Author: White Whale

I haven’t watched the debates. I sort of ooze in ideas from the environment, inference, gut instinct, and etc.

It seemed to me the other day it might be useful to assign short descriptions to the major candidates. Here they are:

Rick Perry: Boy Scout

Mitt Romney: CEO

Herman Cain: Businessman

Ron Paul: Professor

Michelle Bachman: Soccer Mom

Perry wrote a book on the ethos of the Boy Scouts. He is an Eagle Scout, and so is his son. Contemplate that for a moment. If you read about his early life, he grew up on a farm in the middle of nowhere, and took baths in a tub in the backyard until roughly his teens, as I recall the story. He conducted a prayer ceremony for America, seemingly without regard for political positioning. Contrary to the mood of most Republicans, he is showing compassion for the many illegal aliens in his State.

In my view, Perry is an honest man. He may not be ideologically pure on all counts, but he is honest. This needs to count in his favor.

I will add that he needs to do defensive drills on “evolution”. The focus needs to be on “Speciation through Natural Selection”, and “Life arising randomly”, not the word itself. Change over time plainly happened. The salient question is how. There is no evidence in the fossil record that anything like Darwin’s gradualism actually happened. This is an unimpeachable fact. At some point, he will sit down with some leftist hack journalist or other–Baba Wawa for example–and he needs not just to defend, but counter then go on the offensive.

Enough of that. He’s my current favorite among those likely to get the nomination.

Romney is slick. In my professional life I have met quite a few business owners and no small number of CEO’s of reasonably big companies. For my own purposes, I differentiate between a businessman–and I’m pulling Cain in here–and a CEO. CEO’s by nature are politicians. They figure out which way the wind is blowing, head that direction, then pretend it was their idea all along. At some point or other, you will see them marching with a determined, stoically posed face in all four cardinal directions, and up and down if the circumstances request it.

One of the principle tasks of the next President, assuming we the American people are not so ready for national collapse that we reelect Obama, will be to undo Obamacare. It involves among other things an ENORMOUS tax increase in 2013, of the sort that will destroy whatever economic progress happens between now and then. How can we trust Romney to undo it when he implemented something nearly identical in Massachusetts?

Yes, the Massachusettsians–Martians for short–wanted it, because they are congenitally impractical in the modern era (vitiating entirely the well earned reputation of Yankees as being hard-nosed pragmatists), but the point is he gave it to them. Why? That is the direction the wind was blowing. Now it’s blowing another direction, and no doubt he is firmly committed–look at that set jaw, that steely stare–to undoing it. But what if a bunch of people show up to say nasty things, and stink up Washington with body odor, cannabis and Patchouli? Can we count on him? No. Never count on a politician to do anything before sticking their finger in their air, calling their “strategist”, and running the political pros and cons.

Cain, as a businessman, is focused on getting things done. He wants real solutions, that he wants to implement because he thinks they will work, and he will be willing to change his approach based on what actually happens, unlike the current President, and his many ideological forebears. Cain would do a good job, in my view.

Ron Paul is a thinker. He happens to have proposed many ideas with which I agree, and bears an uncanny resemblance at times, in the way he smiles, to Stan Laurel (completely unrelated, but this video amuses me every time I watch it).

In classic stereotypes, professors know what they are talking about. They are smart. In the modern world, when it comes to politics and economics and philosophy, this notion is completely outdated. Most of them are functionally slobbering imbeciles fit for little but yardwork and employment as Obama Czars. Paul is different. He has the Austrians in his heart, and with good ideas like that, you can be consistent.

I come and go as far as isolationism. In my more sanguine moments I think it could work and should be tried, provided we retain the balls for severe retaliation if anyone messes with us.

Conversely, at times I think Paul is idealistic to the point of being simplistic in a bad way. We really do have enemies out there, and it’s easier to fight them elsewhere than here. This is a topic without easy resolution, as it depends in large measure on intelligence I don’t have.

