Author: White Whale

If you think about it, much of our evolutionary perceptual apparatus is dedicated to narrowing focus, to eliminating distractions, so as to pay most attention to what matters most.  If you can’t tell the different between grass rustling in the wind, and rustling because there is a predator in it, you won’t live long.

So we live in this world with an evolutionary disposition to narrow focus, but we also live, objectively, in a world where we can focus on an limitless number of things, most of which need to be ignored to do anything.

And this applies not just perceptually but in terms of chosen actions.  Most of us can choose from a very, very wide array of options.  We can live here, we can live there.  We can eat this, we can eat that.  We can do this for money, or that for money.  We can fall in love, or always hover at the edge.  We can care, we can not care.

To be intelligent, you have to always see all your options.  To get anything done, you have to narrow your options.

To take a mundane, but concrete and real, example, I get Men’s Health every month.  They always have lots of workout ideas, and food ideas. If I changed up my workout routine every time I saw something new, I couldn’t make progress in anything.  But at the same time, it is useful to know what is out there, so that if something REALLY better comes along, like Contrast training, I will know about it.

And I feel this is one of life’s tricks: knowing what you CAN do, but teaching yourself to be content with whatever choice you make.  It is always contingent.  It is always a guess. 

And there will always be an INFINITY of things we can’t and don’t do.  You might be able to fall in love with a redhead in Paris at a particular restaurant.  But you won’t fall in love, then, with another redhead in Barcelona, at least in quite the same way.  Some people make a habit of falling in love, but they then lose the experience of being in love for a long time.  You can bang a 1,000 women, but lose the feeling of sustained tenderness and emotional openness with one.  And if you stay with one, you never know what else might have been, if she was TRULY the best possible answer for you.  Who did you miss? 

It is maddening, in a way.  No matter what you do, some other path is foreclosed.  I can recall talking about this before, because it is a daily struggle for me, and I suspect many, in our affluent world.

Logically, emotionally, the task is separating emotionally from all that might have been. You do not need to ignore it.  That takes energy, and requires cutting off perception.  No, just don’t feed it, and DO feel your sense of satisfaction and accomplishment with whatever you do choose.  Everything we do is imperfect, but what we CAN do is bring perfect contentment to it.  This is the task of life.

If you cultivate the capacity for pleasure, for fullness, for inner peace, then it fills whatever decisions you make.

This is the thing: so much of our current YOLO culture views experiences as one-off’s, that you either have or don’t.  You either hit all your “bucket list” items or you don’t, and are diminished proportionately as you fail.

This is absurd.  If you cultivate inner harmony, every lottery ticket is a winner.  I wonder sometimes if I will end my life in a jail cell somewhere, as a political prisoner.  What sort of life would that be?  How do I make that great?  The same way.

Being present to your blessings is a skill like making free throws, or running fast on a track.  This is the ENORMOUS value of technologies like Kum Nye, and spiritual philosophies like Buddhism.  This is one choice that is easy.  It is, if you will, a metachoice, that both makes you wiser in the concrete decisions you do make, and better able to enjoy the results, however they turn out.

This is not quite as clear as it was in my head, but I don’t always think in words.  I have these little forms with feeling and color.  I think this is close, though.

Ponder this.

And ponder, too, the political and economic benefits of inner peace.  We call dial the consumer culture way back, if we all learn to be content and happy with much less.  We are in a phase of insanity.  But it need not last, and there is no need to replace it with a period of much deeper, demented and psychotic insanity that lasts a very long time.

If you think about it, the vast bulk of the intellectual energy of the Left over the past century has been devoted not to discovering the new, but protecting the old. Their minds are bent to affirming orthodoxy, in roughly the same way the best minds in the Catholic world were bent to the defense of the faith, the Church, and its dictator.

And this orthodoxy tells us to believe in the benign nature of an absolute despotism organized to reduce (or elevate, in some cases) all of us to the same economic and social status. It is an orthodoxy, on other words, fervently and violently dedicated to making the world and its inhabitants as deathly dull and indistinguishable from one another as possible.

And to add insult  to injury, it is all to be done for our own good.

Small wonder these people found the need to start talking nonsense 50 years ago. Clear thinking and the clear speech which follows it, can only be inimical to such wicked stupidity.

And to be clear, Marx, writing and prognosticating in the middle of the 19th century, WAS original. He was also wrong. That is why it is stupid to defend his ideas, and all the downstream ideas that follow and flow from his misanthropic logic.

Whether or not they are interesting is a not bad way to judge ideas and people.   It is of course ideosyncratic, and unique to a particular perspective, but what the label “interesting” implies is that there is something unknown, but potentially knowable about someone or something, and it bespeaks curiosity.

