Moderates United

According to the well known reference source “Good Will Hunting”, the NSA is something like 7 times larger than the CIA, making the CIA a good front for our intelligence apparatus, but largely irrelevant.  Some long time ago it was decided by the powers that be that capturing electronic transmissions was much preferable to using human beings in the gathering of secrets held by our enemies, friends, and everyone in between.

It seems to me likely that cell phones would have been used in the coordination of the Benghazi attack.  What did we capture?  What did we know?  Would the calls not have started long before the stinky mobs in bathrobes started showing up?  This is a question worth asking.

Is it possible that we were allowing Libyan Intelligence–perhaps with CIA supervision–to operate torture chambers in the back of the Embassy, without telling Christopher Stevens, that he found out, and that he was killed because he was going to tell people?  It sure seems like nobody in Obama’s inner circle was concerned about his death.  It also seems likely that Obama and Clinton would have been willing to do nearly anything to make their Libya policy a success, or at least seem that way.

I don’t think more than about one in a hundred people who claim to adhere to a religion of any sort–certainly Christianity in our country–REALLY believe everything they are supposed to believe.

Most Christians are taught social conformity through a sort of Pavlovian conditioning.  In many Protestant sects they are taught to fear hell, and learn to more or less behave through fear and social reinforcement.  Catholics are simply born into a community, and if you want to remain in that community, you do what everyone else is doing.

Many Christians remember the fate of the Sodomites, but not “judge not lest ye be judged”, and “take no thought for the morrow; sufficient unto the day is the evil therein”.

This article is interesting, and I will quote bit of it at length:

Many years ago, a team of researchers at the department of
anthropology at the University of Minnesota decided to put this
association to the test. They studied certain fringe religious groups,
such as fundamentalist Baptists, Pentecostalists and the snake-handlers
of West Virginia, to see if they showed the particular type of
psychopathology associated with mental illness. Members of mainstream
Protestant churches from a similar social and financial background
provided a good control group for comparison. Some of the wilder
fundamentalists prayed with what can only be described as great and
transcendental ecstasy, but there was no obvious sign of any particular
psychopathology among most of the people studied. After further
analysis, however, there appeared a tendency to what can only be
described as mental instability in one particular group. The study was
blinded, so that most of the research team involved with questionnaires
did not have access to the final data. When they were asked which group
they thought would show the most disturbed psychopathology, the whole
team identified the snake-handlers. But when the data were revealed, the
reverse was true: there was more mental illness among the conventional
Protestant churchgoers – the “extrinsically” religious – than among the
fervently committed.

A Harvard psychologist named Gordon Allport
did some key research in the 1950s on various kinds of human prejudice
and came up with a definition of religiosity that is still in use today.
He suggested that there were two types of religious commitment –
extrinsic and intrinsic. Extrinsic religiosity he defined as religious
self-centredness. Such a person goes to church or synagogue as a means
to an end – for what they can get out of it. They might go to church to
be seen, because it is the social norm in their society, conferring
respectability or social advancement. Going to church (or synagogue)
becomes a social convention.

Allport thought that intrinsic
religiosity was different. He identified a group of people who were
intrinsically religious, seeing their religion as an end in itself. They
tended to be more deeply committed; religion became the organising
principle of their lives, a central and personal experience. In support
of his research, Allport found that prejudice was more common in those
individuals who scored highly for extrinsic religion.
The evidence
generally is that intrinsic religiosity seems to be associated with
lower levels of anxiety and stress, freedom from guilt, better
adjustment in society and less depression. On the other hand, extrinsic
religious feelings – where religion is used as a way to belong to and
prosper within a group – seem to be associated with increased tendencies
to guilt, worry and anxiety.

To my way of thinking “religion”, which comes from a root word meaning “to bind”, is unhealthy.  It is too monolithic, too large, to impersonal, too inaccessible.  I have tried to come up with new words, but the best I have at this point is “Wholotropic Telearchy”, which is unwieldy.  “That” would be a good substitute, when referring to something existing and organic. Names are only needed outside the circle.

I think a proper spiritual unit is about the size of a classroom, roughly 24 people.  24 people can know one another well.

What the goal is, though, is shared understanding, shared commitments, to one another, and to everyone else.

As I think about it, somebody came up with the word “holons”, which I will spell “Wholons’.  That is not bad.  I have proposed “bohannon” for reasons which frankly are opaque even to me.

