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I posted my Afghanistan strategy here: http://www.goodnessmovement.com/Page20.html

Logically, if we can imagine an Emperor with no clothes on being imagined to be dressed, can we not imagine clothes with an invisible Emperor?

The clothes are what we can see; the Emperor we cannot.

God is not form: God is the possibility of form, and possibilities, while real, are not visible.

It is today. And yesterday, and tomorrow. A culture which forgets its history is dying, and an important part of every culture is its heroes.

To my mind, what needs to be remembered is not just that brave men and women fought and died for our country, but also that they fought and LIVED for this country.

More: we need to remember all of the heroes throughout history, who did what was right and good and just because it was right and good and just. We don’t have to sanctify any of them: we just need to remember them, and resurrect in our hearts as much as we can of the spirit that animated them.

Things don’t change all that much. People don’t change that much. There has always been good and evil. There have always been those who took what they wanted because they could; who hurt others because they wanted to. There have always been those who stood against them.

We are in a stage in our history when our cultural custodians are in large measure trying not just to destroy American or Western culture, but culture period.

We fight them through memory, through focussed remembrance of who we are, who we choose to be, who we want to be, and how much farther down the path of light we can and still must go.

This is going to be a bit more meandering than usual. It is my effort to patch together many discrete threads of thought that are related, but who don’t know it. This will be a seamed whole.

I developed the Telearchic Cross (described on my other website in the introductory essay) to sort of formalize what I do anyway, which is regularly expand and contract my awareness. At times I am watching ants, or watching clouds, or trying to develop multiple theories on the genesis of a particular mark on the wall . . . to be continued momentarily. . .

[related sidenote: I once took my kids for pizza, and there was a man sleeping in the car next to us. When we came out, he was gone. I spent months giving them explanations of what happened to him, from aliens kidnapping him, to his car flipping over and driving off by itself upside down, to the concrete being actually a giant trampoline that threw him over the building, etc. It is always a good practice to try and inventory possibilities, even wildly improbable ones, and this was a fun way to try and convey that lesson, which they greatly enjoyed]

At other times, I am abstracting as much as you possibly can about the nature of time and the universe. Back and forth.

In recent days, I have been feeling an expansive energy, a liberating energy, that I have in the past called Windhorse, after the Tibetan word for what I think is the same energy. This is the energy of Goodness.

Often, I think we fail to pursue Goodness–spirituality in some form–since we assume that if we aren’t “sinning”, that we are good people. If you pay your bills, are polite to people, get your kids to do their homework, be respectful, etc, then you are Good. But there is Good and Gooder (let it slide): what is the lifelong path you can walk, in which you continue to develop Goodness all along, so that you actually ARE very wise when you are gray and your teeth are falling out (short in the tooth)?

This energy is expansive. It is learning to love life, and learning to value all experience fully, such that objects, per se, cease to matter so much.

This is going to be really scattered. There is a nexus, and it is me, but I am not a line of words; nor is anyone else.

I think sometimes about ascetics going into the woods or caves for years on end. How do they not get lonely? I think some people assume they do, but I’m not sure. What if you could counter-act the FEELING of loneliness with emotional energy that was much more powerful? What if going back into the world were the actual let-down? I think that is how it works.

As I say, I feel this energy sometimes, and it works whether you are alone or with others, and no matter what difficulties you have in your life, although of course maintaining it is much harder in conditions of stress. I find it is helping me manage stress–which I have a lot of at the moment–and work more effectively.

This energy is best developed through Kum Nye, in my view, which I have discussed in the past. It was a revelation to me, though, that my whiskey drinking could be adapted to this purpose.

I have had a lot of pain in my life–whether it’s because of objective difficulty or my own weakness, I can’t say, although it’s likely some combination–and that analgesic seems to complement well the reveries I was already doing on my meditation cushion. Things just flow out, and the effect lasts several days. Things that used to bother me don’t.

Yesterday I was thinking about anger. Anger is externally directed contracting energy, which I saw symbolized by < , where you look at it from the right to left. I don't know why that is the direction, but likely right brain to left brain. Whatever. That's my iconography, because it popped in my head. The use of will is =, where energy is balanced. The use of enjoyment and expansion is > . If you really enjoy something, do you need will or anger to do it, even if it is hard?

