Moderates United

So I read some other rapper wants someone else (not him, not him) to fuck Kanye up.

And I am left to wonder, AGAIN, why the black community thinks Trump is out to get them.  Trump has always been very open to minority participation and success.  That’s why he got an award on the same platform as Rosa Parks and Muhammad Ali.  That is why Jesse Jackson partnered with him on minority outreach.

If I were to pick one single aspect of public black life which most opens them to the accusation that they are inferior in some way–to be clear, to racist beliefs–it would be their inability to see, after fifty years, how blatantly they have been used and abused by the Democrat party, which was ALWAYS the party of Jim Crow.  There was never a Republican Jim Crow, only Democrat.  The  Republican Party was founded to end slavery, and to some vastly lesser extent, to end racism.  Republicans oppressed Southern whites, but all the racist oppression: 100% Democrat.

And now, not to be Democrat is to hate blacks?

This, to be clear, is why they are told to hate Trump: he isn’t a Democrat, and, they are told, only Democrats protect blacks.  But how?  What have they REALLY done to protect blacks?  Free phones with 150 minutes of speech a month?  Slightly better food stamps?  Seriously?

As Kanye pointed out, Chicago did not change in ANY WAY in Obama’s 8 years, other than that it got more violent, the economy got worse, and the educational system either stayed the same or also got worse.  And Obama was from Chicago.  Do you think he gave a shit about the blacks who voted for him?  Of course not.  He was more worried about the price of arugula.

In my current Kum Nye practice session, I am to end with a 10-15 minute meditation on love.  I am not comfortable thinking about love, but I did it anyway.

And it occurred to me some of the different things that happen under the name “love”.  There is the person who sweeps in and takes over, who makes your bed, and ties your shoes, and packs your lunch and tells you where to go.  This is “cloning of the self”.  It is an aggression, committed by someone who wants to see more of themselves in the world.  It has nothing to do with you at all.

Then there is the person who just wants to leave their scent everywhere, who affects a benign presence, and more or less “blesses” you.

There is the desperate need to get, from romantic love, what one did not get as a child.  Both people demand of the other everything they have, while giving only their need.  Sex can tie this together for a time, but not forever.  It spins apart in various ways, although sometimes someone–usually the woman–can keep it together by giving much more than she gets, over a long period of time.  The man, in this scenario, remains a child, with a lover/mother.

And it does occur to me that how a mother separates from a child, particularly a boy, is of vital psychodynamic importance.  There has to be a union when the child is young, and a specific separation at an appropriate age.  As I have said, I do believe in the Oedipal Complex, but I think Freud got it backwards: I think the children imbibe the unhealthy attachment of their mother, who is often using their child as an object to get the love they do not get from the father.

What I feel is that real love, true love, is a taking away of affect, not an addition.  What I feel, what I see in my waking dreams, is all of us living in water, connected, naked to one another.  We all live in bubbles which can be made opaque, which can be made larger and smaller.  Love is not adding or taking anything away.

I am not sure what I mean by this.  I am speaking aloud.  Perhaps I will see more in time.

It is really a remarkable thing, coming into life with post traumatic stress.  The worst that can happen, has already happened, and then used as a baseline.  People like me are in some respects strangers, at least among those who have not suffered such stress. 

But it is hard–impossible, really–to know for sure how many people are affected by Developmental Trauma Disorder.  It is a new diagnosis.  It appears in many ways.  It is perhaps like an inflammation of the soul.  It is perhaps the true genesis of all evil.

I was reading an article by Stephen Pinker (I saw his picture for the first time, and was struck by his dandyish hair style, and presumably underlying sense of affectation), and it occurred to me that, while Reason is vitally important for all human undertakings, that he is asking the wrong question.

The question is not what is rational, but how do we become fully rational human beings.  He, himself, is clearly not a rational human being.  He rejects the science of the afterlife, of psi, of everything non-physical, but extremely empirical and hence scientific on his own terms.

I am tempted to postulate that people who “live in their heads”, who overemphasize reason and rationality, might be presumed to suffer as a group from developmental trauma.  They were not loved enough at some point. They don’t REALLY understand love.

Reason is a natural outgrowth of emotional health.  If you are trying to get from A to B, then reason is the best way to do it.  Since you are emotionally healthy, you will reliably choose the best path. 

