Author: White Whale

I was listening to some old Brian Eno albums last night on the way home from Detroit, and initially it hit me that his weirdness is his way of distancing himself from his feelings.  It is the musical equivalent of using humor–the unexpected, which you throw like a flashbang in front of you to make it the locus of attention–to distance people. (I won’t deal with them here, but Tom Waits and Beck seem to have this trait too.  They are capable of music of great depth and beauty, but seem to feel the need to create ugliness as well.  I believe it was the movie Ararat where a painter created a full portrait, then for some impulsive reason smudged the hands.  Perhaps they can only handle so much of their better angels without breaking down looking at this fallen world).

Here is an example: Dead Finks Don’t Talk.

Musically, it is interesting.  It is different.  But is it sincere?  Have I learned anything interesting about the passions and conflicts of Brian Eno?  As a contrast, I had visited the Motown museum in Detroit the same day (Did you know Berry Gordie’s parents ran five businesses, and required all of their 8 children to contribute $10/month to a general incubator fund, from which the $800 Gordie borrowed to start what became Motown was drawn?).  Listen to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mVrZmTj_rw

It is sincere.  There is no guardedness, no pushing away.

Then you have some songs by Eno which always bring tears to my eyes, like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGX_WJLCxrA

Or this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoZCDNqmFqs

And it hit me that there is a creative sensitive core to Eno, which he is always trying both to hide and to express.  He does not have, to my knowledge, songs which say “I am very lonely and it hurts”, although I’m sure his personal collection has plenty of those.

Then I was cycling between this distancing–which is a mild dissociation–and this sentimentality, and it hit me that the problem with sentimentality is that it is emotionally simplistic.  It is the emotional equivalent to simplistic thinking.  If {oversimplification} and {oversimplification}, then {false or incomplete conclusion}.

Edward de Bono described what he called Catchment Areas, which I have mentioned from time to time.  What he intended is that raindrop falling on a mountain peak might hit just barely on one side or the other, but wind up hundreds of miles away, after flowing down the mountain, and into a river.  We have a Continental Divide in the United States, so that a stream of rain might wind up even thousands of miles from drops which once were inches from it.

Thinking is like this, so that rather than retain the nuance of what is actually there, you say phenomenon X is “basically just. . .”, and in so doing you kill its uniqueness, and in the process degrade your own perception, and make life less interesting by a lot.

But emotions and thinking are closely related.  No firm dogmatism unsupported by emotional rigidity is possible, in my view.

The assertion I would like to make, though, is one I have made many times in many ways: the emotional superficiality PRECEDES the bad thinking.

And sentimentality is basically flowing naturally fully into one of a small group of unnuanced emotions: sadness, happiness, anger.  When you feel each of them, you feel them roughly the same way.  They don’t change.  They don’t evolve.  They are a species of psychologically immaturity.

And so one can easily posit, and see in the case of Eno, that both psychological defensiveness, and a tendency to maudlin emotion, can easily coexist.  One can see him both weeping profusely, and being very aloof. I myself am often like this, so perhaps this is projection, but I think it is more likely recognizing in another something I see in myself.

And in this respect I will call back to mind the SIFT heuristic.  Reversed, most Thoughts depend on Feelings, which arise from internalized and constant–if often unconscious–Images, which in turn arise as emergent properties of specific bodily Sensations which were adaptive at some point in time, and retained in their wholeness, both the adaptive parts, and the now unnecessary parts.

We are, you see, in many respects our tensions.  And in reversing our tensions, and in finding relaxation–peace, a synonym–we become more like one another, and better able to interact as fellow travelers beached on the same cosmic shore.

This, for me, is the beauty of Kum Nye.  It teaches one how to look behind what appears to be there, what appears to be firm, what appears to be fixed, what appears to be immutable, what appears to be in some final sense who we ARE.  What a terror to be stuck forever with some disruptive event–some psychological puncturing–which happened oh so long ago!!!

And Neurofeedback plays into this since for the truly traumatized, significant calming needs to happen before some sensations can even be brought into awareness without tripping the circuit breakers, which is how I put it (although I can’t recall if I’ve put it that way here; internally it’s long been my term).  What I mean for this is a relapse into dissociation, which is a foggy world, but one devoid of sharp sensation, to which one would otherwise be terribly open.

