I do wonder what sort of past lives I’ve had.  My feeling is that I have at times acted as a bridge.  I would not have been someone you’ve ever heard of, but what have made some small difference.

One vision I had the other day was imagining I was at the Constitutional Convention, and literally the only thing I ever did of any note in my entire lifetime was preventing an argument from escalating, say between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, in some moment unknown to history. Maybe all I did was bring in some food at some key moment when both were tired and testy, and if I had not, they would have blown up at each other, factions would have taken up each side, and the whole thing exploded, resulting in a failure of America to be birthed.

Now, as it exists today, America is an extraordinarily powerful force both for good and evil.  What the eventual meaning will prove to be of America having been created remains to be seen.  But I think much of history is like this, of the “for want of a nail” variety.

In my own way–which is the only way I have–all my blogging and other “informational” activities are oriented around not being found deficient when some such moment comes along.  I will have done what I could.

If everyone does this, things work.  If no one does this, things fall apart.  The essence of the authoritarian impulse is suppressing such initiative, of moving from self organizing, organic systems to what we may as well call machines, which are indifferent, lacking in true complexity and deep order, and which work to grind people to mush.

Google: all you have done, in hiring Ray Kurzweil and adopting far-left politics, is literalize this truth.

As I have pointed out before, in hypnotic language, don’t be evil is heard as Do Be Evil.  Palling around with someone who wants to destroy everything good our nation has created certainly qualifies.

Or do you count it a victory that unemployment in the black communities has escalated enormously under the Administration of someone who was hired to help blacks?  38% black teen unemployment overall, 92% in Chicago?  Do you count it a victory that this truth has been suppressed?  You cannot both believe what you do, and demand from yourself intellectual coherence.  The two are incompatible.

If you are a decent human being, you want good things for everyone.  Only sick people are more preoccupied with punishment that lifting people up.

But how does the lyric go?  “Tax the rich, feed the poor, until there are no RICH no more.”

It always has been and always will be much easier to destroy things than to create them, at least superficially.  But to commit oneself to destruction one must first anesthetize some part of ones self that is needed, and which will sooner or later have to be revived.

One can only find horror in horror.  Redemption is walking out of that room, through an open door.

I have often described my favorite album as Lyle Lovett’s “Joshua, Judges and Ruth.”  But Mozart’s music for two pianos is also my favorite.

And this of course got me to thinking about the relationship between our “favorites” (people, places, things, etc.) and our identities.

Wellington has a dish named after him, since he was so fond of it.  What happens if you one day discover a new favorite, then another?

It seems to me that what matters in every interaction is the extent of our open engagement with it, our openness to experience, and that we enjoy everything NOW, and then move on to what is next.  Clearly, we will have recurring patterns.  Life is large and chaotic.

But I think it might be useful to regularly change favorites, or at least to explore.  The goal is not to destroy enjoyment, but to weaken the clinging part of us which imprisons us in places where happiness and enjoyment are not possible.

And I would add to this some thoughts on Exploring versus Exploiting I learned about in my lecture series on Complexity.  To some extent, they are mutually exclusive.  In the first case, you are looking for something–say in this case the best Beef Wellington on the planet–and in the second case you are eating it.

You could in theory stop at the first restaurant you find which serves it, and consume theirs forever.  This would be a case of more or less pure exploiting.

You could continue to try new versions for the rest of your life and never go to the same place twice.  This would be pure exploring.

Very smart people feel–and I must say that the end of all our explorings is still a feeling, that of confidence–that the best solution in at least rugged landscapes is what the call Simulated Annealing, which in my understanding more or less works out to lots of exploring giving way gradually to lots of exploiting.  They of course use symbols and shit.

But in a dancing landscape, you can never stop exploring, and life is a dancing landscape.  This is something like, say, Hogwarts, which changes over time.

Ponder this: there is a favorite something that will one day be in your life that you have not yet imagined.

My life sometimes feels to me like crawling through a pile of razor blades, being cut at every moment, bleeding and regenerating, and it is very unpleasant.  But ideas of some sorts bring me solace and comfort.  They reconnect me with beauty.  And sometimes, very rarely, I feel light.

There is no doubt in my mind that I am willing to give my life to learn.  And it does seem to me that over the long term, perhaps things are a bit like my Assassin’s Creed game: if you keep going, and keep the faith, you never have to traverse exactly the same landscape twice.  You cannot lose.  You merely encounter delays, perhaps lifelong ones.

And I get this sense I have been on this Earth many times, and I have failed many times.  You take your place in the line, and you try to hold it, and you are overwhelmed.  You did what you could, but it wasn’t enough.  The opposing force was too strong.