What I will say is that the Fed–and the fractional reserve banking system it enables–is the greatest enemy of the prosperity of ordinary Americans that we face, and Paul categorically understand this, although as I have argued often simply ending the Fed is not a good idea. We need to do it right, and this would include ending fractional reserve banking, which cannot be done easily if the thing is not thought through. I’ve posted my thoughts often enough.

Oh hell, here they are again: http://www.goodnessmovement.com/Page14.html

Bachman I like, and would definitely vote for, but she just seems to lack gravitas. Now, Obama had the weight of perforated balsa wood, so plainly being substantive is optional in the American Presidential race, but even so I feel she needs to know more than she does.

Altogether, it seems plain to me that not one of the major candidates would fail to do much better than Obama, but why would an adult brag they could beat a 4 year old in a foot race? The bar is exceptionally low, and our task is to raise it a LOT.

America deserves a good President after all this time. I proposed elsewhere and will propose here a Perry/Guiliani ticket. A Perry/Christie ticket would be even better. Anybody that can get elected as a Republican in a Blue state has something to add.

I have been in a strange mood the last week or two. I am working extraordinarily hard, but that is not unusual.

What I have been feeling is that I am a part of a circle, in search of the rest. My sensory talents can go so far, but then they stop. They dead-end. They are limited.

What I feel is that God can and should be a present reality, and not an abstraction. Theology kills God. It really does. It buries the reality in an enormous pile of trivia, that is then used for the concentration of temporal power.

God is a wind, an uneven wind–like all winds–that blows through, and is felt by few. I look into the darkness surrounding me, and feel something, but its nature escapes me.

The point of this post, though, was that growth begins with a sense of absence. You cannot pursue that which you do not feel you are missing. Had you no sexual instinct, the species would die out. Had you no hunger, you would need not learn to work.

On a more subtle level, if you cannot perceive your emotional or cognitive shortcomings, you will never fix them. You will never address them, unless and until some crisis forces you to.

No doubt most are familiar with the Taoist notion of the empty pot. Logically, for optimal growth, you should start with maximal absence. The more you want to learn, the more you feel you need to do, the more you will learn and do.

It has become clear to me recently, too, that learning/growth is a source of meaning in and of itself. It need not lead to something else. It is fine alone. You can decide to live so that you can learn as much as possible, where learning is not primarily academic, but emotional. You can learn to move better physically and emotionally. You can learn to think better. And yes, you can learn the Japanese Tea Ceremony, or the Samba, or how to brew great beer. These things all exist externally, but all learning grows your spirit to some extent, in my opinion.

When you are learning, you are moving. New facts and behavioral patterns are being introduced.

The other day I was looking at a tree, and contemplating the play of sun and shadow on it, and watching the clouds behind it, and it occurred to me that all that was happening, as we are told, in my brain.

Visual images, we are told, are input upside down, and “fixed” between our ears. Sounds generate harmonic responses in our ears, and are “collated” in our brains. If I touch something hot, receptors in my fingers send value-neutral impulses to my brain, which then assigns a value to them.

Why can’t intuition work the same way? The mind is a putter-together-er. It assembles fragmentary experiences into wholes that can then be examined cognitively, as frames of experience, now abstracted. If the nerves in my fingers have no mind, why must whatever brings in sensations through the ether, or whatever we call it? It is the assembler that matters.

As Bishop Berkeley argued, in effect, we have no means of determining that we are not minds in a vat, input sensations.

I am meandering, but hopefully there is something useful here for somebody. Long day, some beer involved.

One task I constantly set myself–or, seen phenomenologically, work that presents itself to me–is seeing things in new ways. We are all familiar with the idea of reincarnation, called “metempsychosis” in older writings. In some renderings, it is comforting: you never die. In other renderings, like Hinduism and Buddhism, it is seen as problematic, since life on this world pretty much sucks for everyone, if they look honestly and accurately. The Buddha had the best of everything, but realized much better was possible. We are all on fire, he realized, with the flames of unrealized potentials for deeper fulfillment. Moreover, everything changes. His idyllic life would have ended for him, if he had stayed where he was, when his kingdom was overrun, and everyone he cared about placed in a pit and trampled with elephants. That is my understanding of the story.