My work continues.  I will add one more ingredient to the mix, one which in very much in my consciousness at the moment: Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Decalog.  I watched numbers 4 and 5 last week.  I find his work amazingly moving, precisely because he avoids the cheap shots, the easy sentimentality, the simple answers.  What he is asking is that people feel what it is like to be human, with all the confusion, the conflicting emotions, and lack of given answers.  I feel watching these makes me richer in the ways which matter.

I had some specific commentary on number 4, but will make it some other time, if I choose to make it.  Some thoughts I keep to myself.

For this government, I mean.  Everyone involved in City Hall makes good money, wears fashionable clothing, has an office paid for by the taxpayers, and is respected as somehow superior to the average citizen.

And the people they are allegedly “protecting” self evidently don’t want their protection.  The lack of a staircase–and the inaction of City Hall–had ALREADY caused ACTUAL, not theoretical, not possible, injuries.

Who is being protected here?  BUREAUCRATS, who, if people realize they don’t need them, or would even be better off without them, might just tell them to go fuck themselves.

http://www.ctvnews.ca/mobile/canada/toronto-man-builds-park-stairs-for-550-irking-city-after-65-000-estimate-1.3510237

One thing I neglected to mention in my last post is that of course people who pay in less than they get out can be expected to support the Nanny State.  They accepted long ago the price of being made into perennial beggars and children.

But the other element is those who USE government to gain advantages in what would otherwise be competitive free markets, which would constantly evolve to better serve the consumers at lower prices.

Here you almost certainly have a contracting firm or firms, which got written into the code–after some pricey lunches and hefty campaign contributions–unnecessarily restrictive building codes, which vastly increase the price of any work done pursuant to those codes.  Given what we can assume are also licensing restrictions, they also likely cut out many potential competitors, like this old man who just wanted to see the fucking problem fixed.

On the one hand, you ensure all solutions are expensive and relatively profitable, even if contracts are bid, reducing overall profits a bit.  On the other, you make sure your buddies are the ones awarding contracts.  This is how you go from $500 to over $65,000, which is more than a 100 fold increase.

The world needs less of this, not more.  We need less of this massive monster which exists for its own sake, and more of people exercising common sense and being allowed to do so, and even rewarded for doing so.

Returning to the investment/consumption analogy, it is always worth asking if government is overpriced.  We assume from long habit that it is different in some fundamental way from private sector services.  Paying taxes is not like buying a hamburger.  But is this true?

Is there anything the government does that cannot be privately contracted?  Security can be contracted.  Fire protection can be contracted.  Roads can be contracted.  Paying a doctor to prescribe medicine or administer treatment for ill health can be contracted.

Consider this article: https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/what-happens-when-you-ask-pro-taxers-pay-more?utm_content=buffer3fa07&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Could it be made any more obvious that the main aim with Leftists in calling for more taxes is to make it easier for the government to use the money of one group of people to pay another for their votes?

When I send in my money in taxes, do I get back more, less, or exactly what I paid for?  As far as I can tell, I don’t get anything.  I am sure the troops in South Korea, and the naval flotillas sailing continually around the world have some benefit, but not directly to me.   The roads I use and the police I could call could be provided at a tenth of what I actually pay.  It is worth noting that 3% tax rates were enough to produce armed revolts in the past.

We have a system where the people who pay in NOTHING get something back.  If you pay zero taxes (other than sales taxes), but get food stamps, free medical care and the like, you have every reason in the world to keep that system in place.  And there exist people who view moral corruption as a career choice who miss no opportunity to call everyone a villain who would question this system of vote getting by entitlement.

I have said in the past that only people who pay into the system should be allowed to vote.  After all, it is THEIR money which is being spent.  People who do not pay into the system should not get to vote on how much of other people’s money they should get, PARTICULARLY when all politicians retire very wealthy after careers on relatively modest salaries.  It is a lucrative venture, being a “representative of the People”.