What I would propose is the obvious thought that what is ALIVE, MOVES.  Things that don’t move, that don’t grow, that don’t interact with the world at least through a need for food and oxygen, are not alive. 

Something driven down into the ground with a stake, and to which an endless array of ropes is attached, is not alive, not spiritual, not Good.

I am moving.  Interesting things may be on the way. 

This is really quite wonderful, and worth the read in its entirety.  I of course have something to say at the end.

1 Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven.

2 Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.

3 But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth:

4 That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly.

5 And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the
hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in
the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say
unto you, They have their reward.

6 But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet,
and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in
secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.

7 But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.

8 Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.

9 After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.

10 Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.

11 Give us this day our daily bread.

12 And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.

13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.

14 For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you:

15 But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

16 Moreover when ye fast, be not, as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance: for they disfigure their faces, that they may appear unto men to fast. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.

17 But thou, when thou fastest, anoint thine head, and wash thy face;

18 That thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father which is in secret: and thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly.

19 Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:

20 But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:

21 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

22 The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.

23 But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!

24 No man can serve two masters: for either he will
hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and
despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

25 Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?

26 Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not,
neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father
feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?

27 Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?

28 And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:

29 And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

30 Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?

31 Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?

32 (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.

33 But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.

34 Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for
the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto
the day is the evil thereof.

I woke up this morning thinking “seek ye first the kingdom of God”, and started crying.  I don’t know why.  My detractors (sundry) will likely term me whiny, or mentally unbalanced, or [does it really matter?].  I try to tell the truth on this blog.  God only knows how rare full sincerity is in on this Earth.  People are like hardened Earth, having forgotten rain.  I certainly don’t tell all, but what I tell is my truth, relatively unfiltered. And it helps that while I don’t exactly hide my name, I don’t put it out there either.

Heaven is on Earth.  Heaven is a state of mind.  It is an openness to experience, an emotional strength that enables you to persists in the face of grief, heartache and disappointment.  None of those things is real, in the end.  All of us are granted access to infinite light at the end of our days if we just soldier on as well as we can.

I watched “Cold Mountain” last night for the second time, and after having forgotten some of the plot twists.  What I had not forgotten was the old lady in the woods, who even while loving her goat slit its throat because someone needed to eat to live.  She did not harden her heart, or engage in useless sentimentality because it pleased her. She did what had to be done because it had to be done.

If you ponder the whole of the plotline, there is a theme of destiny, not less weak than in Forest Gump (which is in many respects as profound a meditation on love as any I’ve seen).  As Maddy put it:

See, I think there’s a plan. There’s a design for each and every one of
us. You look at nature. Bird flies somewhere, picks up a seed, shits the
seed out, plant grows. Bird’s got a job, shit’s got a job, seed’s got a
job. And you’ve got a job. 

The Kingdom of Heaven is your job, your duty–your dharma, as the Hindus would put it, and as the Buddhists would put it with a slightly different meaning.  It is accepting whatever hand you were dealt with grace and even pride.  That is all God wants, in my view, all He needs: your destiny.

Work hard and be well.  Perhaps that is the whole creed.  And when that doesn’t work, repeat.

And with respect to the verses above, is it not obvious that if you are simply erecting a facade, it will blow over in any wind?  Build something worth building.

And if you place your trust in work and sincerity and in a desire to be good, this does not mean you will be fed. It does not mean you will be clothed.  It means you can ACCEPT this.  Is it not better to be poor in sober self respect, than the richest man on Earth who hates himself?

The things that matter cannot be weighed or laid next to a ruler.  Death is no end, unless it starts in your heart; and it continues until you remember life.

The light in Your eyes fills my cauldron and sparks fire to warm it.
Its boil illuminates and perfumes my room.

Drink and be well, You say.

From my planner.  I’m cleaning up, so it’s type ’em up, or not.  I obviously went with A.

“Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage.  The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.”  William Ellery Channing.

“Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little”.  Edmund Burke

“Remember, a person who wins success may have been counted out many times before.  He wins because he refused to give up.”  Kemmons Wilson

“It is the character of a brave and resolute man not to be ruffled by adversity and not to desert his post.”  Cicero.

“Believe it is possible to solve your problems.  Tremendous things happen to the believer.  So believe the answer will come, It will.”  Norman Vincent Peale.

