Author: White Whale

 From here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/11/national-climate-assessment-global-warming_n_2458905.html?show_comment_id=221314116#comment_221314116

The lack of response makes me wonder if others can see it, but I cannot say definitively it was censored. It was pointed out to me as well that I did add the category “if it is happening, and if man is causing it, is fixing it still cheaper than riding out the effects?”  This is far from clear.  There have been periods when we had no polar ice caps and life THRIVED, and of course no one is even remotely suggesting this will happen again.

 

Intelligent people–which excludes most journalists and academics–will ask three sorts of questions:

1) Is the Earth warming? If we are making that claim, what metrics are
we using, and how does this warming fit within broad climate contexts?
Based on the past record of these people–and there is clearly a
type–they are cherry picking data that excludes actual measurements of
temperatures on both poles.

2) Is anthropogenic CO2–as opposed of course to the CO2 the dinosaurs breathed–a principle cause?

3) Will cutting down on emissions NOW do anything?

I have studied this topic extensively–MUCH more extensively than the
many silly people who unknowingly do nothing but repeat talking
points–and it seems clear to me that even if we DID cause an increase
in temperature, virtually nothing we do now will make a bit of
difference, since the relative role of CO2 diminishes as its
concentration increases. Each doubling causes half the effect.

I deal with this topic at length here: http://www.moderatesunited.blogspot.com/2008/01/global-warming.html

It seems obvious to me that the threat–the manufactured threat–of Global Warming is trojan horse for global governance

As I suppose many people do, I sometimes fantasize about what I would do if I had unlimited power.  What policies would I pursue?  In my case, I would in general eradicate most large scale restrictions on freedom, and trust that people could self organize in either better ways, or at least THEIR ways.

But tonight I was thinking about universities.  I have of course often criticized Humanities professors for being morally obtuse, and in general intellectually destructive.  So of course I would abolish most Humanities departments, at least as currently constituted.

As one example, though, would it make sense to return to the “classics” of Western literature?  Are these “classics” not in part the REASON our tradition has devolved to the point of collapse?  Does “Pride and Prejudice” help mold better characters?  Who knows?  I see no reason to reflexively to return to what never was, and would think it more intelligent to move forward to an considered use of literary and other art.

Thus, it occurs to me it would make sense to develop a discipline which has as its focus and goal the development of ideas and principles–which of course it would test, as I fully envision this being a scientific enterprise–on how to create art which both ennobles the artist, and either helps lessen the burden of the co-participant–the viewer–or fills them with a broader happiness and sense of possibility than they already had.  Or both.

Our literary tradition is filled with all sorts of literature.  Take Edgar Allen Poe.  How do you make him useful?  I won’t say it can’t be done, but I will say it is not clear to me HOW and in what contexts it can be done.  Someone should study that.  I could get behind something like that, if done sincerely.

Our entire problem is that our great orienting principles, like human rights and equality before the law, are being desecrated by those for whom egalitarianism is the only creed which they can justify.  This can be reversed and MUST be reversed if what is good in humanity is to survive the on-going onslaught on common decency being launched on us by the post-moral intellectual aesthetes.

Rather than calling Keynesian economic “Demand Side” we should call it “COMMAND side economics.”

I trust my meaning is clear.

Think back to a glorious day you have had.  For me the temperature is perfect, I am outside, and everything is in harmony, between the sun, the clouds, the breeze, the feel of the air.  You feel good, really good.  Go back to this feeling in your memory and let it grow.  If you do not oppose it, it will tend to grow naturally.  Simply let it be.  Let it grow.

Now imagine you are radiating light, like a jewel with expansive powers, or like a sun.  It simply flows through and radiates.  If you keep the happiness and pleasure going, the light will seem to come too.  It goes with happiness, with joy.  Let it shine.

Now imagine you and your light are on a parade float, and your whole experience begins to move.  You are not moving yourself, but you are being moved.  Go slowly.  You may feel a bit unsure at first, but relax and flow into it.  I suspect with a strong root in the experience, you can work to moving very fast, but I have not done so myself.  Any movement is good movement.

To my way of thinking, this is the root feeling of Windhorse.  It is the essence, the root, the beginning point of the best sort of Goodness.  Remember it from time to time, and bring it into your life, wherever you are.

Have you ever noticed that what your ribs and diaphragm and chest do are quite similar both in sobbing and laughing?  Both are cathartic releases of emotion.

I am increasing inclined to view the root repository of tension and anxiety as the intracostal muscles and the diaphragm.  It is for this reason that deep breathing over a long period, as in Wholotropic Breathwork, stimulates and releases emotions, when it happens in a supportive environment.

I will add, too, that I think what the breathwork does is get you into a space without movement–a trauma, or perhaps even a mystical experience–and then add movement, through the evolution of music. 

I may have made that comment earlier, but can’t remember.

Passing through Cleveland yesterday, I stopped for a short while at the Rock and Roll Museum.  My short take is that the Birchers were right: rock has on balance been a pernicious influence.

What maintains cultures is continuity.  To maintain continuity you have to VALUE continuity, and the essence of rock is breaking with the old, rebeling, destroying in some iterations.

There was a room of photos of 80’s era bands.  None of them looked happy. 

The posters in the gift shop consisted in either horror show bands like “Five Finger Death Punch”, and “Bullet for my Valentine”–none of them smiled, either, of course–or vapid pop to appeal to teenage girls.

Once you lose control, how do you regain it?  If you regain it in a position of not having access to open, plentiful, sincere love, then you regain it in power.  What else can one make of an album titled “Kill ’em all”, Metallica’s first?

All this anger makes sense to people.  It is not just Other-destructive: it is SELF destructive.  All power mongering is, since the root of malady is a loss of a self not dependent fully on context.

I’ll have more to say, but as usual I’ve overslept a bit.  I never fuck up completely.  I just don’t adhere to the highest standards of what is possible professionally.  This work, in any event, is much more important to me.

It’s worth saying from time to time–as I’m well aware I do–that this blog is my public note space.  For a long time–years–I kept all my notes private.  What I found is that it is a pain in the ass editing and publishing them, so what I decided to do is just post my musings here. 

I don’t agree with everything I say here, reserve the right to contradict myself and be stupid, and some of what I post will not make sense, or be fragmentary.

A quote I wrote down long ago from Thoreau went something like “It need not be long, but it takes so very long to make it short.”

For me, at least, verbosity is the spring of concision.

I would submit that sentimentality is always a bit narcissistic.  You look at yourself weeping over the kids in Africa, and weep because you are weeping.   What a lovely person you are.

This is quite a different emotion than empathy, or the commitment to help which follows it.

Meaning is that which minimizes qualitative pain, and maximizes qualitative joy.

An optimal truth system is one which focuses on the qualitative growth in knowledge, and secondarily the quantitative growth.  It is far more important to know what life IS, than what insects reside in the Amazon rain forest.  It is far more important to recognize and integrate the idea that our souls and bodies separate at death than to cure cancer or heart disease (and in any event, little progress other than early detection and early intervention has happened over the last half century).

An optimal political system is one which maximizes the number of meaning systems.

An optimal economic system minimizes quantitative pain (cold, hunger, illness) and, by the same stroke, maximizes access to plenty.

Self evidently, you cannot maximize generalized wealth by decreasing it.

I’m sure I’ve been through a few iterations of this, and will go through more, but will offer the following as something that makes sense to me at this moment:

Meaning is that which justifies both suffering and deep joy.  The stronger the meaning system, the more pain you can suffer without complaint, and the greater the joy you can feel.

Countless shreds and shards, and streams and rays of meaning can be created in this world, where creation is vision.