But I do believe in reincarnation.  I do believe in second and hundredth chances.  The evidence for what they used to call metempsychosis is overwhelming.  You can’t beat me.

I think this is my all time favorite piece of music: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/mozart-music-for-two-pianos-piano-duets-ludwig-hoffmann/11217?ean=28945402628

I’ve been listening to it for 20 years.  I used to play it for my children when they were little as they fell asleep.  Not infrequently, they would want me to lay on the ground next to them until they were asleep, and we would lay there and listen to this, some other Mozart (I love all his piano concertos), and a Baroque compilation I had.

Of course, I wanted little geniuses, because at that time I vastly overvalued intelligence.  My views evolved quickly.  Today, they ARE quite smart, but I am much prouder that they are well rounded, responsible, genuinely decent human beings.

I’ve put myself on a Facebook fast, so I may post a tad more personal stuff here.

http://www.appleseeds.org/10_Cannots.htm

This creed is the essence both of common sense and common decency, and in my view displays very conspicuously the MORAL and practical superiority, in all respects, of political conservatism, when practiced honestly (something which has not happened in a very long time).

And I would ask Google (read this: http://nypost.com/2015/03/28/google-controls-what-we-buy-the-news-we-read-and-obamas-policies/ ) what I would ask leftists the world over: what concrete goods do you do people?

The Civil Rights movement: oh so many goods were presumed to flow from that.  Those were noble days, no?  Blacks got the right to sit at all lunch counters. They got the right to vote.  They got integrated schools.

And they are so much better off now, than they were then, right?  Because to believe otherwise would be to question both the methods and the people involved in “battling racism”.

I do so question.  I drive through ghettos and I see sad stories that would not have happened if people had been allowed to grow past bigotry gradually, organically, peacefully, one on one, and without a gun to their head on either side.  But no, very rich, very entitled white people could not wait, the situation was too urgent.
Now, 50 years later, we are 50 years behind.  We have not only not fixed anything, we have made things much, much worse, and the same tactics that got us here continue to dig the hole deeper.  I wonder how many Google employees live in East Palo Alto or Hunter’s Point.  I suspect the blacks of 1915 had more self respect than those of today, despite the on-going nastiness of Democrat racism (which, I will grant, has “evolved”).  They at least had families, jobs, and the drive to make their own way, even if Wilson shut them out of his government, and refused to do anything about lynching.  They understood the value of dignity, I suspect.

As I have said before, there is a reason Frederick Douglas–perhaps the greatest black civil rights author ever–has been largely ignored in the Leftist Canon.

Rev. William J. H. Boetcker download as PDF You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help little men by tearing down big men. You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot establish sound security on borrowed money. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn. You cannot build character and courage by destroying men’s initiative and independence.  And you cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they can and should do for themselves.

I was wondering where his spirit is, now. I feel he must feel a great deal of regret and sorrow. It is an odd fact of life that permanent decisions can be made in temporary conditions. In a moment of anger, you can say things that cannot be unsaid or forgotten.

In his particular case, I don’t think he knew how to reinvent himself. He was trapped by being “Robin Williams” who everybody thought they knew.  He needed to not be Robin Williams, and he didn’t know how. It likely seemed to him there was no way out, that lies and misery were the entirety of his remaining days. I’m sure his wife thought she knew him, but he must have felt otherwise.  He was, obviously, a talented actor, which is to say deceiver.

The thing about depression is it can seem permanent.  The defining factor is an inability to imagine a better future, even though–and this is an operation I’ve performed many times–one must logically posit one, given the data points of current location and direction of movement.  If you are trying, and keep trying, and keep learning (repeating a bad strategy can lead to repeating a bad strategy), logically you will eventually succeed.

I have been getting moments, flashes, where my sadness drops away momentarily.  And I can see that I will eventually reach a condition in which I can’t remember why I ever felt like that.  This is the thing: if you have not had these feelings, they seem absurd, and looked at logically, they are.  Looked at with emotional logic, though, with the very real and very profound sensitivity that is at the center of all of our hearts, it makes perfect sense.

One day it will all be gone, because I am doing the work I need to do.  This is rational framing.

I will add for any depressives reading this some things I’ve added to my inventory.  I’ve been getting really deep with my EmWave2.  It has been provoking some powerful emotions. The thing is to stay with them, and maintain a calm focus on staying on track.  Some very nice music to listen to is Vangelis’ L’Apocalypse des Animaux and Opera Sauvage.  I’m also quite fond of Edwina Francesca’s little known “Breath of Heaven”, with Pacificas a particular favorite.  I need to get Ishmael, since I suspect it also is very, very good.