But reason tells us NOTHING about what to value, and about when protecting our own emotional health might require detours and rerouting on otherwise straight lines.  It is rational to protect one’s emotional well being, but if one is insensible of what that might mean, then this aspect of rationality is lost.

And in the same sense that Robespierre trod a straight line from the Revolution equaling human well being, to the destruction of all possible opponents of the Revolution also equaling human well being, I think it quite appropriate to fear, in the abstract, all people who would fetishize both “science” and “reason”.

If one assumes perfect rationality is possible, then there is no logical reason it cannot be canonized in a single authority with supreme power.  It is made supremely powerful because it is supremely rational, and because by definition what it considers an abomination must be wrong.  If it follows the methods of “science”, then it is infallible, just as we are told, in many ways, that the IPCC is infallible, and the “science is settled”.  Those spouting this view lack the political clout to create their tribunal, thus far, but the principle is there already, and the social support for it is there as well, among many, who already clamor for the heads of dissenters.

In reality, of course, a singular authority represents a perceptual choke point, which kills many possible ideas.  This is the reason “science”, properly understood, can NEVER be understood as anything other than ALL the opinions represented by people who follow the method.  If it is uniform, it can be ASSUMED to be dead.  Where there is only one opinion, it can only mean the others have been killed, figuratively or literally.

As I have pointed out before, Newton’s Laws of Motion, which are as canonical as a body of ideas describing physical reality can be, were shown to be incomplete and wrong in some cases.  This is why we now use General Relativity which, itself, may one day be superseded.  As a final answer for the nature of reality, it is clearly wrong, as it cannot incorporate the discoveries of Quantum Physics.

A better tomorrow will necessarily, structurally, need to begin with comprehensive, deep, emotional health and well being.  It will necessarily begin with people learning about, getting in touch with, and learning to meet their true emotional needs.

This is the only logical approach.

So I listened to Charles Duhigg’s book “The Power of Habit” and had many ideas.  I will share those I can remember intelligibly here.  Those I can’t remember intelligibly will trickle back to wherever ideas which have been thought and then unthought go.  They are likely still there somewhere.  I may yet find them again, but presumably they will have changed clothes by then.

Basic idea: Humans have space in our behavioral memory allotted to what amount to programmable instincts.  We are like birds in that we can feel the need to nest or mate, but unlike birds in that the precise nature of our instincts can be made to adapt, in real time, to current circumstances.  We call these programmable instincts “habits”.

A culture is the sum total of the habits of a given group of people who have bonded together to some greater or lesser extent.  How such habits form is a formally complex process which is not replicable, but which is comprehensible, as a series of responses which are more and less effective to the problems of human life as they relate to confusion about the nature of life and the world, the concrete problems of physical survival, and the social problems of how to make group decisions and how to concentrate or distribute power to either optimize happiness on one pole, or safety–or perceived safety–on the other.

This means that who we “are” within a cultural context is a set of habits we did not invent, do not understand, do not execute consciously for the most part, and which confine us in important ways, while also allowing us to belong to a protective social order and to meet our needs for community and interpersonal connection.

I propose that for habits we can substitute “dharmas”.  Now, I am a bit fuzzy on the Buddhist use of the word, but it is clearly applicable to Hindu notions of place and duty.  As I understand the Buddhist use of the word, they include a roughly Hindu notion, but also use it to refer to what exists, the bits and things floating around, understood abstractly.  Here is one selection:

Mahayana texts sometimes use the word dharma to mean something like “manifestation of reality.” A literal translation of the Heart Sutra contains the line “Oh, Sariputra, all dharmas [are] emptiness” (iha Sariputra Sarva Dharma sunyata).
Very basically, this is saying that all phenomena (dharmas) are empty (sunyata) of self-essence.
You see this usage also in the Lotus Sutra; for example, this is from Chapter 1 (Kubo and Yuyama translation):
I see bodhisattvasWho have perceived the essential characterOf all dharmas to be without duality,Just like empty space.Here, “all dharmas” means something like “all phenomena.”

To be without form is to be without habits.  Physiologically, psychologically, this is very, very hard.

Duhigg talks about habits as constituted by a trigger, a behavior, and a reward.  They are conditioned responses, in other words.

Here is the thing: the trigger is most often a feeling of some sort.  A feeling flashes before your inner eyes–perhaps so fast you don’t even feel it any more–and you find yourself doing something which seems logical, but you don’t know why.  Having done it, you feel better.  Not doing it elicits all sorts of bad feelings, notably craving.

