately what our spirit craves.  Clearly, it craves adventure, excitement, discovery, danger and other such things, and I am not in the slightest diminishing these needs.  It craves sex and connection.  These are therefore intrinsically not sinful, until they cause immorality, which is hurting others.

This means that virtue is a skill not unlike riding a bike, or ballroom dancing.  And what creates skill is AWARENESS.  Lack of awareness is what causes a lack of skill.

It can be frustrating dealing with stupid people.  I have an IQ significantly above average, and not infrequently find myself angry at how short sighted, self interested, self absorbed and stupid people can be.  But is this reaction not a species of stupidity in me?  Should I take it personally when dogs bark at me, or birds shit on my car?

My point is that judgement exists on a continuum, and EVERYONE exists on that continuum, so our moral failings differ in scale, not the fact of their existence, and this means that judgement is inherently hypocritical, with one exception: those who encourage others to sin, and take pleasure in the pain it causes them.

This is how I define evil.  Evil is not cheating on your wife, or lying, cheating and stealing.  You do these because you are unwilling to consciously face the full consequences of your actions.  You are unwilling to feel the pain of those you have hurt.  You are unable, on the positive side, to access positive feelings of the sort which would have made you happy without doing those things.  You don’t know that happiness surrounds you, so you reach for small and dark things.

Evil is deciding finally that the Light is beyond your reach, and should therefore be beyond the reach of anyone else.  It is my feeling that this sort of evil should be dealt with through violence.

I wish I could say I advocated infinite tolerance, but infinite virtue is in my view impossible in this world, and the essence of spirituality is practicality, and practically this is the reality.  Love does not in the least in my view imply pacifism, or allowing others to abuse you.  Quite the contrary: virtue consists precisely in building the best, most resilient, happiest You that you can.

I have dealt with these issues before, and am not sure I’m not repeating myself, but I suppose it’s impossible to walk even the same road exactly the same way twice.

Edit: you know, in some respects I just described Avidya.  But it is always worth doing things in your own voice, in your own vernacular, because this word can mean, in subtle shades, an infinite number of things, even if they all approximate the same thing.  What I need is MY shade, and what you need is YOURS.  This is how life becomes and remains interesting, at least in the social sphere.

Being blessed with PTSD myself, this movie triggered me a bit, even though mine has nothing at all to do with combat.  I really felt like you did get some sense of what that sort of urban combat was like.

Now, it’s the middle of the night, and I’m a bit foggy, so what is likely to follow is not likely my best work, but a few preliminary thoughts are in order.

First off, I think viewing it as pro-war, or even as propaganda is stupid.  It did not explain or rationalize our involvement in Iraq in the slightest.  On the contrary, it showed us clearly as the invaders we were, driving tanks down Iraqi roads, and kicking down Iraqi doors, and handcuffing and sometimes shooting Iraqis who wanted to resist our presence violently.  This is the text of the movie.  That is what is shown.

And it shows the cost of ordinary Iraqis in trying to help Americans.  The boy who is power drilled to death, and the father who was shot, for collaboration: that sort of thing happened.

And I watch this and wonder how we could have been so foolish as to believe that the Iraqis would welcome an invading Army with open arms.  Yes, people like me repeated the atrocities of the Hussein’s often, the rape rooms, the violent suppression of the Shia in the south, cutting people into pieces and stuffing them into bags, the torture chambers, the gas attacks on the Kurds.

With regard to the Kurds, he killed perhaps 50,000 people.  With regard to the Shiite uprising, it is unclear.  Let us put that number also at 50,000, although it does not appear that high.

The lowest number I can find with regard to Iraqi deaths is 110,000.  Some put the number as high as a million.  You have to factor in both Iraqis who chose to oppose us, either as regular military or paramilitary, as well as the Al Quedists who caused so much death among those unlucky enough to be caught in the crossfire.  They created a hell on Earth for a few years, and arguably won the war for us.

So does it make sense for us to have killed more Iraqis than Saddam did in order to protect them from him? I  can’t honestly say that it does.

And of course drilling elbows and knees is barbaric,  Cutting off body parts, decapitating children: these are horrific.  We shudder at this sort of thing.  But what do bombs do? If your limbs are leaving your body, and your soul this benighted world, the difference to the person affected is, I would submit, largely academic.  We do not INTENTIONALLY dismember people, but that is the outcome nonetheless.  Children too.