I’ve been taking 5-HTP at night, along with a ZMA supplement with melatonin.  I’m not a big melatonin fan, but they changed the blend I like at GNC, and I haven’t resourced it.  I do my Alpha-Stim for 20 minutes every day, Kum Nye for an hour, and plan to take up yoga.  I take fish oil and Vitamin D,  this Mental Clarity supplement, and just started taking Ashwagandha .

I do not and never will believe in the things that psychiatrists prescribe.  My strategy is multi-pronged, and based on a philosophy that if it is unlikely to hurt and may help, I include it.

For anyone who may have similar issues, I would simply say Carry On.  It is a good motto.  It is not the same thing as saying everything is alright or will be alright.  Most depressives can’t imagine everything being alright, so saying they will be feels close to a lie.  Carry On, though, says nothing but “don’t kill yourself.  Keep trying.”  And those ready for it will also hear “Maybe, just MAYBE something good will happen someday.”

I thought I might pass along the link to the steadily improving and already quite professional website for Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth: http://www.ae911truth.org/

I donate to them on a monthly basis.  This is a hugely important topic.  Almost all the wars of the past 10 years–and much more importantly–the pervasive NSA surveillance and other curtailments of the civil liberties assumed by and protected by our Constitution are enabled in large measure by the climate of fear enabled by 9/11.

It may be, of course, that there are people out there working to set off nuclear or biological weapons (chemical I fear much less, because their path of destruction would never be more than a few thousand), but even NSA experts say that if we watch suspects, the people they talk to, and the people they talk to, that will be quite sufficient.  Going beyond that creates the potential for a gulag state, for a police state of a scale and scope no fascist regime ever even dreamed possible.  Big Brother is already here.  If you have a Kinect or Wii plugged into the internet, they can literally watch you in your living room now.  If you keep your cell phone in your bedroom, they can listen to your pillow talk and snoring.

This is not the direction of a hopeful future.

And even though we can’t know for sure who was behind 9/11, SOMEONE obviously had extensive access to, in all likelihood, all three towers, and for a long enough period to place enough explosives to rig the buildings like professionals.  The Towers had already been attacked, and I don’t think it too unreasonable to suppose there was SOME level of security, even if tens of thousands of people were coming and going every day.  The people who did this would have needed to get behind locked doors, and been able to transport explosive material behind these doors.

And, importantly, they would have needed access to nanothermite, whose residue was found throughout the wreckage.  This implies a very developed nation state.  I have proposed the Russians (I nearly called them the Soviets, since I find it impossible to separate Putin from that species of fascistic control called Communism) as suspects.  Putin no doubt had reasons to hate America, and the operation happened roughly 18 months after he took power.

Others have proposed the Israelis, who no doubt had the technical sophistication to do this.

But we have to ask the question: why did NIST intentionally falsify data and overlook basic elements of physics to reach a wrong conclusion they have stood by ever since?  I have proposed cowardice.  That still seems possible.  But as an agency of the American government, they also reported to the governmental command structure, and it may be that they were ORDERED to reach the wrong conclusion.  That would not look good, would it?

Here is a lengthy treatment of this topic, which appears careful and meticulous: http://www.911review.com/articles/ryan/demolition_access_DonPaul.html

Increasingly, my gut tells me it was a nexus of Americans and Arabs.  That is more or less his claim, and it appears plausible.

Whatever the truth is, it is CLEARLY not in the public domain.

I thought this a decent film.  My only thought I’m likely to share is that that Star Trek episode kept going through my mind in which one group with–humor me if I’m backwards–black on the right of their face and white on the left were persecuting those with black on the LEFT of their face and white on the right.

Can anyone who is being serious, contemplative, argue that Christ died for the right of people to hate and kill in His name, over exactly how his brilliant creed of love should be ceremonially expressed?  How is it that people who grow up ONE BLOCK from one another feel the need to torture and kill one another in the name of their version of Jesus?

This sort of thing causes me to understand the emotional background which seemingly informs the world view of many atheists.

Yes, I get history, and that identities beyond the religious play an important role.  I know the British treated the Irish worse, arguably, than we treated the American Indians.  As I have recently posted, they enslaved a very large number of them, and killed  great many outright.  They banned their languages, and put huge barriers on things like land ownership and other rights.

Still, both sides go to church at least weekly and read a document which talks about little but love and forgiveness.

This is worth the periodic repost and reread.

Google seemingly removed this from their search engine.  I wonder why that would be?  Or why they thought that would slow me down.

You people are smart.  Why are you being so fucking stupid?  Will life be better as robots?  Do you believe this?  Do you think meaning and purpose and human connection are unimportant, or that crass left-wing politics are the method to anything but emotional alienation, grotesque economic distortions and eventual collapse, and the loss of the capacities both for reason and honesty?

http://www.claremont.org/article/all-the-leaves-are-brown/#.VRbZa_zF-So

Trotting out this 97-98% number is a bit like asking people “is your current work useful or useless, and if useless, why are you doing it?”