And as a general rule, interesting people are curious.  They are interested.

And interesting ideas are not the same old, hackneyed ones you have seen your whole life.  The fact is, the tried and true ideas may be the best ones.  I think they are, in general, and certainly as it relates to economics and Liberal political theory.

But obviously what we have been doing has not worked as well as it should have.  New ideas are needed, to be layered on to, and added to, what has been known.  These are what interest me.

There is always some new direction possible.  Looking for it is a habit.  So too is that of trying to foreclose the new by assuming “pretty much” everything that we need to know, we already know.  That is deadly dull, and in my view, antithetical to discovery and needed innovation.

We innovate readily in technology.  Philosophically, socially: not so much.  Very little at all, actually.  Very little that is interesting at all is going on in those domains.  We are told to sit down and shut up by the Democrats, and Republicans, to the extent they are coherent, want to return to a time which never existed, and in so doing, pursue the impossible.

No, a social revolution is needed.  A philosophical revolution is needed.  And we need to finally take seriously the insights of physics and modern consciousness research.  All of them.  Few are even trying to do this, and no one in a position of influence, as far as I can tell.

Democrats are expending a lot of political capital in attacking Trump. It’s hasn’t seemingly hurt them that much yet, because a lot of people believe the lies they are being told, lies that, like all effective  propaganda, is disseminated daily, uniformly to the extent possible, and as widely as possible, which is most media outlets in this country.

But Trump is clearly innocent. He didn’t hire a dozen Russians to write things on Facebook, and in any event if you compare this to the seeming FACT that Hillary took $200 million from the Saudis ( one small fact among my many) it’s ludicrous to even care. Farcical. Nonsensical.  All thinking people see this immediately.

Here is the thing, though: there is an arc to controversies. If this one lands with s judge throwing everything Mueller has out of court and sends him packing, that may well Red Pill a lot of people, who have been naive enough to fall for this bullshit. Trump could then clear house without fear of a backlash.

And this eventuality is not out of the question. Mueller was appointed on the basis of claims that were KNOWN to be factitious, he himself has been ethically compromised from the start, as has Rod Rosenstein, and he has been proceeding as if there isn’t a 4th Amendment. That worked in New York, in front of a Hillary hyperpartisan, but in won’t work forever in all the places they would need to take cases. Not if the judges are honest.

Sometimes waiting is the smartest play. I can’t feel I can speak confidently when I lack many important facts.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-manafort/u-s-judge-questions-special-counsels-powers-in-manafort-case-idUSKBN1I51WE

I will note that Rosenstein’s name is everywhere even when, as noted, he is supposedly a material witness. 

Rosenstein, as an employee of the Justice Department, is trying to launch an illegal, but judicially executed, coup against his ultimate boss, Donald Trump.  Jeff Sessions is AWOL.

Can’t we put someone in charge of the Justice Department who 1) likes Donald Trump; 2) values the rule of the law; 3) possesses moral courage; and 4) is intelligent?

Is that REALLY asking too much, Mr. President?  Again, I don’t know what’s going on.  Maybe you are getting ready to issue arrest warrants for all the Clintons, their cronies, and their enablers.  I don’t know.  But if there is nothing going on but mumbling and fumbling, this is not what competent management looks like.  Trump can do better.  He knows it.  He also knows better than I do what has stayed his hand so far.

And I can’t resist the idea that Giuliani putting the idea out there that Trump lied about the payment to Stormy Daniels is a sort of trial close, a balloon lofted to see which way it goes.  Does anybody care?  Apparently no.  The usual screamers screamed, but they do that every day, no matter what.  One would think they would be tired by now, never shutting up.

Here is the thing: EVERYONE knows that Trump knew about the payment.  We knew it then, and it doesn’t surprise us now. 

And most of us can contextualize this as maneuvering in a severely hostile environment, filled with liars, thieves, and probably a few murderers.

We know that for every lie Trump might tell to cover his ass, the media and his enemies tell 100 trying to get his ass.  And a great many of us are on his side.  Fuck those people.  Fuck the people who lie as easily as breathing, yet are somehow surprised and disappointed that we don’t react the way they hoped when they show us some new alleged atrocity Trump has committed.  We get they are criminals themselves, covering for criminals, trying to get a man who is honest in the ways we care about.

If Trump fucked Stormy, then gave her some money to shut up for a while, so fucking what?  That’s between him and Melania.  North Korea is on the verge of ending a war which has lasted since the early 1950’s.  And I suspect Trump has an end game for the Israeli-Arab conflict too, and quite possibly even Iran.  Those are the major conflicts, or potential conflicts, we face. 