I was on the internet somewhere in 2003, arguing that America was attacked on 9/11 because even though we have BY FAR the most powerful military on the planet, no one takes us seriously because our halls of government have been so thoroughly infiltrated with people who fundamentally hate this country.  Lacking credibility is lacking the capacity for deterrence, which in turn makes it more likely that if someone like Saddam Hussein gets nukes, he is more likely to use them to blackmail us and our allies.  That is a justification for war, or so I saw it.

And I do think it worth resurrecting for the public record his open admission, when caught, that he fully intended to start up his nuclear program again.  The war obviously prevented that.

But was it worth the cost?

First off, my ENTIRE world view changed when I realized that 9/11 involved a much larger conspiracy, one not likely Al Queda affiliated.  As I have said repeatedly, the bombs could have been detonated without the planes, resulting in far higher casualties.  Also, any group with the sophistication to get those bombs in those buildings undetected would easily have been able to carry out more attacks.  Attacking Americans is child’s play, as the snipers shortly after 9/11 demonstrated.  We are an open society.

And as should be obvious, I am slowly coming around to the view that the most likely suspects are members of the Bush Administration, who mounted a false flag, in the belief that something like this was needed to get things like the Patriot Act passed that they viewed as critical for protecting America from even more deadly WMD’s.  I don’t like this idea, but the reality is that SOMEBODY put those explosives there, and must have done so with the more or less tacit approval and cooperation of those providing security for those buildings.

So I return to Chris Kyle, and I cannot say unambiguously that his work, his sacrifices, his unrelenting efforts did in fact protect American freedom.  Our enemies seem to be in the gates.  I have nothing but respect and affection for our nations warriors, but they are much better people than those “leading” us.

I don’t know what THE solution is, but I have resolved to actually start some work I have been postponing.  A truly free people, using their freedom, acts as a self organizing system far more powerful, in potential, than the authorities running the thing.  In China they have 180,000 protests and riots a year.  Imagine what they could do if they were armed.

There is reason for optimism, but we must work hard daily to remain alert and aware, and to speak as much truth to as many people as we can, every day.

I have often said that the way to remember fallen warriors is to dedicate ourselves to the freedom in whose name they gave their lives.  It does not matter if Iraq was in fact worth it.  What matters is that freedom was and is worth it.

I think, if one were so inclined, one could derive covert complicity on the part of at least elements of the United States government in the controlled demolition of the World Trade Center Towers with the 1% doctrine which apparently animated the Bush Administration.

Here is the book which discusses this idea: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/20/books/20kaku.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

The net of it is that, to quote Robert de Niro in “Ronin”, “if there is any doubt there is no doubt.”

9/11 clearly facilitated goals which preceded it.

 The potent wartime authority granted the White House in the wake of 9/11, he says, dovetailed with the administration’s pre-9/11 desire to amp up executive power (diminished, Mr. Cheney and others believed, by Watergate)

Imagine laying awake every night worried about a nuke going off in Boston, or an anthrax attack at Grand Central Station, or any of thousands of other possibilities.  Imagine becoming convinced not only of the inevitability of such attacks, but that you were completely helpless to prevent them.  Imagine coming to the conclusion that absent a major push, no amount of arguing would EVER convince Congress and the American people to take the aggressive steps needed to prevent attacks which could kill millions and permanently alter the trajectory of all American lives.

Logically, a few thousand lives would be a small price to pay to save millions.  One could justify it in the name of patriotism, and taking care of the nation.  This is a scenario that makes sense, if you make everyone involved more than a bit psychopathic.  War for Halliburton, War for a pipeline: I hope these scenarios are ridiculous, but if you make folks fully psychopathic, they come back into the realm of the possible.

It does bother me that Marvin Bush was a principal in the company that provided security for the World Trade Centers.

Regardless of who we point blame at, there is NO DOUBT, NONE, that those towers were prepped with explosives before they were hit by airplanes; and that very few people understand this blatantly obvious and ineluctable fact.

This is the best song about addiction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3O1Ap41ptU  Most of them anyway.

Can we say addicts are caged enthusiasts?

Is it a search for myth?

For Constancy?

I don’t know.  I got drunk last night, after vowing to give it up.  I have some understanding why, but I still woke up with this song on my mind.