Then of course I got to thinking about unions. Posit a fixed number of people willing and able to work, and a fixed amount of work to be done. What unions do is increase unemployment by increasing project costs, while increasing wages for those who belong. If you pay one person $40/hour for something, you can’t pay 2 people $20. Since labor hours are what they are–if you build a five story building, it takes as long as it takes–if you require union participation, you also see a decrease in work.

What happens, then, [I am thinking here of government protected union cartels; I have no objection to unions people are free to join and leave, and to government contracts that are negotiated at actually prevailing–as opposed to imposed and artificially high–wages] is employment shrinks, and the work to be done shrinks, while the pockets of the unions expand. This is exactly what happened in the Great Depression. Hoover instituted what amounted to Union Scale wages (the Davis-Bacon Act, which is by the way still in force, and still driving up costs on all Federal projects), and of course FDR more or less granted the Unions the right to form legally protected cartels. Effect: mass unemployment, and economic malaise.

The point I wanted to make here, though, was that these effects are cumulative. The longer you allow the processes of contraction and contraction to continue, the worse things get. The people who fail to see these things are operating as if time did not exist. They are acting as if there is always a pool of workers, and a pool of money they are just trying to get their share of. But look at Detroit. IF you have a Union job, you’re paid great. But unemployment is huge, and now they are sucking money out of other States, by the means of the Federal Government supporting their pensions and medical benefits through the bailouts. It’s a black hole, but the people involved, many of them, can’t see it, since they lack the capacity for seeing the consequences of their actions on everyone around them. But they are shrinking.

Another example: sex. I think most people can agree that sex is best with someone you love deeply. Love is an intangible, but it is a flow that you can perceive readily enough. Good sex is expansive; there is much more involved than just physical friction. At its best–and I’ve never gotten there, but I can imagine this–it is mythic, IF you are relaxed and willing to let your consciousness go. It can enable you to tap deep into the very springs of primal consciousness, which in my view includes a vision of God.

This led to the thought that contracting sex is bad, and it is what is preached 24/7 by our media, which is confined to physical attraction, and physical friction, and devoid of a larger sense of wonder and purpose, and of course committment (which is the same as a larger context). It seems to me that prostitutes are honest about what they are doing, but women who allow themselves to be used are not. Most cannot REALLY endure that physical intimacy devoid of open compassion and love without losing some part of themselves. Many DO lose some part of themselves, in my view, as do the men.

An interesting corrollary to this is that the contraction is when women are treated as objects. Structurally, then, prostitutes and the kept women of the Middle East and Southeast Asia are the same: both have been turned from themselves into objects serving the interests of those with contracting minds, hearts, and energies.

I look at women, and most of them are up and down all day, feeling feelings all the time. Most men are like you take that basic process, and hit the Mute button. It’s still sort of going on, but inaudibly, and with much less range. Yet, if we value perceptual movement, women do more of it, in general. This makes them more spiritual, in general.

Socialism formally distances itself from what I have called in the Telearchic Cross the Systemic Dimension. This is the connection across time between purpose and outcome. It creates instead an Eternal Present. This is the system in Cuba, and that in North Korea. Nothing changes. Nobody moves. Nobody lives or dies. They are shadow-lit lands, living underwater for unendurable eternities (I let the poetic streak in me out from time to time). Think a fish tank, except the fish can’t move.

This is contraction. Broad-ly (yes, if you were wondering) speaking, expansiveness is a female trait, and contraction a male trait. Socialism is a masculine system, then, Liberalism a feminine system. Liberalism is nurturing not because the government can nurture, but rather because it does not STOP the processes of self liberation that occur constantly in all of us, absent restraint (contraction).

Think of very masculine systems. Take the Marine Corps. Everything is regimented. Or, as I’ve said, take Fascism: it is nothing but the extension of the Central Planning ethos of the military to the culture as a whole. Morality is produced centrally. The economy is planned centrally. Truth is distributed from a central point, and all power ends in one person. Communism is the same, but the person pretends to be a committee, and it pretends to care about you. Contraction.

Religions (religio means “to bind”) likewise contract. Now, you need some rules. You need boundaries. But as Lao Tzu said, you should “know the masculine, but keep to the feminine”.