So on some accounts, the task is to escape Samsara, the world of birth life death something else rebirth, seen as a wheel with no sense of humor, and no pattern variations, except in details.

To this is added, in Buddhism, the Bodhisattva, who, roughly, depending on the canon you read, is determined to win release for all sentient beings, no matter how long it takes.

Can we not imagine lives as trilogies, in which one task is undertaken in three lifetimes? Can we not imagine a rhythm: boom, Boom, BOOM, and then a pause? That life is skipped, because it can be.

Must we choose between EITHER life escaped, and Samsara? Can there not be an intermediate point, of work and rest?

Most all truth depends on puncturing bubbles, and noting carefully what is left. This is my task here. I know many will think me nuts. I may be nuts, but if that is the case, I am very much a functioning, practical nut, who solves concrete problems on a daily basis, and who can and has defended his views in very diverse environments from hordes of critics on a sustained basis, using nothing but commonly available facts, and the disciplined application of reason.

I drive myself nuts. I get ideas in my head, and have to follow them. That’s why I work with my hands for a living.

Look at this image of the ten story Russian 9/11 Memorial. I can’t tell if this is a rendering or actual picture, but it’s close enough. We are told this portrays a torn city, and a teardrop within it, symbolizing shared grief over the hole torn in our psyche on 9/11.

What I would like suggest–and this is merely a possibility, for which no suitable verification is even remotely likely to happen–is that this could also be seen as a symbolic rape, where the building is seen as feminine–the hole is roughly in the shape of a vagina–and the teardrop as sperm. The aircraft were thrust into the buildings.

Here are images of teardrops: http://www.google.com/search?q=teardrop+shapes&hl=en&sa=G&prmd=imvns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&ei=SueBTtGNGoSatwf30szoAQ&ved=0CDQQsAQ&biw=1024&bih=675

Here are rendered images of sperm: http://www.google.com/search?q=teardrop+shapes&hl=en&sa=G&prmd=imvns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&ei=SueBTtGNGoSatwf30szoAQ&ved=0CDQQsAQ&biw=1024&bih=675#hl=en&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=sperm+images&oq=sperm+images&aq=f&aqi=&aql=1&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=21819l22278l0l22516l6l4l0l1l0l1l212l564l0.2.1l3l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=1352c85337ea1a11&biw=1024&bih=675

Which one does the memorial more closely resemble? I don’t like this idea, but pass it along because it cannot, in my view, be dismissed out of hand.

I have work to do, but in a way this counts as my day job, the one that just doesn’t pay me a cent.

In baseball, the highest point on the field is the pitcher’s mound. Logically, then, we must see the field two ways, as a pyramid from the top–with the pitchers mound being the apex–and from the side, at an angle perpendicular to the side. From the top you have a usurper, who has taken the place of God, and from the side you have a person who is going to try and circumnavigate the pyramid in a counter-clockwise direction. For some reason, the name Porphyrion keeps coming up. And the field is green.

Based on such musings, I expect my “day job” to continue to be a labor of love.

Secondly, as I was pondering this idea of religions each having a shelf life, I got to thinking about Judaism in contrast to other religions. In Judaism, you have many prophets. It is not based on one. And many of them are quite imperfect, whiny, and disobedient. You really don’t see this often in world religions, at least the ones extant today. You certainly see Gods behaving badly in most religions, including old Norse myth, Native American myth and Greek myth.

But normally when it gets to human exposition, the prophets are seen as more or less perfect. This would include the Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, Rama, and others. Everyone but Yuddhisthira has their flaws in the Mahabharata, but Krishna is conceived of as a man/god, albeit a lusty one.