Asking “what do I get with my tax money” is a reasonable question.  A retirement program with a negative rate of return which is on shaky financial foundations?  If I could, I would opt out.  Access to government run medical care when I get old, care which is inferior to that which I could get by opting out?  Again, I would like to take a pass.  Cops, firemen, roads, traffic lights?  That has nothing to do with the Federal government, and could be bought much more inexpensively.

What I pay for is a massive bureaucracy which in most cases exists in the main for its own sake.  I pay for people who like their jobs very much, very much want to keep them, and very much want to continue getting regular pay raises, increases in benefits, and more co-workers, regardless of the economic climate, and regardless of the necessity of these jobs.  All bureaucracies quickly exist for their own sake.

And self evidently Obamacare fits squarely in the middle of this.  Why turn all of this over to ANY bureaucracy, and particularly to a FEDERAL bureaucracy?  Once the government owns it, I have lost choice.  There is no longer a free market.  There is no longer competition.  There is no longer an Option B when Option A tells me in words and actions they don’t give a shit if I live or die, as happens so often in nations which have been stupid enough to turn their healthcare systems over to unaccountable bureaucrats.

Helping the poor is obviously laudable to a point.  But there is a patent moral peril in making indolence, bad decisions, and antisocial behavior patterns which are rewarded.

There is no nobility possible in dependence.  There is no self respect.  There is no freedom.

As I mentioned, I am reading Jose Saramago’s book Blindness.  The basic premise is that an epidemic happens in which people can become instantaneously blind through merely being in the proximity of someone affected.  The first group affected is quarantined in an old mental hospital.  The Army delivers food every day, but one group decides to use violence–one has a gun–to take control of the food and to parcel it out based on the conformity of the rest of the patients to their wishes, which are first for material goods, and then for the right to rape the women.

This seems to me a good metaphor for Socialism, although I suspect he intended it represent that cartoon character “Capitalism”.  I will perhaps get a better feel as I progress.

Within socialism, the goods come, for most people, from somewhere else.  They do not control them, cannot create them, and cannot directly control how they are dispersed.  Much of the hunger which follows Socialist/Communist take-overs in the developing world (Socialism being perhaps the most pernicious export of the Western world) comes from greedy bureaucrats taking their share of everything before doling it out, IF they dole it out at all.  Full warehouses in the presence of starvation have been, in my understanding, a common feature in particular in Africa.  That is, self evidently, not Capitalism.

And what has been interesting to me in this book is that the victims vastly outnumber the oppressors.  There is one gun, which could not have more than perhaps 10 bullets in it, a handful of clubs, and roughly 20 people against several hundred.  Yet, the majority acquiesces.  Why, I wonder?

Most Americans would readily perceive the need for revolt. But Saramago was Portuguese, and they lived under a fascist government for many years.  Oppression–Socialism, as they are the same thing–breeds out of people their natural drive to protect their individual dignity, their right to self determination, their “live free or die”, which I think most people are born with.

It is really quite an astonishing fact of our time that everything good in the world has been made bad, and everything old and terrible has had a new facade placed upon it, covered with glittery lights and a fashionable mural, and is being extolled by a variety of idiots and co-conspirators, and even people with brains are eating it up.  Tyranny is nothing new.  It is the oldest game in the world.

FREEDOM, political freedom, the sort enshrined most perfectly in our Constitution, is what is the exception to the historical rule.

I read this just now: https://thedailybeast.com/heres-why-your-favorite-horror-movies-are-so-left-wing

I was reading this yesterday: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pier_Paolo_Pasolini

And I am reading Jose Saramaga’s book “Blindness”, which contains scenes of terrible cruelty.  I read he was a Communist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Saramago

And I wonder, how does one reconcile the apparently genuine concern, the apparently genuine compassion Leftists feel, with their willful disregard of the HISTORY of their own ideas, the millions of crimes which have been committed in their name?  Sean Penn, to take one obvious example, makes a great deal of his alleged sensitivity and passion for humanity.

Here is my thesis, based on my own inner work: some part of them revels in cruelty, even the most outwardly sensitive and kind of them.  This is of course the Cultural Sadeism hypothesis, but when dealing with someone like Saramago, he is obviously not psychologically blind, himself.