You know, I am here too, my friend.  We were wrecked on the same ship.  Let us look together for a way to continue our journey.  Let us look into the distance together and hope.  Let us remember the sun, and feel the ocean.  Let us walk together and not go astray.

Commentary: I wrote this this morning, and have pondered the last paragraph today. I often write things I don’t understand.  I then try to understand them, as here.

I fuck up.  My recovery is offering someone else help and companionship, when this is really what I need.

Lao Tzu (which I’m told translates roughly to Old or Revered Master) wrote: “Renounce sainthood; it will be  thousand times better for everyone.”

Can we not posit that many of the people remembered as saints were in fact suffering from compulsions brought on by unprocessed emotions?  Can we not posit many were manic, or OCD, or simply AFRAID of being sinful?

Back to me.  I have decided that I am likely to be alone until it no longer bothers me.  I will likely be misunderstood until it no longer matters to me.  These are hills I need to climb.  You do your work, or not.  I will do mine. I am doing mine.  It starts with relentless honesty.

Commentary on the Commentary: OI, drunk to friend of the world to martyr.  I can’t keep up with myself, so I’ll have to close this down.

I’ll leave you with this: being alone together can be read two ways.

An authentic life consists in rediscovery; an inauthentic life consists in repetition.

It pleases me sometimes to be a bit cryptic, but this I will expand on a bit, because it led to more ideas.

I have in mind Ecclesiastes, which is my favorite book of the Bible.  The creed “Eat, drink, and take joy in your work” is quite functional, and I think sufficient to get most people through their lives.

To the point, “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”


One can take a pessimistic view of this, but here is my own take: whatever problem you have, whatever life challenges face you, whatever your WORK is for this lifetime: someone has successfully passed through where you are.  It has been done.  This means it CAN be done.  History is on your side.


And obviously, failure is always an option.  Someone has failed, too.  But why look at your feet, rather than the horizon?


And this is eminently suitable for Best Case Scenario treatment.  Why not just getting through, but transcending?  Don’t use it as a club, obviously, but do feed it to your unconscious as a possibility, and one which has been realized somewhere, by someone.


And I shouldn’t need to say this, but I will: there is nothing unique about technology.  There is no fundamental difference between trying to build a web app, and trying to build a better fence using your own ideas, and the materials at hand.  There is nothing unique about feeling alone, alienated, detached from a sense of meaning, or surrounded by change.  There is nothing unique about feeling love, feeling special, feeling a sense of belonging, and a sense of continuity with the past.


Even atheism has a very long history.  The Carvakas of India pre-date Christ.  It may be that every snowflake is unique, but this does not prevent us from talking about snow.

Ponder if–instead of proposing we spend nearly a trillion dollars on bailing out bankrupt Medicaid programs, fixing highways that weren’t broken, and distributing money to corrupt Democrat donors–Paul Krugman had instead proposed that we sacrifice 1,000 goats.

Let us further suppose that, due to obstructionist Republicans, only 500 goats were sacrificed.  Could Krugman not have then continued to argue that the failure to achieve the stated objective of keeping unemployment under 8% resulted entirely from not sacrificing the extra 500 goats?  Could he not continue arguing, week after week, that IF ONLY we had done what he, as the prophet of Zeus demanded, everything would have been fine?

In practical fact, the argument is made that even though the “stimulus” appears to have done nothing but increase our national debt, that things would have been WORSE if we had not done it.

Again, would the argument change in any salient, meaningful way, if the argument were over goat sacrifices?  I don’t see that it would.

Take any ritual you want, intended to accomplish anything you want, and you can say that it prevented something worse from happening.  Imagine I took it into my head that the only thing that prevents a meteor from falling on my head is throwing rock candy over my left shoulder every morning and reciting the Hail Mary.   Does not every day that I don’t get hit by a meteor further validate my belief?

I wish I could say this were satire, that I were in some respect exaggerating.  But I am not.

And never forget that Keynes argued quite openly for Fascism–albeit without calling it by name–in his most important book, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money.

I wonder how many people citing his ideas have actually read what he wrote?  I have most of his books on my shelf.

I watched “Top Hat” with my youngest last night.  Her verdict?  “THAT’S entertainment.”