This pattern, though, of repeated failure and getting back up, is an interesting one, that is unique among the major world religions, as far as can tell.

The question to ask is: what are the structural advantages and disadvantages of this? I don’t have time to answer that now, but will likely do so at some future point, perhaps years from now, and perhaps today.

One good example of the chaotic but ordered nature of experience–chaotic on the surface, with deep, clear underlying themes within–is dreaming. I have had lucid dreams on many occasions, but I cannot induce them at will.

Several themes for today, one old and one new. Some time ago I went into a very old temple in a dream. Within the temple was a very large–perhaps 10′ tall–jade pyramid, onto which water was poured from a jug. There were grooves on the side, such that the water moved slowly, majestically, and symbolically. This was the entry of God into the world, into life. Water taken from the bottom was symbolically returned.

I think this temple exists. This is purely an intuition. And I think people use it, initiates, who no longer remember what it is for. They have lost their way, and need to find it. All sects decay. It is a commonplace that the third generation ruins the family business. Perhaps no religious order should last past its third leader. Had Islam faded with Ali, I think that would have been a good thing. Had Christianity never reached Constantine, that, too, may have been a good thing. It’s quite hard to say, but I think I can say with some confidence that what mystics call “baraka” (yes, same root), or darshana, does not last long in this world.

In any event, this pyramid uses the All-Seeing Eye. The very top is cut off, you see, as the pyramid is the world, but the top exists in the Godhead. Water symbolizes the movement of spirit on earth. The entire thing is intended to be very contemplative, and if possible you are to feel the entry of God into your own being as the flow that it is.

I do not understand the meaning of jade, if any, but will point out that our money is green.

At times-really, often, but I am rarely answered–ask for insight into things. This morning, I input the pyramid, and got Baseball. The following I offer as an exercise in cognitive flexibility only, with no evidence of any sort other than the possibility I propose.

If you read the history (linked on the word above), it is clouded in uncertainty. It’s not clear who came up with the thing. What I saw, though, was that Home Base is the Eye. It is the source and the completion. It is the beginning and the end. To see this, you have to imaginatively draw a line from second base to home, and imagine that you are seeing two sides of the pyramid only. Home Base is the apex. When you round the bases, you are traveling from God and back to Him again. That this is difficult is the point. If once you put out sufficient effort and send the ball–your nemesis of doubt, confusion, weakness and vanity–soaring into the skies far enough, your journey is made easy.

You have nine innings, and each inning consists in two sets of three threes. Each team gets three threes. In some cultures 9 is considered a divine number, since in a Base Ten system it is the highest you can go without starting over.

As I Google it, others have come to roughly the same conclusion, albeit not staring from a pyramid.

I will readily admit I am a strange man, but I am never bored.

To any reading this who have personal knowledge of whereof I speak, I will add that in my view you are decadent, and need to either destroy the thing and start over, or resurrect yourselves. Nothing good is coming of what you are doing now.

You cannot fill an emotional gap with anger. It might appear for a moment, for a time, to work–and in the flow of experience it does mask the gap–but in the long run that gap will stay the same or even grow, while you are not paying attention.

You can’t worry about what you did not get, or are not getting. The task in forward progress is always to tell the truth, and pay attention to the countless little emotional details which do in fact act to fill the gaps. Imagine contentment not as a unitary thing, but as countless little bits floating in the air, that will nest in your holes if you let them. And in aggregate, they will stop the leak.

None of us need be zombies, even though that is an apparently widespread tendency.

From time to time I “cite” popular culture as a referent. Here are the lyrics to “Wake me up inside”, by Evanescence.

Frozen inside without your touch,
Without your love, darling.
Only you are the life among the dead.

What happens if both people feel that way? What happens if neither feels the power to wake the other up? You get zombie parades, metaphors made real.