Sometimes you need to nail people’s asses, but you also have to have tools other than a hammer, and you need to want to put that thing down as soon as you can. Violence and weapons are merely–sometimes–tools for building peace, which is the end goal.

We need to generalize this notion of Goodness, and people need to understand that there are practical, proven, effective methods for doing it, such that happiness becomes more likely for everyone.

What we’re doing sure as hell isn’t working. We are tightening into little balls of grief, envy, self destructive rage, and greed.

That’s enough wondering and wandering for now.

Watch this video “Doing the Continental”.
It almost made me want to cry with how innocent and yet fun it was. There is so much information in there, so much quality, such an open, expansive set of feelings, that complement in a wonderful way the hormones that were no doubt present as well.

Does this spirit still exist in this country? What are they playing in dance clubs, mainly? Hip hop. Music that is heavy, hard, aggressive, and focused purely on physical pleasure and domination. As I commented several weeks ago, we have had at least two big hits that dealt more or less openly with S & M. That is actually the name of Rihanna’s song.

Listen to this song for a few moments–Justin Timberlake’s “Sexy Back“

This is the sexuality of machines. It is contracting, compulsive, and utterly devoid of pleasure.

Returning to the theme of a few posts ago, I think sadomasochism is best understood as an effort to get into the open a covert reality: that of being assaulted qualitatively. In regard to modern sexuality, I think most women are in effect assaulted the first time they have sex by doing it WITHOUT LOVE. Boys say what they need to to get in their mouth and pants, and then abandon them. This hurts.

Consciously choosing pain is perhaps a way of managing it. Consciously inflicting pain is a way of expressing anger.

This is all very sad. Socialism, as a doctrine which effectively requires women to act like men in matters of sexuality, and which requires men to act like women everywhere else, is not just unnatural and perverse, but very indicative of cultural decimation, and the impossibility of an innocent existence in an intact cultural space.

Socialism makes “home” impossible.

It occurred to me the other day that the essence of the tactic of Alinsky is cultivating a sense of moral superiority without ever developing a coherent morality. It is binding (remember the root word for religion means to bind) people together in a shared feeling, but not philosophy.

Often, we focus on the effects of Alinsky on enemies, since his principles of character assassination and vilification plainly work at disrupting rational debate; we forget, though, that they also keep the herd in line.

“Good morning, my name is Bob. Welcome to Bob’s Engine and Philosophical Repair Shop. What brings you in today?”

“Well, I just can’t seem to get started. And when I get going, the power just isn’t there to go far.”

“I see, well let’s take a look. Do you spend a lot of time on computers?”

“Yes, I’m on-line at least 5 hours a day.”

“Do you believe in God?”

“No, I’m actually a big fan of Richard Dawkins”.

“How about your love-life? Do you believe in love? Have you ever experienced it?”

“Not really. I was actually pretty lucky, and first got laid when I was 15 with a girl I went to grade school with. It didn’t really work out, and she’s in a punk rock band somewhere down south. I hook up with girls now and then–I usually meet them on-line–but nothing serious. I never really wanted kids, and the idea of getting married scares me”.

“OK. What about politics? You a fan of Obama?”

“I’m actually disappointed in him. He seems to have sold out to Corporate America, and is continuing those stupid wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

“Right. Here’s my diagnosis: you’re not going anywhere because you don’t know where you want to go. How can you get started without a destination? How can you go fast in a direction you don’t have? You’re stuck.

First step is to expand your world. This includes opening up to the possibility of philosophical optimism. Get the book “Quantum Reality”, by Nick Herbert. He is a good physicist, and knows his stuff. The net is that the best minds on the planet cannot seem to locate a physical reality unaffected by consciousness. This militates against orthodox materialism, and opens up the possibility of something like God, the survival of death, and the non-physical interconnectedness of all things.

Next, read something by Dean Radin. I read “The Conscious Universe”. It details the evidence for things like psi, which has become overwhelming, even though many will not admit it. Quantum physics, though, opens up the physical possibility for these things.

Third, read this free book all the way through, and follow up on any particular lines of research that interest you. I enjoyed the book “The First Psychic”, by Peter Lamont.