The number of people researching the tooth fairy is likely quite small, but I think we can assume a high percentage–something close to 100%–think she is real.  Otherwise, why do the work?  Why go on snark hunts if you don’t believe in snarks?

If you want to work in “climate science” there is one Big Boy in town, and you either agree with him, or you don’t work.  Very simple.

And moving farther upstream, everyone knows this.  You don’t go into “climate science” in the first place if you don’t already think it is actually science, and not an abusive farce, which is what I think it is.

So we can assume with considerable confidence that 98%+ of the people ENTERING the field of “climate science” START as true believers.

And actually, researching this, the story is even worse: http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2012/07/17/that-scientific-global-warming-consensus-not/

Since 1998, more than 31,000 American scientists from diverse climate-related disciplines, including more than 9,000 with Ph.D.s, have signed a public petition announcing their belief that “…there is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.” Included are atmospheric physicists, botanists, geologists, oceanographers, and meteorologists.

So where did that famous “consensus” claim that “98% of all scientists believe in global warming” come from? It originated from an endlessly reported 2009 American Geophysical Union (AGU) survey consisting of an intentionally brief two-minute, two question online survey sent to 10,257 earth scientists by two researchers at the University of Illinois. Of the about 3.000 who responded, 82% answered “yes” to the second question, which like the first, most people I know would also have agreed with.

Then of those, only a small subset, just 77 who had been successful in getting more than half of their papers recently accepted by peer-reviewed climate science journals, were considered in their survey statistic. That “98% all scientists” referred to a laughably puny number of 75 of those 77 who answered “yes”.

But the fact remains that we just had a record cold winter, that the maximum ice extent on both poles has grown over the past few years, and that cold and hot are two different things.

The most pernicious element of modern education is teaching obedience to authority.  Even people who think they are anti-authoritarian will abandon all reason if the right person is speaking.

The locus of perception is the individual.  It cannot be otherwise.  Some individuals have more “knowledge” than others, but if they are unable to treat it dispassionately and with the skillful application of critical reason, they can be taught to “know” countless things that just aren’t so, to paraphrase Reagan.

And to buy into any cult is to abdicate the personal responsibility we all have, in my view, to engage with the world as sovereign and interesting individuals.  Sovereign::interesting as conformist:: dull.

And counter-cultural cults are still cults. This should be obvious, but it seemingly isn’t.

I’ve said this, roughly, many times, but am feeling a bit sorry for myself and want to reject it by praising myself publicly.

My IQ is roughly 150.  This is decent, and I think I could probably get a 160 if I studied the test.  There are methods for raising measured IQ.

But I have started my email campaign again to reform our financial system, and am likely dealing with economists with 170 and even 180 IQ’s.  That field attracts really, really smart people.

My proposal is simple: we can eliminate unemployment and poverty, achieve a uniformly high standard of living, and do it working LESS than we are today.  All this, and we make our system more just and equitable.  The only people who lose are the predators, and no one, on the Right or the Left, favors the actual predators, at least rhetorically.  In practice, of course, they take large sums of money from them in every election cycle.

All I do is apply dispassionate logic to commonly available facts.  Money creation has no inherent economic use.  It creates a claim on actual economic wealth.  Ergo it is theft.

It can be reversed through the simple expedient of recognizing that money is not real, and that what has once been granted to the banks can be taken from them.

These are exquisitely simple ideas.  I think one could and should argue that the entire profession of economics consists mainly in trying to iron out the troubles created by banks and government interference in the private sector.  Businesspeople don’t need economists–or wouldn’t–in an actually intelligent, actually just financial order.

This is the problem I run into, though: most people fear being alone.  They fear social isolation.  They fear mockery and public shaming.

And this is how stupid shit happens over long periods of time.  Nobody wants to be the first adopter.  Nobody wants to go first.  And ESPECIALLY no one wants to admit that they have missed fundamental and vastly important truths across the course of their lifetimes, despite huge educational achievements, very high measured intelligence, and prodigious work output.

My goal is to send out 500 emails this year.  If I can get one person to rethink things, I will count myself very lucky.  Vanity has few limits.

And here is the core point I wanted to make: what makes me different is not a uniquely high IQ or capacity for information processing.  What makes me different is a willingness to tell the truth FIRST, and only secondarily figure out the social consequences of that belief.  I am able and willing to tolerate solitude, vast solitude.  I don’t like it, but it is essential to me being me, and I have no desire to be anyone else.  I like who I am, even if it is often difficult.