Author: White Whale

I was reading this: http://whitecrowbooks.com/books/sample/the_hidden_power_science_scepticism_and_psi  and came across this quote:

Researchers hoping to obtain new crystals from solutions, much as ice crystallises from water, have found that it can be maddeningly difficult. Yet as soon as a crystal emerges for the first time, a chain reaction appears to start up. Crystals emerge elsewhere until the procedure seems simple. Nobody understands why. The explanation usually given is that microscopic dust particles are carried to other solutions, ‘infecting’ them – a typical example of the way in which implausible ‘natural’ explanations are accepted, rather than have the door left open for unexplained action at a distance.

This stood out to me because I saw this once in a waking vision–I am always dreaming–and it hit me that this is a good metaphor for Emergence.  It is as if from entropy a latent order crystalizes.  In the case of culture, it emerges from what we focus on, what we believe, what we value, what principles–expressed and unconscious–order the behavior of the average member of that order.

It is perhaps what prophets do–think Moses–that they FEEL intuitively this order just below the surface, and they become the first “crystal”.  It is easy to create laws and rules, but difficult to craft them in such a way that they feel natural, spontaneous, obvious.  For this to happen, there has to be a connection, and a connector.  There has to be someone who can see what is there, just on the other side, and who then names it, and by so doing, makes it so, here.

There is a flicker, and then suddenly something that was not, now is.  This is magic.

Oh, we are so blind and stupid, now.  It is not hard at all to believe that we not only live in a fallen age, but that the falling continues apace.  Our slide into oblivion happens pari pasu with the elevation of our buildings into the sky, and the mushrooming of our cities into everything.

Feed the slow, nurture the small.  At long last, REMEMBER.  Who we are now, is not who we once were, and not as–as I believe–we are one day meant to be again.

But what do I know?  The stupid is strong in me too.  I feel it.

As I thaw, I realize increasingly how emotionally detached I have been.  I am very emotional, to be sure, but in response to my own thoughts of things, not to things as they are.

I see this, and I feel shame.  But I look around me, and I see it everywhere, absolutely everywhere.  It manifests in many different ways, but very, very few people are emotionally healthy enough to be truly present emotionally most of the time.  Women of course are better at this than men, but most of the women I know have so many emotional wounds that it is hard, I think, for them not to be mean and cruel.

It is in the nature of both men and women to be kind and compassionate.  Women start from a place of greater emotional awareness, and ideally intelligence.  But this can go both ways: it makes the wounds in them hurt more, I think.

We all spend most of our days interacting with shapes and colors, and ideas about them, and only rarely get a glimpse through the cracks at the people on the other side.  Well, this is my experience, which I think is slowly, slowly, slowly changing.

At a very slight risk of oversimplifying, I think I want to state that the main purpose in life is to be able to see and interact with productively the people and events in front of you.  So few of us do, in this fallen, abstract world.

It is a source of regular amazement to me how excited people get about some new technology that does x, y, or z.  It makes our clothes brighter, it mows our lawns, it improves videoconferencing.  Where is the excitement about spiritual technology?  Do we not already have plenty of things?

We lack for much, but things is not one of them.  The poorest among us have shit everywhere.

And again: if we want to reduce our load on the Earth, is it not important to develop new cultural values consistent with being happier with less?  Is this not a process which can be done with more and less wisdom?  Is it not seemingly the goal of some to create this result with a boot on our throats?  Technology might certainly help with that, but that is an imbecilic ideal, as seen from anything even approaching a pro-human, pro-freedom, pro-dignity perspective.  And the ones wanting to oversee the stomping, of course, intend nothing so vulgar for themselves.  They are superior, you see, even when they cannot define that term outside of the naked fact of their ability to deliver and express power, as cloaked in pseudo-benign rhetoric.

But I abstract again, do I not?  This is not healthy.

I think one of the most useful things you can do as a parent is individuate, yourself.  Grow up.  Demonstrate it is possible.  Have a mature personality, a sense of self, convictions, beliefs, things you stand for, and things you won’t stand for.

If I might return to my analogy with Buddhism, what the Buddha provided was an example of escape, or, really, transcendance.  The Buddha was to ordinary people as an adult is to a child.  But likewise, adults need to BE as adults to children, and far too often, in this world, and in the past, this has not happened.