Here is the music

Listen with attention to the quality. It starts innocently, almost music-box like, in trembling intimacy, fear and hope, then distortion intrudes, and the fear wins. She’s unwilling to admit final defeat, but clearly there is an energy pushing her away from the very person she needs, and she is caught in a whirlwind of confusion that feels like death.

Listen in your life. See. Feel. Genuine hope and progress float around us, as invisible but helpful motes of the genuine air we need.

Posted this here.

We are in an interesting time. Even in the time of Reagan, he was blocked by Democrats controlling Congress. Bush got elected and reelected by moving to the center. Uniquely in my lifetime we are seeing a broad, principled, informed conservative revitalization, of a potentially transformative nature. EVERY artifact of leftist cultural attack and intellectual atrocity is potentially up for reimagination, and eradication.

When Obama was elected, the Left naturally assumed that their time had come. All the plots and conspiracies they had hatched over decades of more or less quiescent marginalization could now be brought into implementation. Large steps, rather than the small, quiet steps of wolves still dressed as sheep, would now be possible.

They have been waiting these last three years, and are simply unwilling to contemplate the idea that they might have to wait even longer, and are thus ignoring the signals of the American electorate that they are waking up to the truth.

The refugees of the Israeli War of Independence are no different. They think they can force through something, when in fact what is more likely to happen is that more Americans wake up to the fact that the UN was brought into being by a Communist agent–Alger Hiss–and that it does not serve our interests, or the interests of peace.

Ending our massive support of the UN is now something that can be contemplated as possible. Let us hope Abbas CONTINUES his abuse of justice and truth.

Here is an interesting idea: what if Bush was given credible information that the Russians were behind 9/11? What do you do with that information? Would we have been prepared to go to war with them? If not, would it be useful to put this image of Putin killing thousands of Americans into the publics mind, with no really viable means of exacting revenge? Clearly, we did face Islamic extremists. Would it not have been tempting to take on enemies we could plainly face with violence?

I think the aim on the part of the Russians was to draw us into one or more wars that we would then LOSE, weakening us, and causing a global retrenchment of the sort that followed our retreat from Vietnam. This is a guess. To do better, I would need to take the time to remember and researach what the world looked like in 2000, and then imagine what it would have looked like from the perspective of an ex-KGB director, and lifelong dedicated Communist.

That is more than I am willing to take on, so I’ll leave it here.

The point, though, is that one could plausibly see Bush covering up evidence, but not because of his own complicity in the crime. This actually makes sense to me.

As I understand the current story of the thing, Easter Islanders harvested themselves into extinction. I believe Jared Diamond made that the thesis of his second book, and argued by analogy that we were in the process of doing the same thing.

This betrays a fundamental ignorance of economics. Specifically, we have a finely calibrated shortage sensor that works over short, medium, and long terms: price. Price signals indicate when something in demand is in increasingly short supply. Long before we ran out of oil, prices would be so high that everyone would cut back simply out of economic necessity. We need fear no oil shortage. We will get plenty of warning.

Price only works, though, when it is not interfered with. If for example the government uses taxpayer money to prop up enterprises that are not providing a service or product people want at a price they are willing to pay, then the shortage and glut sensor malfunctions. Products are made that nobody wants. This is the whole problem of the Solyndra (Sp?) business. Not only was our money wasted, but it was in effect funneled to certain plugged in people. This is not how free markets work.

As I have argued in the past, Keynesian economics can be seen not just as a system for wasting money (really, transferring it from ordinary Americans to connected Americans) while increasing the bureaucratic power of the State, but also as a price disruption mechanism. It puts a crowbar in the spokes of the free market, and does so by design. The intent, plainly, was to cause economic decline, so that more of the same could be claimed as the cure.

Keynes was not actually so stupid as to believe his economics worked “to” the purpose he claimed it did. Nor do I believe Paul Krugman is that stupid, although perhaps he really is. He’s certainly no Keynes, and his Nobel Laureate is every bit as earned as those of Barack Obama and Yasser Arafat.