Craving–the Buddhist Tanha–is the word Duhigg uses, and it first occurs in the case of monkeys who were more or less addicted to blackberry juice.  Once they got the jones, all they wanted to do was get more juice.  Their brains were rewired.

One can easily look at the Buddhist spiritual path, particularly, as oriented around nothing more or less than superior mental health.  Logically, if we can learn to avoid constant cravings, if we can learn to deal well with uncertainty and change, then we will be happier all around.

Within Kum Nye, the whole point of the thing is to feel what you are feeling, to find what is hidden, to find what slithers around in the darkness, or in the periphery of your vision, or which moves so fast you think you are imagining things.  All of these things lead, ultimately, to habits which have cravings associated with them, and following unfreedom and behavioral compulsion.  If you stop to feel, you automatically stop the looped behavior. If you give that feeling freedom to breathe, it can go anywhere it wants, which makes you more authentic and more intuitive.

Returning to this conception of culture, Duhigg offers what to me was a good analogy (although of course I am extending it much farther than he did).  Researchers watching mice learn a maze noted that the first time they walk it, they are hypervigilent.  They proceed slowly, sniff everything, look at everything, pause often, and generally expend a lot of energy.  After they have completed the maze a few times, they go faster.  Eventually they run immediately to where the cheese is.

Living within a culture is like this.  It takes a bit to become acculturated, but once you have, many things, many behaviors, happen automatically.  You celebrate the 4th of July by grilling out.  You celebrate Christmas with a Christmas tree and gifts.  The details both vary by culture and define that culture.

With learned/conditioned behaviors, you get dopamine reinforcement, which is something Duhigg did not know about, or chose not to discuss.  Dopamine is an inherent reward for a given behavior.  It is the completion hormone (is it a hormone?  Neurotransmitter?  I’m not sure), at least as I understand it.

Living within a culture is living within known bounds is living within a maze you understand and know how to get rewards out of.  Culture is in some respects a dopamine dominated system, and an organized method for getting behavioral reinforcement.

That comprises most of my notes.  Some of the ideas I had don’t fit neatly here, and I don’t feel like making a follow up post.

But there are some very interesting ideas here.  I do believe in the afterlife.  I do believe we go on.  But it is also possible, I feel, to dumb Buddhism down to a concrete method for developing mental health here, now, before we go anywhere at all, and one which works even if you are a materialistic fundamentalist.

The phrase I think I would use to describe this film is “sympathetic absurdity”.  He show how ridiculous, how ponderous, how lustful we can be for “life”, however we define it, and how these sentiments, which we hope will be pure, deep, profound, can often shade quickly into absurdity, without our seeing it.  He is not saying life is absurd, but that Ferdinand is absurd, and that those who are like him are likewise absurd. 

Do you think your life will change in profound ways by running away?  Don’t count on it.  You simply create a world of new problems, which you will not be equipped to solve.  Stay in the fold.  Leave only when you are ready.  Less is very often more.

The boldest lines are sometimes the shortest lines.  La Ligne Chance, I think was the French.  You want a long line, one that goes over the horizon.

I was having dreams of madness last night.  I could not remember where I belonged, where I worked, who I worked for.  I wasn’t wearing the right sort of suit.  One of the most successful hyperconformists I have ever met–a guy who was making half a million dollars a year in his twenties–was telling me I needed to get my shit together.

But what I have learned is that our fear of emotional conditions–here, a break from the values of our country–quite often feed into a panic loop that then creates truly bad conditions.  I’m not crazy.  My reality testing is quite good.  I’ve met schizophrenics–we have one in the family–and I am not schizophrenic.

What I realize though is that it IS a sort of madness to see and FEEL, emotionally and viscerally, how contingent the values of our society–and any society–truly are.  They could easily be something else entirely.  And those of this nation, at this time, are truly insane.  Money?  What good is money, truly, when you have lost your soul? I say this not to judge, but to ask what is, to me, an obvious question.

All people who aspire to a genuinely spiritual path must be revolutionaries.  There is no other way.  Everywhere there is the bracken and detritus of centuries of dead habit, of thoughtlessness, of separation from primary awareness.