It may or may not be true the Buddha was raised as a prince, but structurally, for the story, it is useful: he had everything any ordinary person could want.  He was happy, in a conventional sense.  There was nothing lacking.  He had power, the esteem of others, a wife, and children. He had a home, and a larger family.

The core question is: did Russia determine the outcome of the election, through anything it did? 

The obvious answer is no.  The Left avoids this clear and unavoidable conclusion by speaking in generic, non-specific, weaselly ways.  They speak of MASSIVE interference.  They speak of clear evidence of collusion (there is none, by the way), they speak of highly orchestrated campaigns, etc.

Russia had some Facebook profiles supporting Trump (and Bernie and Jill Stein, by the way), some Facebook ads almost no one saw, and they–we are told, and I am still skeptical–successfully hacked John Podesta, and revealed, through Wikileaks, how the Democrats were cheating to win the Primary for Hillary.  This does not seem to have mattered much even to Bernie voters, who dutifully did their part voting against Trump, to “avoid fascism”, despite the fact that election tampering is pretty much exactly what fascism looks like, and that Hillary was already showing every possible autocratic tendency, including chronic mendacity, and an absolute and even reckless disregard for the law.

So look at your chosen media source through this prism.  Ask yourself if the language they are using is warranted by the evidence.  Or are they choosing language intended specifically to obscure the true facts, and sway your political opinion in a particular way?

And I will recollect for you the Democrat Dirty Tricks team which was uncovered by James O’Keefe, and how their senior on-the-ground operative Scott Foval tweeted “Hillary just lost the election” when he was fired.  That is my recollection in any event.  I can’t find the story.

In any event, that four senior DNC staffers were fired after the expose seems clear enough, and that they engaged in organized voter fraud and dirty tricks for many years seems equally true.

Actually, looking around, I came across this, which I had forgotten, if I ever knew it: https://mountainrepublic.net/2016/10/27/scott-foval-reveals-who-was-really-behind-the-romney-47-video/

I think all addiction should be viewed as withdrawal from life, from present moment, open, focus. 

In this past week I have several times abstained from getting drunk when I ordinarily would have.  I have allowed myself to eat a bit more than I ought to have–I am on a diet, in theory–to somewhat absorb that emotional energy.

And I have been using an odd tool, the “bed o’nails”, aka the Spoonk.  This consists in a mat and pillow that have these plastic spikes on them, and no matter how they market it, these things HURT initially when you lie on them.  It’s uncomfortable.  There is no easy, pleasurable way to do it.

But I have found over time, sometimes, a deep relaxation does follow.  They speculate that endorphins are released, as I recall.

Just as often, for me, I initiate the same shaking and involuntary verbalizations I get when I am sleeping.  I had bought the thing because it supposedly helped with sleep, then stopped using it when I got the same problems.  What would be the point of subjecting myself to this, when I get what I was going to get anyway?

I think a secondary aspect of this thing is it creates a low grade challenge to the fight or flight response.  It asks it: are you going to fight this, or let it be?  And over time, I think it MIGHT lead to less triggering.  I do feel that when I have my “attacks”, they do end with a sense that some of that energy is draining out.  I do feel that if I do it 40 minutes before bed–I like to do it while listening to a soundtrack of a thunderstorm–it helps with my sleep.

And I have also been doing my “free running” thing.  I haven’t been to a bar in 2-3 weeks, when I was accustomed to stopping in somewhere 2-3 times a week.  And what is happening is old feelings are coming up.  I am seeing myself, now, and in the past, in a new light.  I am realizing ways I have been stupid.  Last night, I was mourning my lost marriage.

You know, as painful as divorces are, it is ASTONISHING they are so common.  They are financially very difficult, and usually emotionally worse.  They are hard on kids, hard on the adults.  But at least 1 in 2 marriages ends that way.  That number is much higher in some places.  Is it really worth it?

In my own case, I needed space to explore what was hurting me, space I tried to negotiate within the marriage, but which in the end I could not.  And that led to my advice to anyone I run into who is thinking about divorce: only leave if you would be happier alone.  Do not leave thinking you will find someone else to “complete” you, even if that person is a current lover.  It likely will not last.  And you are not as young as you used to be, and you are going to be broke, if you are like most.