But then, perhaps he was.  Blindness is, after all, an allegory he wrote.  Perhaps in creating scenes of mass rape he is echoing Sade, who was so beloved by so much of the Left.

So they spend considerable time contemplating the miseries of the world, the poverty, the racism, the reflexive hatreds, the misunderstandings.  And some part of them reacts abstractly by fashioning a defensive strategy, which says outwardly “I hate all these crimes.  I am a passionate humanitarian.”  But the REAL part of them remains fascinated with shit and murder, with transgression, and with the expression of the pervasive hatred for the world, for life, for humanity, they feel in their hearts.

Novel writing is in large respects the domain of talented liars.  They make up everything.  They might tap into real world experiences, but they can spin them, refashion them, in any way they want.

Many if not most modern artists are full of shit.  They speak in angelic tongues for a time, but when and if revealed, there is nothing but horror at the bottom.

I continue to be a proud American.  I am proud of the ideals we adopted consciously and purposefully.  I am conscious of our many failings, but also conscious of the failure of the vast bulk of the rest of humanity which has not even attempted what we have, and who, in not even trying, cannot in any sense be compared to us.

We created an evolutionary system, one which changes, which adapts, which seeks to better humankind.

This system has, to use a current word, been hacked by lunatics, by cloaked sadists using our own language to attempt to strangle us, our freedom, and everything good in the world.

I cannot understand Republicans who lack the balls to act like Republicans.  We are the ones trying to prevent the destruction of our system, and far too few seem to have the understanding of precocious ten year olds.

Why not repeal Obamacare?  Because millions who are getting free coverage will lose it?  Were they going to vote Republican anyway?  Can we not create in short order through free markets replacement policies even the working poor can afford, which limit the downside potential of even the worst illnesses?

Why is Mattis not opposing the continuing assaults on traditional gender roles in the military?  I read they are training Army women to accept men in their showers who think they are women, just like some ducks think they are dogs.  It is a free country, and men should be free to think what they want, but the rest of us are also free to think of them as mentally ill.  We do not have to share their delusions with them.  God help us if we all begin to feel the need to pander to every fantastic thought the many emotionally ill among us can concoct.

It is hard to be optimistic when there is no much open hatred in the air, and when so much ground has been cleared for mass atrocities.

I had a dream last night where some wise beings were communicating with me, and saying that I have nearly been broken three times.  One was described, and one I can guess, but the third was when an attempt was made to heal me.

Ponder for a moment the tone in a therapists office.  In most cases there are strict prohibitions about hugging and touching.  There is a plan of abstraction, one born ultimately in the utterly fascistic and repressed Vienna of the 19th century.

You are supposed to talk about emotions, and feel them if you can, but always there is a distance between you and the therapist.  There is a tacit claim made that “this is how people interact”, with the further tacit claim that “this is a cold world, and you cannot expect to get too close to anyone”.

The entire therapeutic experience depends on money.  Run out of money or coverage, and your relationship with that therapist is at an end.  It is entirely contingent.  There is no loyalty, no true friendship even possible, since it is frowned on by the ethicists of the profession.  There are rules which state that distance must be maintained.

Ponder going into such a room desperate for love, for nurturing, for reassurance, for hope, for some giving spirit to demonstrate the world is not an intrinsically hostile place, and then ponder the immediate shock that “oh, this is a slow process.  Tell me why you think you are depressed, agitated, angry”.  Ponder the immediate shift that has to happen from the desperate need for a hug, and someone to say ‘its going to be OK.  I have your back.” to “tell me how that makes you feel.”

Many of us did not have the word love in our homes.  It was not a word we used in our home.  I was never told I was loved.  I was never hugged.  And when I was in my late teens, all I knew was that something was missing, but I didn’t have the faintest idea what it might be.  I had no way to compare happy homes with my own.  All I knew was that I was miserable.

So they direct you into this track where you read psychology.  You learn about intrafamilial dynamics.  You develop a shaded trust in the therapist, who is of course liable to disappear at any time, permanently.