A sufficiently spiritually aware person could be dropped into any time and any culture, and quickly find their way.  The essence of spiritual truths is that they never change.  The Way never changes, even if it is ALWAYS specific to a time and place.  There is the inner and the outer.

I will make my habit post today.  I have been postponing it both out of a fear of pain, and out of a sense that, in the end, it may simply be mediocre and that I will feel stupid, which would actually be a bit comical, as it would imply I am taking myself vastly too seriously, which I am quite sure I do.  Life is simultaneously a deadly serious business, and not serious at all.  Living well means moving flexibly between those two poles as the occasion calls for it.  Sometimes being a good person means being serious.  Sometimes it is laughing and joking whole-heartedly, and in a spirit of innocence.  I need to do more of the latter.  It would be good for me.  I have a very robust sense of humor, and a very quick wit, when I am feeling good.

I am out of my comfort zone, even as it tenuously exists for me, but this feeling is good.  It is a step into the light, after long darkness.

I don’t get out much, intellectually.  I don’t read journals diligently, and I’m not really up on what people are talking about.  I go to about 5 websites habitually, and that is it.

So if I am stating the obvious, and the already-much-discussed, please forgive me.

There are twin dangers with AI.  There is obviously the Terminator scenario.  That one has of course been much discussed.

But the other is that it is a force multiplier for HUMANS, because it is a THOUGHT multiplier.  Used properly, it makes the possessor vastly more intelligent. It also automates many things which might once have been done by fallible humans.  You can give orders to robots which you know they will obey faithfully and diligently.

The world is filled with lunatics, and a great many of them ride their obsessions to great wealth and power.  It is right and proper to fear technologies which make small groups disproportionately capable.

As with all weapons, one can hope that the good guys with AI can counterbalance the bad guys.  Getting to the party early always has advantages, which dwindle as more and more join in.

As I ponder this film, I realize that Godard was satirizing a certain type.  He did call him “the fool”, and I think the ending makes his intent clear.  And his name was Ferdinand.  It truly is a funny movie, and  whimsical in very good ways.  I actually think I may watch it again.  It’s not really a noir.  I’m not sure it’s classifiable other than as extremely French.  I honestly can’t think of anything else it reminds me of strongly.

There are a lot of laugh out loud moments, which are memorable in the sort of way Monty Python or SNL skits were at their best, in that they become funnier with time. It is the oddest juxtaposition of moments I can remember, which include not least the musical and dance numbers.

I actually can’t remember ever laughing at a French movie other than Monseiur (?) Hulot.

It is an odd thing that speaking of life and death, of the felt sense of “living”, of love and betrayal, have come to seem deep.  This movie, obviously, opposed commercialism, and opposed Communism, Coke and Leninism, as they succinctly summarized it.  Stylistically, it was quite interesting, with the many characters at the party more or less literally speaking commercials.

And it was a funny movie. Black humor, for sure, but funny. And completely unpredictable.  It was perhaps the most ideosyncratic movie I have ever seen.  I was initially thinking it was a vastly superior “Badlands”, or perhaps even “Thelma and Louise”–as it starts similar in premise–but then it went its own way.

Good movies stir up things in the viewer, and this one did in me.  It is not inaccurate in some respects to say I live on an island, and send out bottles, via this blog, to the vast ocean around me.  I look at people madly trying to find meaning in their lives, to find the FEELING of being alive, and failing.  Everywhere I see failure, and I do not want to surround myself with it, with glib answers, and emotional superficiality.  I don’t like feeling misunderstood, and I can’t find anyone who understands me.  Not yet.  It seems I will need to fashion that world myself, with great effort, great difficulty, but victory will be sweet, if I can reach it in this life.

And I think of the Tibetans, living alone for 3 years, 3 weeks and 3 days.  Do you think that they, as human beings, fail to be confronted by all the same existential anxieties, fears, confusions?  Is it deep to suppose that style, and wit, and basic questions constitute profundity?  It is easy, watching the French in particular, although they are not uniquely guilty, to think that many people want to answer yes.  The “deepest” among us see little, and seemingly as a rule find small struggles to be insurmountable mountains.

When I made that post on Hitler, I felt death in me for hours afterwards.  What sort of world do we live on?  We live in a world where we have to face death, face despair, face hopelessness, face confusion, and stare them down, to the best of our abilities, all while doing our level best to become stronger by helping one another, and sharing what wisdom we can.