You have to ask: for whom would global peace be a disaster? 

Who are the people who are frightened and threatened by competence, honesty and sincere patriotism?

It’s partly a question of following the money, but also one of following the ideology.  I ask again: how did a man who voted for the Communist candidate in 1976 get to be head of the CIA?

Here is one more story: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/05/earth_to_jeff_sessions.html

I have of course often wondered why Jeff still has a job.  As long as Rod Rosenstein has a job, Jeff is failing.

Here is the thing: it is obvious that the Justice Department as a whole, is adversarial to the Trump Administration.  The tone is that of a Congress which is adversarial to the sitting President.  This is comprehensible, when the President is of one party, and the Congress is controlled by another.

What I don’t get, though, is that the Justice Department ANSWERS TO TRUMP.  It’s in his control.  It’s his baby.  It’s within his Administration.

How is it that a group of people who report to a CEO can get away with openly attacking him, flouting his lawful orders, and–as the one agency most responsible for protecting and enforcing the law–continually break the law, both in principle and fact, over a period of, now, some eighteen months? 

How is it that, as far as we know, nothing has been done to reopen the Hillary investigationS?  They prosecuted Lulu in Brazil.  Are we no better than Brazil? Are they to be our shining light and example for how to conduct business, and uphold integrity in the public domain?

I don’t get it.  I don’t know who has pictures of who, who is being overly patient, or how the fuck a legal disaster this big can get the support of so many deluded imbeciles.

I was in the grocery store yesterday, and walked by the soda aisle.  And it occurred to me that EVERY bottle there would be trash within 2-3 days of being purchased, and that this store likely runs through many hundreds of bottles daily.

Look around the rest of the grocery store.  Everywhere you look you see packaging that is used once, then discarded.

Now, I am obviously a hard core conservative.  The question of sustainability–can we keep doing this forever–is an empirical question.  The likely answer is that yes, we can probably do something like this for at least several more decades, during which time our lives will change in large and unpredictable ways.

But I would submit that there is an aesthetic element to this, which is not reducible purely to economics and science.

It is UGLY, throwing this much shit away.  It is unnecessary.  There are better processes possible.

Here is one immediate suggestion: https://www.thekitchn.com/ditch-the-plastic-10-reusable-produce-bags-174099

More generally, if you were to focus on reducing packaging you will almost inherently, and I know I’ve commented on this before, eat healthier.  You will wind up with whole grains, legumes, veggies, fruits, meat (in paper, which at least biodegrades), and oils.  An “oil bar” would be a useful thing too, so I could bring an oil can.

Conservatives and leftists get in so many pissing contests about so many things.  There is no reason we can’t side with the tree huggers on this one, with one distinction: the Left wants to ban what it doesn’t like, and require what it does.  I think all these things will respond well to education, peer pressure, and time, without the need for yet more government.

Can you imagine a black market for soda in bottles?  It might be possible to create one, with sufficiently bad policy.

It is not emptiness: it is fullness.  It is not nothing: it is everything.

But reaching fullness is a process of subtraction.  It is finding and untying the countless knots which bind you, and letting them fall away into nothingness.

This is why the Buddhists call it emptiness.

Love is not valuing people.  It is teaching them how to value themselves.

Love is not comforting those in pain.  It is teaching them how to comfort themselves.

What has changed, qualitatively, when you have passed through, which leaves no personal mark, that is love.

To love honestly is to be forgotten.  That is what I feel.

This is the work of life.

“the reason why I brought up the 400 years point is because we can’t be mentally imprisoned for another 400 years. We need free thought now. Even the statement was an example of free thought It was just an idea.


we are programmed to always talk and fight race issues. We need to update our conversation.


I freed a thousand slaves I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves. – Harriet Tubman”


From his Twitter feed: https://twitter.com/kanyewest


He is speaking clearly enough.  He is simply being willfully misunderstood, by those who either benefit from the status quo or, more likely, lack the imagination to see how long and how completely their allegiance has been used by selfish, cynical people for personal gain.


He says he was speaking a feeling, the feeling of not liking being told what to say or not say, what to think or not think.  As a general rule, anyone trying to control you in any way, is trying to USE you, because you benefit them in some way.  He feels this, intuitively, and has whatever Kanye has that allows him to speak his mind, even when he knows he will catch hell for it.  Trump, of course, has this too.  He is a renegade in a world filled with lies and liars. This, of course, is also why he is hated.  Nobody who has invested bigly in the Big Lie wants to see it torn down.


What he is saying was said well by Bob Marley, long ago (by current standards): 


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrY9eHkXTa4

“Emancipate yourself from mental slavery/ nobody but ourselves can free our minds.”