Month: May 2015

I am trying to tighten up on my Kum Nye practice, and be sure I get at least 5 good practices done each week.  Toward that end, a little ditty came in my head:

Practice done poorly,
Practice done well:
It is of practice DONE
Which I shall tell.

And I will add a short and mostly not interesting story.  I travel a fair amount, and found myself in New Orleans last week, and sought out a place called Jacque-Imo’s, which had a sausage and alligator tail cheesecake I had heard was quite good.

The meal was good, not great–although the place itself is a lot of fun–but sitting there pondering the whole thing it occurred to me that happiest thing that happened to me that day was in my Kum Nye practice, where I often, lately, pull out interesting and forgotten or new emotions.  This is a sort of discovery which is the end goal of physical travel, which does not always yield it.  Quite often, you just move your blindness from one location to another.  This can be repeated endlessly, to no profit.

I have often called to make States the locus of most of our military, leaving only something like the Marine Corps, the Navy, Strategic nuclear capabilities, and SOCOM as our main standing services.  I have wrestled with how to make this a likely outcome without the Federal government forcing it in any way.

I think I’ve come up with the answer: veterans pay a permanently lower rate of taxes, perhaps in absolute percentages, as well as perhaps being granted more deductions/allowances.

And as I have said a number of times, I envision both military training, and search and rescue training.  Both are useful.

I was doing my Kum Nye practice the other day, and found myself ascending a long set of white stairs up into the sky.  I reached the top, and there was a layer of darkness hanging there, like a layer in the atmosphere.  I poked my head through, and a voice asked me what I was seeing, why it was dark.

I was lying in bed the other night, being attacked by shaking, as I had chosen not to drink, and it occurred to me it was a teacher, and should be embraced.  After this realization, I had a  major insight into my own psychodynamic history come into my awareness.

And I was pondering in the Tibetan tradition how demons and angels are the same; it is the understanding which differs.  And then it occurred to me that when we are presented with demons, it is our job to transform them.  They are uncooked.  It is our job to cook that experience, which becomes useful and transformative in the process.

I keep my ear to the cultural landscape, and have followed at a small distance the work among others of Nassim Taleb.  He has this concept of Anti-Fragility, which I believe was the title of a recent book.  The gist of the idea, as I understand it, is that there is a difference between resilience–which might be summarized as “hard to break”–and something which BENEFITS from chaos and assault.

I don’t like negatives.  I don’t think it is ever good to include within a word what it is you don’t want.  Thus: transformation-capable.  Phase shift capable.  Informationally absorptive and self organizing.

And I got to thinking about this concept of being emotionally “vulnerable”.  We assume being emotionally open makes us vulnerable and we are supposed to simply accept this as the risk of living, of loving.

But what if I open to something which tries to wound or kill me, and I am able to process it, and TRANSFORM myself in the process, accepting both hurt and the following growth?  Over time, does my very vulnerability not become a positive virtue?  Is it not what pushes me forward, ahead of the winds of chaos and destruction which hang everywhere over the world in which we live?

Within Kum Nye, the task is to take all emotional “sensations” and open them up, and expand them.  And I saw that if you take a hard thing, and add space to it, you can imagine it like a blown up toy, filled with air in the middle.  You can enter this, and look around.  You can see dots of darkness, and dots of open space.  No evil is fully continuous. And you can expand this, such that the dots of darkness are very far apart indeed.  You can denude the sensation of its impact, its effect.  I have in mind here the Buddhist conception of dharmas as dots or points in a discontinuous universe.

I am listening to Dicken’s Great Expectations on audiobook, and enjoying it immensely.  Dicken’s ability to turn a phrase, and his droll sense of humor I quite like–to borrow from his phrasing.

Listening to it, though, I am struck by English society as characterized by this massive and national game called “Don’t piss people off and know your place.”  One must always be calculating.  Pip is always calculating.  Nothing is spontaneous.  There is no dancing.  The whole thing is quite grim, and only peppered here and there with clever word play, which is the only spontaneity allowed.  Wit is the only dancing in this world, as thus far represented.

One can feel the need for empire, as a way of expressing pent up energies.  And in that regard I would note the remarkable cultural similarities between the Japanese, who also subsisted nearly entirely on etiquette; and the Indians, whose caste system the English order closely resembled.  Everyone to their place, a place typically made obvious by the use of language.

These thoughts occasioned yesterday’s post.  I was thinking it was all a very dismal game, one which satisfied the emotional needs–the social connection needs–of no one, and then I realized it was not a game at all: it was a ritual.