What if you had centers where people singing and dancing, where they were happy, and were happy to share their happiness with everyone?  What if hugging were easy?  What if people were emotionally open?  Some cultures are like this today.  None of them has ever contemplated conquering the world.

My work continues, but I think I am getting much closer to where I need to be.

It is gradually occurring to me both that there is nothing to hold on to, and that this is OK.  Life is an enormous ocean, with waves and tides, angry moods and pacific moods.

It is both true that there is no one and no thing to which I can cling, and that I am connected to everyone and everything, just not in a fixed way.

The tide comes and the tide goes, and people will invest entire lifetimes trying to prevent one inch of sway, holding, straining with all their might, when all they needed to do was accept and wait.  It will come back, in some form, but you will fail to see it if you first blind yourself.

To be clear, I was not accusing Trump of exaggerating things, although no doubt he does do some of that.

No, I am talking about the comparisons with Hitler, and the “darkening” of America, and all the other ludicrous propagandistic, hysterical pap out there.

This is LITERALLY the most hyperbolic moment in human HISTORY!!!  All of it!!!  By a LOT!!!!

I really like bread, but it seems virtually all grains sold in this country have Roundup (Glyphosphate) on them, even the “organic” ones.  I was reading this website, then came across this interesting entry: https://healthytraditions.com/healthytraditions/traditional-food/fermented-foods/atchara.html

Here is what caught my eye:

Many Filipinos are not wealthy enough to eat meat regularly outside of these special events. Add that to the fact that most people living in the rural areas do not have refrigeration, and therefore consume meat in larger quantities during these holiday and festive gatherings (such as “lechon” – a roasted whole pig), atchara became a strong tradition at the meals of these events, as their digestive systems were not naturally used to digesting large amounts of meats on a regular basis.

And it occurred to me that EVERY day is feast day for most Americans.  There is nothing special in it.  I love Christmas cookies as much as the next person, but there is no reason I could not eat them every day of the year.  I can and do eat meat every day.  I take on faith that the Buddha was no idiot, and did not suggest vegetarianism idly, but for myself I was a vegetarian in my youth for two years, and found I did not function well, physically or emotionally.  There is something grounding for me in meat that keeps me from drifting away.

Be that as it may, what it occurs to me is that the poverty which is very real with us is spiritual poverty. We can eat anything we want, any time we want (most of us: there is real hunger, too), but how often do we have access to the feeling of belonging, of participating in a vital and real community?

It seems obvious to me that all this experimentation with sexual identity, with racial identity, with using opposition to everything which is, to fashion an identity BUILT on tearing down, is short sighted, and characterized mainly by emotional emptiness and following desperation.  We burn what we hate, and we hate what does not grant us the love we need.  And our society certainly does not create and distribute love well.  We do not do it well in the homes, and what we fail to find there, we can scarcely be expected to build well elsewhere.  We look to others suffering from the same illness to relieve our own.  This must lead to madness, unless it can be palliated by distractions, illusions, useless activity and emotional superficiality.

Our wealth is not our problem.  “Capitalism” is not to blame.  It has always been lunacy to suggest that tearing down can create.  Only creation can create.  And creation is gradual, and always operative within smooth, peaceful times.  It has no place in disaster, which can only breed fear of the new, rigidity, and the violence which follows.

Culture is that which connects us.  It is what allows us as individuals to face collectively our shared fate of decay and death.  Countless brilliant people have created countless useful solaces.  They do not do so through the use of reason.  Such was the conceit of the French Revolutionaries and their progeny, who now inhabit so many high places in so many public places.

No, cultural creation is intuitive; it is spiritually driven.

Listen to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvcZf7NHMUQ

Is it not quite possible that they are weeping on the way back from the grave?  Is it not equally possible that this music gives them the emotional courage to continue their lives with emotional openness and the joy which this makes possible, in spite of “everything”?

I feel this darkness in the air, and I wonder how we clear it, how we take the next step.  So many people seem to think that by impoverishing the world, we can return to a different, better time.  This is ludicrous.  The task is understanding, on a wisdom level, what it is to be human.