If you do all this with an open mind, it should get you some space for dreaming, which is to say perceptual movement.

Next, read everything on this website. Having written it, I’m a bit partial to it, but it comes out of a similar problem to what you are presenting to me.

Last, but not least, remember that the excitement in life comes from small things, not big things, and that if you get good at building from small things, then you’ll get all the satisfaction you deserve. Buy the book Kum Nye relaxation, by Tarthang Tulku, and incorporate it in your life.

That, and a little elbow grease, should get you on your way. Thanks for stopping in at Bob’s Engine and Philosophical Repair. Philosophy: use it or lose it.”

This phrase popped in my head the other day. This is an apt metaphor, I think, for living systems. We are not fully free–you have genetics, hormones, nutritional imbalances and other influences external to consciousness–but my God we bloom.

There is a John Ruskin quote which I have long thought summed up the Leftist creed admirably, but I can’t find the damn book. It’s from his essay–an apparently pivotal influence on Gandhi–“Unto this last”. The net of it is that one must be held accountable to one’s principles, and not to the outcome of actions based upon them.

That is the sum of the problem. It is perfect since he was in fact an early and very influential advocate for Socialism, who was constantly advocating for morality in a strident voice; and yet he was a pedophile, who drove a young girl–I believe his niece–mad. She literally spent most of her life in a mental institution. He eventually went mad himself. Go to San Francisco: those are his people.

If one says that one’s principle is to be guided by principle, what one has actually said is that one is to be guided by ideas which can neither be vindicated nor negated by outside events. They connect to the external world not at all. This is why Leftism is so popular among intellectuals: all they have to do is think, talk, and write about; no one ever, within their community, feels the need to measure any concrete result.

Detroit is Detroit because of “urban renewal” policies. Some renewal.

This post is a bit of a repeat of things I have said before, but this point is critical to grasp clearly: if you are not naming in advance your desired outcome, then verifying your success or failure subsequently, and making intelligent changes as needed, then the actual principle upon which you are operating is solipsistic narcissism. The rest is words without referents.

This would patently apply to most academics in fields in which nothing ever actually gets physically done. They are not used to measuring anything–how do you measure an essay?–and see no reason to change their mindselt when it comes to their politics. That is how Fascist nations like China and Cuba get their approval.

To say “my principle is my principle” is to say “there is no there here–I am the world and all that matters in it.”

One extension of this baffling stupidity is that Leftism does not work well as a creed in building happiness even for Leftists. You want to find a lot of screwed up, confused, nihilistic people, look for heavy concentrations of Leftists.

I ran into something the other day I have never seen before: watered down hard liquor. In Ohio, apparently, only State-controlled stores are allowed to sell hard liquor, so you have in the grocery stores 40 proof whiskey.

At the liquor store, I was told that the State tells them what they can stock, and how much to charge; and if I wanted to use a debit card, there was a $1 tax imposed for hard liquor, but not for beer or wine.

Being me, I got to thinking about the Constitutionality of this, and what my thoughts were about that extent of direct government interference in what should be a free market, but was no longer.

Liquor is one of those things that can plausibly be argued to exist in the moral domain. Alcohol has destroyed more lives and families than all the drugs ever invented combined. It’s not even close. People drink and drive and kill people. They beat their kids and wives. They lose their jobs. They get in fights. They kill themselves.

At the same time, it is my understanding that beer is the drink of choice of most alcoholics, and certainly one can get drunk easily enough on a sufficient quantity of ANYTHING that has alcohol, so making it harder to get hard liquor does not necessarily cut down on ANY of the undesirable behaviors.

Constitutionally, it would seem to me this should be acceptable. The Constitution does not protect liquor sales, although it would, I think, prevent States from banning liquor imports from other States. Actually, though, I know that some States ban the shipping of alcohol.

Unrelated, too, but relevant, is the fact that it would seem the Federal Government ought to ban the de facto prohibitions on competition in the insurance and other realms that some States impose. For example, in Alabama Blue Cross/Blue Shield–the local branch–has some 85% of the market. Why? Nobody else is allowed in there. I would suspect rates are as high as one normally sees in conditions of legally protected cartels.

I’m not going to take the time to work through all the ramifications of this, but thought I’d pass a few preliminary thoughts along.