Be all that as it may, I am finding and seeing my own severe defects, at least some of them.  Emotionally, I had my wings clipped early.  I had my Achilles tendon cut.  I was prevented from running or flying.  And it has prevented a normal individuation.

My usefulness, to this point, to the extent it has existed, has consisted in a combination of hypervigilence and a high intelligence.  I naturally seek out and look for problems and solutions.  I am always scanning, always looking for the first iota of a problem, and this includes the abstract realm.

We, as the modern, industrialized West, have many, many problems.  We have the threats of nuclear war and global epidemic, economic crashes, personal financial troubles, relationship problems, and anomie of modern life.

And we have addictions in all forms dangling in front of us continually, the most obvious of which is the internet, simply getting sucked in.  I was contemplating yesterday I rarely read books any more.  I am sucked into this damn keyboard.  I listen to more books than I read, even though I have some fantastic books on my shelf.

Internet porn is just one category.  News, just plain news, by which I mean the daily emotion of outrage and self righteousness which the sites which stay in business seek to evoke: this is addictive. 

Food, in all forms: pizza, hot pockets, cold beer.  TV shows, binge watching.

I return to this theme from time to time, but when we watch movies like Dances with Wolves, and the Last Samurai, what we are really dreaming of is a socially connected, non-addicted world; a world free of all the trivialities which daily drain our energy, suck out our brains, siphon off our souls.

I am trying to find a way through, for myself.  I can’t say I have it figured out.  I am posting here, after all.  But perhaps in this meandering mess there is something useful to someone.

This is interesting: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/20/trump-poised-to-take-control-of-the-federal-reserve.html

As any long time readers–if I have any–know, I am against Fractional Reserve banking, period.  There is nothing wrong with saving up money, then lending it at interest.  But that is not what banks do.  They save up enough money to be granted the legal right to create more, which they then do.  When it works they get rich, and when it fails we have a recession or depression.  In the first case they siphon off wealth, while adding nothing of intrinsic value, and in the second case they are the direct cause of mass poverty and economic and cultural dislocation.  There is no case to be made that Fractional Reserve banking exists for the public good.  It exists to make a wealthy elite more wealthy, and more elite.  It is at the root of the growing disparity of wealth and power, in my view.

And the Fed, of course, exists in theory to soften the blows of the financial cycles.  It exists to slow down inflation–which is the result of mass creation of and circulation of new money by banks–and to prevent bank crashes, when they don’t get back the money they created in loans.

Practically, though, and to an extent we can’t know, they also exist as a private source of capital for the largest banks in the United States, and perhaps even the world.  We can’t know, as the Fed is more secretive, arguably, than the CIA, since the CIA at least in theory reports to the President.  The Fed, by law, is required to do nothing other than deliver periodic reports which can, and generally do, say almost nothing about the details of their actual operations.

Consider the Quantitative Easing program.  Some $50 billion a month was created for something like 5-8 years.  Let us say it was five years.  50×12=600.  600×5: 3,000.  This means some THREE TRILLION dollars was created by the Fed in the Obama era, on the low side, and disbursed to banks.  We don’t know the details.  We don’t know who got the money.

BUT THIS MONEY WAS CREATED FROM NOTHING, AND GIVEN TO MASSIVE BANKS WHO WERE ALSO PART OF THE BODY VOTING THE MONEY.

Can you see the problem here?  If we call money potential wealth, it remains in potential until it is spent, which is to say put into circulation.  Once it does start circulating, you get inflation, which is to say money competing with money, driving the overall value of it down.

Obviously, if the Fed is raising rates, it fears inflation.  This may be a valid fear.  But what I would like to encourage the President to do–and obviously this is the single most important blog on the internet (just ask me), so he will obviously read this and unhesitatingly follow my advice–is rethink the whole system.

We can, in one stroke, abolish all debt in the United States, and engineer a system which will be immune to economic cycles.  Economic cycles should be a thing like smallpox epidemics, or malaria outbreaks, which we read about as having existed in the past.  If money is real, if it’s value does not change, we get a supercharged, bulletproof economy which makes everyone into a wealthy person.

Self evidently, I do not favor unlimited consumption of everything, but I think wealth is most likely much like population.  Most industrialized nations, once the inhabitants realize their children are highly likely to survive childhood, see a drop in population growth, and in older nations–such as most of Europe and Japan–birth rates are currently negative.  Their populations are shrinking.