To take as but one example the current cultural offensive on the sexual front, which seeks to destroy all the  evolved wisdom of the human species, what lasting joy can come from the “freedom” to change ones gender like one changes clothes?  What underlies identity?  What is deeper?  Sex, as used today, is nothing a dissimulation, a drug, a lie told to keep the wolves of confusion and despair at bay.

I have nothing against such people.  There have always been people who felt they were born in the wrong body.  But this is something different.  This is an attack on the very few givens remaining in our world, and can only operate to alienate all of us from one another yet further.  There is no end game, other than the childish demand to be allowed to do and say whatever one wants, whenever one wants, and to demand others acquiesce in whatever the delusion of the day is.

We fail at our great peril to value what the past has to teach.  Yes, not all of it is beautiful.  Some of it is ugly.  But without understanding, you see, we REPEAT what has been so many times before.  There is nothing new in tyranny, nothing new in radical intolerance, nothing new in shouting, yelling, hurting, killing, and falling, again, into the pit.

We exist, as I continue to say, in a time when global peace and harmony is possible.  But not through destruction, which has become the dominant mania of most of those entrusted with our “progress”.

We are resurrecting Moloch in the name of progress.  I do not need to read the stories.  I can feel it.

I am one man, living in a small world.  I do have and have shared many ideas, but I think the most important thing right now is for more and more people to stop and ask “what are we doing?  Why are we doing it?  Where is it all leading?  What baseless assumptions, and emotionally driven manias are pushing us?”

How, to put it simply, do we reconcile political freedom with the need all of us have for belonging?  Surely it is obvious an ubiquitous and omnipotent government cannot grant us anything but death in all its forms?

At the beginning of The Sacrifice, by Andrei Tarkovsky, the father is speaking to the son about the miraculous power of consistency, telling him a story of a monk who watered a dead tree daily for two years, at which point it came to life, and they do this while planting a dead tree. At the end, after the fathers seeming madness, the boy waters the tree.

All my life I have admired people who get up every morning and do without fail what they set out to do.  I have never been like this.  I will be good for a time, but then I find myself dreaming, as I did this morning.  I lay around, or sit and drink coffee, and watch images and ideas, and wonder where the time is going.

And it occurs to me that as with many things, there are WAYS of being disciplined.  One way is to lack the imagination to do otherwise.  One way is to be compulsive and really asleep in some ways.  One way is a deep seated fear of failure, of the sort that the military breeds into people.  None of these really apply to me, although I did use fear for a very long time. I whipped and beat myself without mercy.  I am no longer like that, thankfully.

And one way is love: love of an activity, love of oneself and ones health and emotional well being.  This is the healthiest of them all.

The longer I live, the more I feel that it is not what you do, but how you do it.  All of us are set the task when we are born of waking up, of becoming consciously alive, consciously human, and of consciously pursuing the angelic, the higher.  All of us have large dark regions within us, parts which are cut off, which we cannot feel, and which thus cannot provide us needed wisdom.  Finding all of them, inventorying all of them, requires periodic variation, changes in action, changes in perspective.  Within Kum Nye, there are hundreds of different activities, and the practice consists in varying them regularly.  There is no recitation of 100,000 mantras, or decades spent on the exact same meditation.

And here is as good a place as any to post a phrase that came to me the other day: When we own our demons, we amplify our angels.

Two other phrases that kept popping in my head last night: there is no place to start but the middle.

And: if you can see through to the end, the middle is clear.

They are a bit contradictory on the outside, but what I think my unconscious meant was that you have to start with the heart in important things.  The heart, the feeling sense, the connecting sense, the sense of affection, of wanting, of knowing intutitively–is where honest activity flows from.  You cannot force heart from the head.  The head exists to serve the heart, in important ways.  This is something I am still learning to accept.  Intellectualism is such a comfort and shelter, and armor.  It is also, of course, a cage and a stupefying and blinding tranquilizer.

And as far as contemplating an activity, if your heart is in it, you can see yourself doing it.  There are no blocks on the way, no part of you which will throw stumbling blocks in the way.  You can reach areas of objective difficulty, and visualize yourself finding ways to push through.