This is HARD.  It is very hard.  This is a difficult game, one hard to play well, easy to fail at.  But it is not an impossible game.  It is reasonable to look to the saints and spiritual heroes among us and see that a way can be found.  And seeking it is our job.  It is the point of the light in the sky, the flow of our waters, the air in our lungs, the ground under our feet.

And I cannot help but feel, again, that Kum Nye is the most direct path I have found to what everyone wants and craves.  The sense of being alive is the POINT of the whole thing.  And that is only preparatory. We are so fallen, that we have to begin far, far behind where more advanced peoples would have begun.  What is confusing to us was self evident long ago.  Of this I feel certain.  All of our technology, or most of it, is making us stupider in all the ways which really matter.

This movie is crazy.  I’m taking a break.

I’ll share this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=15&v=HWaG3cQGURc

It is quite reasonable for intelligent, reasonable people to conclude with reasonably high confidence that the “gas attack” wasn’t.

Then I read this: https://www.infowars.com/trump-seals-jfk-documents-until-2021/

Why is Trump sealing this evidence?  What CURRENT CIA operations could be jeopardized by disclosure?  He ordered that the names of any living agents be expunged, but that should suffice.  What leverage does the CIA have on our President, the elected representative of the people, and the one man most tasked with the protection of our Republic?

Then I read this: https://lawyerscommitteefor9-11inquiry.org/lc-doj-grand-jury-petition/

This is on the plus side.  When I discuss conspiracies, many I simply leave as “unknown but interesting and possible.”  9/11 WAS a coverup.  Period.  There is ZERO doubt in my mind.  None.  The evidence those buildings were subjected to controlled demolition is incontrovertible, which is why assuming a cover up is necessary.  NIST was not and is not incompetent.

And the Alaska works remains on-going: https://www.ae911truth.org/news/444-update-from-dr-leroy-hulsey-on-the-uaf-wtc7-study

It’s of course possible that all involved have been receiving threats, and having odd things happen to them.  I obviously can’t know.  But I do also feel that there are multiple sides in this whole thing.  It is not the case that ALL members of the CIA and FBI etc. are venal, corrupt, evil human beings.  Merely too many.  This means that the one element which might make those threats has to keep other elements in mind.  The bad people know who they are, but the good people can’t know for sure.  All of them are highly intelligent and well trained and experienced in deception.

But what seems more likely in this particular case is that you have a career Structural Engineer whose career will end with, will be most associated with, this study.  It is all most people will know or remember about him.  And when it is released, so too will the wolves.  There will be howling, growling, shouting and shoving.

He has to be SURE it is right, that there is nothing in there, no small flaw, which critics can seize on to invalidate the whole project.  And in something that complex, that is a sizeable task.  It may not be possible at all, but it seems likely he wants to get as close to perfection as possible.  I would submit that about 95% is probably good enough to get the thing into the public media.

These things have a way of catching fire.  The thing is most people are unwilling to accept all the implications involved in the idea that our government, from on high, is capable of mass murder, the willful manipulation of public feeling for the purposes of war and implementation of tyranny, and that masses of people associated with it can be so corrupted as to cooperate in the project, IN AMERICA.

We want to believe that all these agencies and institutions to which we have ceded so much power have not become evil.  But it seems that large segments of them, in fact, have.  Google has become evil, and not being evil is in its motto.  Money and power make people funny.

It’s hard to predict the effect of a well engineered study being released by a highly credible professional, after a long term and well financed project, which indicates that 9/11 was CLEARLY, unmistakably, an inside job, and one covered up by other elements of the government who can be named.

I feel, though, that it could be substantial.  That is one area where bipartisan outrage would be well warranted.  It was not Bush.  Bush and Obama and Clinton and George H.W. seem to have all been playing on the same team.  I hate to go there, and would like to be wrong, but that seems the most sensible hypothesis. 

It’s small wonder I find myself thinking about death some days.  I’m not melancholy: it’s just hard to see how all this ends well.  I think of the Ray Bradbury story where everyone on the planet has the same dream the same night that the world will end that night, and the couple with kids puts their kids to bed like normal, then goes to bed themselves.  What else can you do?

I try daily to tell truths I am not seeing represented elsewhere.  It is all I can do.  Accepting and embracing and finding joy in the middle of impermanence is perhaps the core task of life on this Earth.