Here is perhaps the nicest scene in it, certainly my favorite song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrCsyN-fZ94

These sorts of movies, filled with silly stereotypes, witty humor, nice song and dance numbers, elegance, decency, evoke I think for many a bygone era of greater simplicity, innocence, clarity.

But in the same sense that I have said numerous times that Fundamentalism consists in the INVENTION of a past that never existed, I think this nostalgia is misplaced.

Here is what clarified things for me: ponder the lives of your parents and grandparents and great-grandparents, and those of your friends, to the extent you know  any of these stories.

I look at the stories I have been told [and by the way, I would strongly encourage you to videotape your parents and grandparents and ask them to tell you their life story.  They tend to like doing it–although of course you can likely expect some major gaps and dishonesty–and it is interesting], and they are filled with anger, jealousy, infidelity, alcoholism, child abuse, violence, frequent disruptions and heartbreaks, abandonment, poverty, unemployment, drug abuse (remember valium used to be prescribed easily, and speed was available more or less over the counter for a long time, as were other drugs), and despairs which were inconvenient.

This is the era when what we tend to call now depression was called pain and sadness. It was called Life.

Get these stories, if you don’t have them–ask your parents and grandparents to discuss the things they don’t want to talk about, as it’s possible you may succeed (I have found often that blunt requests for honesty sometimes yield blunt and actually true answers)–and ask yourself if that sounds like an easy life.

Ask yourself if these people were genuinely innocent.  Was this a Golden Age?  Was it really that different from our own era, other than that we have much more time to contemplate our problems, and much more space within which to work them out?

Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers movies make you happy.  They make me happy, at least.  They were and remain perhaps more useful than the entirety of the current psychochemical arsenal.

What do you want?  This is perhaps the question.  This is my question.  Do not think about what you want to avoid, but where you want to go.  Who I am?  Who I choose to become.  This is the existential reality.

I choose Goodness, as I conceive it.  This is my life’s mission.

Every authentic life is a rediscovery.

[I may have stolen this: but is that not perfect?]

I don’t remember if I have mentioned this, but perhaps 15 years ago I was certified to teach Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats program.  My license has of course long since expired, and in marketing it I found it to have been trendy for five minutes some time perhaps in the 80’s, embraced by a few large corporations like 3M, but mainly ignored.

I would submit that even today the basic idea remains useful.  That idea is that the work of thinking can be broken into parts, represented symbolically by hats.

The Blue Hat is the control hat.  It is why a meeting is being held, and what the problem is that you want to solve.  It controls how long the meeting/interaction happens, and how you decide if a solution or solutions have been reached. [I continue to believe, by the way, that setting up intranet project sites by Hat would be an interesting and useful approach.  You give a group a week or month or on-going access to add anything to any Hat regarding any problem.  This could not but be cumulative, and would represent a more or less standing meeting which would be highly efficient.  Setting up such software would be a good business venture for someone, I think.  OH: an APP.  That’s where things are going.]

The Green Hat is generative. It is throwing out all sorts of ideas, without evaluating them first for value.   It recognizes that quite often bad ideas lead directly to good ideas which could not have happened without the bad ideas.

The White Hat is all the information, objective knowledge, that can be spoken about a given topic.  In a political discussion, this would include things like “overall tax receipts went up after both the Reagan and Bush tax cuts”.  This is an empirical fact, even if one can argue whether or not the two are linked.  One could dig quite deep in information here if one wanted.  And in most cases, this is likely the quickest and best path to take, particularly in mature areas of human knowledge, like economics.

The Red Hat is how you FEEL about something, a discussion, even about the people conducting the discussion. It is a way to recognize, evaluate, and take into account your gut reactions, which can be both helpful and obstructive.

The Black Hat is all the possible problems with a given idea.  It is the worst case scenarios.

The Yellow Hat, the reason for this post, is all the possible POSITIVES.

Here is an interesting idea when doing visioning work, which I have been doing: write out a Best Case Scenario.  If everything works PERFECTLY, or nearly perfectly, what will happen?  Where will you be?  THIS is what you should be working for.  By definition, it is possible, even if it requires everything working perfectly.

Now, we all know things rarely if ever work perfectly, but here is the value of this: you establish in doing this a baseline ideal, and can view all imperfections as problems which can be dealt with, which can be handled, solved, in order to return to the Best Case Scenario.  This makes problems delays, not deadly.

For me at least, this is proving a hugely beneficial approach.