Likewise, I think once everyone has a taste of the good life, their need for all the fine things of life will diminish.  It is possible to savor what is local and special.  It is possible to build a global culture based on a sense of the plenitude of life, of the value and beauty in small, non-material things.  It is possible to grow gardens the world over; to, as I say, feed the slow and nurture the small.

Anyway, here is my treatment of the topic: http://www.goodnessmovement.com/Page23.html

Love is the art of being with other people.

With regard to this issue, I simply want to recall to your memory that Obama quashed the investigation into the Fast and Furious by invoking Executive Privilege.  That this was absurd–because it had nothing to do with him, or so he claimed–didn’t matter.

And I will recall to your memory as well, as I like to from time to time, that Alberto Gonzalez, the first Hispanic Attorney General, was forced to resign as the result of a campaign of whispers and innuendo, nothing more.  No evidence ever emerged he was guilty of anything.

On the one hand, you have Eric Holder getting off scot-free despite seemingly more or less engineering an increase in border violence he intended to use to push gun control–in which he was, to be clear, complicit in hundreds of murders, hundreds of human deaths, simply to pursue a partisan agenda–and on the other a good man, as far as I know, being forced out of office as a result of coordinated lies launched by Democrats and the media they control.

Ponder this.

the problem, of course, isn’t the Democratic System
it’s the
living parts which make up the Democratic System.
the next person you pass on the street,
multiply
him or
her by
3 or 4 or 30 or 40 million
and you will know
immediately
why things remain non-functional
for most of
us.

I wish I had a cure for the chess pieces
we call Humanity. . .

we’ve undergone any number of political
cures

and we all remain
foolish enough to hope
that the one on the way
NOW
will cure almost everything.

fellow citizens,
the problem never was the Democratic
System, the problem is

you.

I will add the comment, too, that the core difference between true conservatives and everyone else, is that we are not looking to the government to rescue us.  We are not looking to politicians to magically make life better.  We simply want the freedom and the space–from sons of bitches in the government, and sons of bitches everywhere else who want to lie, cheat and steal–to make our own way.

And we figured out a long time ago that some clever politicians CREATE the sons of bitches, so that we vote for them to make them go away.

We need some government.  We need cops, so we don’t have to shoot the sons of bitches ourselves.  But beyond that, we ask only that God protects us from good politicians, from government “aid”, and from all the hands that hold us down by trying to hold us up.

You know what this whole thing feels like to me?  A textbook CIA AgitProp operation.  It’s win/win for them.  They get the entire political Left acting as if the CIA has a long history of unfailing patriotism, truth telling, deference to the law, and accountability. AND they get to call Trump a traitor in public, which is a word which has historically meant NOTHING to the Left–they don’t like this country to begin with–but which resonates with political conservatives.  They are shaking the tree, to see what  falls out.  It acts as a synchronizing signal for the pools of little fishes, with their little fish brains, and as a reason to leave for Republicans.

But as I keep saying, a failed propaganda operation, when opposed vigorously, as this one has been, risks losing ground overall.  Some people WANT to be lied to.  Those people are reliable.  But most Americans instinctively hate liars, and once you are on that list, your capacity to tell the Big Lie is at an end.

And this “Trump is a traitor” meme is one of the biggest Big Lie’s I’ve seen in my lifetime.  It is up there with the official NIST report on 9/11, but with the difference that there is really no official reason to grant this lie credibility, other than being a gullible dupe.  NIST is at least composed of scientists, who on their own account used science to reach their conclusions, even when this proved a manifest lie upon even superficial consideration.

I’m bullish on Trump.  They are pulling out the stops, but nothing is working.  The American people don’t care about Russia.  And more and more are getting tired of the relentless shrieking.

As I was telling some guy on the internet, how does THIS call for impeachment differ from the one you were making last week, last month, and last year?  You don’t HAVE a reason to remove Trump from office, other than that you don’t like what you know about his politics, and you don’t like him as a person.  But that’s not how our system works.  In fact, it betrays a fundamental contempt for the will of the people, as expressed by popular voting within our Constitutional framework. It betrays autocratic biases, arrogance, and a belief that, in the end, might makes right.  Nothing more antithetical to the American spirit could be imagined.