If we think of play as a reconciliation of our social system with our lower nervous system energies–as a way of expressing and releasing “fight or flight” energies, and countering the immobilization response–then its necessity for social harmony becomes obvious.

But there are layers of harmony.  At the lowest level is the totalitarian “order”, in which a handful of savages inflict pain on the masses until they become prostrate and helpless.  Whether he articulates it as such or not, this is what Obama and his handlers want for the world.  This is because they have wild beasts within them–savage, angry, aggressive, unempathetic energy–and keep them from controlling them on an emotional level only by being controlled by them through the intellect.

Above this is the ritual order.  Throughout the book, one is struck by the closeness of violence of some sort, for perceived slights.  In this order, there are rules to follow, to prevent the outbreak of violence.  Unlike in a totalitarian order, though, some spontaneity is allowed, but only so much.  Thus: play without trust.  One can engage in witty banter, but only go so far.

A true order is one with cognitively and morally sovereign individuals–the creed of Individualism contains within it the only possible non-contradictory morality (societies do not exist, making an appeal to social morality inherently an X=0 proposition)–who interact in spontaneous and formally complex ways, forming a complex, and thus robust, order.

I would add that I think honest laughter is a good indicator of an authentic social order.  There was some honest laughter in Great Expectations, as for example between Pip and Joe, but not much.  Virtually everyone suffers from some sort of mental disorder brought on in large measure by social disconnection, and a sense of inner isolation.

Rock Lyrics: “English blood runs hot”.  Stones

“Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way.” Floyd.

I will continue to develop this.  I have had some major personal breakthroughs I will be focusing on and not talking about.

I would like to define ritual as “play without trust”. There is a huge amount of latent content in this which I will develop shortly. In the meantime, I have many miles to go before I sleep.

I was at a very pleasant flea market in the hipster-ey side of town today.  The sun was shining, people were laughing and drinking beer, and buying odd little curios and various ethnic foods.

And the thought struck me: why does Barack Obama want to destroy all this?  Why does he want all the smiles and laughs gone, as they have been in Cuba for 50 years?  Why does he want all the boutique coffee shops, tattoo parlors, micro-breweries, corner restaurants, art galleries, nick-nack shops and everything else that is not needed to sustain life, but which makes it interesting, to disappear?

We need to be clear that our present level of spending is absolutely unsustainable, and everyone who has even a shred of sense knows it.

It is a miracle that the national credit rating has not already been downgraded again.  It seems likely a lot of arm twisting and maybe some cash or other quid pro quos have gone into keeping the illusion of solvency alive, but the day will come when our debt will be downgraded.  If the Fed were not buying 3/4ths of it, it would have happened already.  When that happens, all hell is going to break loose.  Unless something like my plan is implemented, we will face another national Depression.  That is my read on the situation, and I have a LOT of company.

And it seems obvious that this is the plan.  They crash the economy, and get control.  Then what?  They eliminate income inequality among those who are in the elite.  They provide a blanket and aspirin for every citizen, like Cuba, and call it universal healthcare.

Here is the thing: I had a pleasant day today, and if it is the case that someone made a billion dollars, I DON’T CARE.  It doesn’t matter to me.  I worry about my life, and wish everyone else did the same.  Taking care of yourself is the opposite of selfishness.  It is generous.  You don’t have to worry about me.

When this economic catastrophe hits–and it is a certainty if we elect anyone but an actual conservative to the White House next year–everything will be washed away that makes the people who put Obama in office happy.  Austin will not be weird, and neither will Portland.  We will see boarded up doors of places that once sponsored good times.  We will read weekly for years on end about new closings.

Does anyone even REMEMBER that we spent nearly a trillion dollars on Keynesian economics, and got nothing to show for it? The only reason our economy is not sputtering to a standstill now is the Fed is pumping $50 billion a month into the largest banks, who are using it to buy things they get to keep, but which also puts money into circulation.

I feel rage sometimes at the lack of thoughtfulness I see displayed all around me every day.  Yes, thinking is work, it is hard work, but people who do not want guns pointed at their heads need to do this fucking work in much larger numbers before it is too late.

Edit: Barack Obama does not relax.  He plays a lot of golf, and spends a lot of time not doing his job–which is good–but he does not relax.  No true ideologue relaxes.  The reason they live in their heads, the reason they are separated from the real world, from experience, is precisely that some emotional problem or problems push them away from that connection.  They do not see people: they see symbols.  They do not recognize suffering: merely symbols.  Fidel Castro does not relax.  Pol Pot did not relax.  Stalin did not relax.  Relatively, maybe.  They went to the ocean or the mountains.  But deeply: no.

Put another way, such people are unable to truly have fun.  They cannot play.  Their lives are characterized by one long emotional spasm.

So they do not VALUE the creature comforts and pleasures that an effective economic order makes possible.  Back in the days of open radicalism, they called them “bourgeois”.  But what is supposed to replace them?  What pleasures and comforts do they enjoy in Cuba?  Wealthy elites the world over go there for the hookers.  Fidel Castro even bragged that even his hookers have college degrees.  Let that sink in for a moment.  Is it not a perfect metaphor?  You are being fucked so you can survive, and your leaders are extolling the fact that you underwent State sponsored indoctrination.

Do you remember how the Soviets created special stores for Party elites, so they could buy stuff less good than what we take for granted now?  How Communism always, necessarily, betrays the ideals of egalitarianism, fairness, justice in any sense, and common decency?

No person who can stomach Communism can possibly have a conscience and a brain.  No person working to destroy our economy belongs anywhere but hell.  Given the opportunity, I would gladly help facilitate the journey.

I am a 6’0″, 275 pound person who drinks too much–did last night and the night before–and my blood pressure today was 110/82.  The doctors never believe it.  A few years ago when I weighed only 240 or so I had one doctor take my blood pressure three times in a visit, and it went down each time.

I am going to go on record as saying my belief is that the two best exercises for blood pressure are the standing barbell press, and the deadlift.  There is considerable evidence that weight training is good for blood pressure, but what I think makes these two particularly useful is that they require full body activation, and presumably push momentary blood pressure through the roof.  What I think happens is that the arteries expand and flex in response.  This is the whole problem with blood pressure: hardening of the arteries.  But if you ramp up the pressure periodically, I think, you force them to adapt.

I am not a doctor, and can’t say this approach is safe for everyone, but I dropped my scores about 20 points on both measures in a month once I started weight training again.

The EmWave2 is likely good too.  I do it every morning, and can lower my pulse about 5 bpm, and get very relaxed in a very cardiovascular specific way.

I think we can safely posit that no one enters the physiological state of adulthood in a state of full psychological awareness and maturity.  We all carry scars with us.  We are all limited, often in ways we can’t see.  How many people do you know who are absolutely relaxed, confident, empathetic, joyful, and able to become utterly absorbed in the creative expression of energy without neglecting their chosen responsibilities? Looking at that list, I can’t think of one person.  Most of the people we consider successful are in fact simply compulsive with respect to work and/or competitiveness.  Many outwardly decent people are still walking wounded, with anxieties and depressions, and cognitive distortions they simply deal with as best they can.

I have by and large stopped “debating” Leftists.  Purely as a practical matter, my viewpoints and the reasoning underlying them are actively suppressed at all the main sites.  But I still will find myself waiting on someone or something from time to time, and let me fingers (finger, I’m bad at it) walk on my phone.  Such was the case today.

And I am struck by the overall level of childishness which characterizes so many of those who have taken it upon themselves to repeat the days propaganda, and to attempt to silence through attack all who disagree with it.

And surveying this landscape, what I realize is it is characterized by a very visceral terror that conservatives are right, and that a principle purpose in life is accepting and developing the ability to be accountable to oneself and others.  This thought terrifies them. It requires psychological maturation.  It requires dealing with emotional problems they don’t want to deal with.

In Lenin’s time it was possible to believe that a new and better society could be built through terror and science.  It was never a humanism.  It was never Liberal in any respect whatever, but the experiment had not been tried on as grand a scale as he attempted.  They had far, far more time than the French ever had.

What happened, of course, was that Lenin was far worse than Czar Nicholas II in every possible way.  Mao was far, far worse than Chiang Kai Shek.  Ho Chi Minh was far, far worse than the French or Japanese.  Castro was far, far worse than Battista.  Etc.  It is a dull drill, and a series of facts lost only on who?  The terrified.

For the sufficiently emotionally disconnected, it is possible to nurture a belief that OUT THERE somewhere is the answer to all their problems, and that it is possible in the meantime to join a cult which will tell them what to do, what to say, what to think, and which promises to never, ever ask them to be responsible adults.  This reassures them.

These people are out there in droves.  They swarm on the internet like gnats.  They reinforce one another.  They reassure one another.

And for the power elite, they have their uses.