“Only those are fit to live who do not fear to die; and none are fit to die who have shrunk from the joy of life and the duty of life.  Both life and death are parts of the same Great Adventure.”  TR

“A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral”.  Antoine de Saint-Exupery

“Real difficulties can be overcome; it is only the imaginary ones that are unconquerable.”  Theodore N. Vail.

I have had a very pleasant morning listing to selections from Handel’s Harp Concertos, and some of Bach’s Suites for Solo Cello.  Now, some Nina Simone, then some Steven Reich.

And it occurs to me that if I had to give thanks for one thing today, it would be music.  Think about how restricted the best music was just one hundred years ago.  Now, you can wake up and download things that are beautiful and make you feel better instantly.  You get the best of the best.

Yellow Hat: in de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats method, you analyze issues in 6 ways: determining what the goal is; putting all the information you have on a figurative or literal wall; figuring out what is bad or risky; figuring out what is good and safe; determining how you feel about things; and generating creative alternatives.

We tend to focus on the downside, on what bad COULD happen.  That is the Black Hat.  It is the hat par excellance for engineers.  You don’t want optimists designing bridges.  But it is not inherently a creative hat.  It is not one that leads to building, but to risk remediation.

The Yellow Hat is the good side.  It would be the preferred hat of entrepreneurs and sales people,who either don’t start or don’t last long if they can’t access a well of optimism.

I am frequently a “nattering nabob of negativism” (I’ve always liked that phrase, not least because nobody says “nabob) any more. I talk disaster.  I talk Fascism.  I talk waves of evil and darkness.

Today, though, I am going to spin things in a positive way, to the extent possible.

First off, Obama’s real intentions.  The owner of my company went to a talk with Mitch McConnell, and what he said was that Obama and his inner circle want to recreate the French system, their approach to social welfare, unemployment, the environment, etc.  This is not Communism.  The French, in point of fact, have had a robust Communist Party since Ho Chi Minh and others founded it just after the Bolshevik coup in Russia.  Yet they have never had gulags.  They have never had labor camps, or even murders.  Yes, the government has come a play a large role, but they also get at LEAST 4 weeks off every year, and work fewer hours than most of the world.  If we could get that to happen somehow, that would be good.

As far as our debt, it may be that we can go a lot longer than we supposed without disaster.  Obama’s reelection will mean continued high levels of unemployment, but the reality is that 90% or so of the Americans who want to work can do so, even if not at jobs they like.  And it also means that because banks will likely still not be making many loans, that Ben Bernanke’s handouts to member banks will not likely lead to significant price inflation any time soon.  I predicted significant inflation if Romney were elected, since businesses would have started building again, and banks loaning, generating a significant increase in the money in circulation. 

And with regard to our surveillance state, the simple reality is that it does in fact make terrorism much more difficult, and in terms of its practical inconveniences, it is not that big a deal.  What we fear is what COULD happen, not what is happening.  Even the TSA does not molest the vast bulk of people coming through.

We now have a large, and permanently energized conservative movement.  I want you to think back to the Reagan era, when there was NO Fox news; when you had NO internet; you had NO talk radio, no Rush Limbaugh; when if memory serves the “Fairness Doctrine” WAS in effect, such that you couldn’t say something conservative without immediately contradicting it; and when if you wanted to get news from a conservative or even reasonably impartial perspective, you had to subscribe to one of only a handful of magazines, like the National Review.

It is my strong feeling that the Democrats NEVER expected such a large and persistent conservative resurgence.  Given that support for conservatives is geographically widespread, and support for Democrats much less so, coming mainly from big cities, I think we can expect to hold on to the House for quite some time, which will make any further social engineering much more difficult.

As far as our debt, plans do exist. There is the Chicago Plan, there is my plan, and there is the “move all the old people in with their children and cancel the aircraft carriers” plan.  We are not being intelligent, but this does not mean that we cannot keep some decent standard of living.

Obama may not be a monster.  Nobody around him seems to think he is.  He is just a college academic with no common sense, someone who tends to view people as abstractions, and someone enchanted with his own world view.  It is a damaging world view, but need not be a catastrophic one.

All of our fears, all of our hyperventilating, consists in assuming the worst. The worst may be what we get, but practically, historically, things usually swing within a range between the worst and best.

We are not powerless.  We are not speechless.  We control the House, and can likely continue to move it to the right.

And Obamacare may well get us a conservative in the White House in four years.

I’m not getting squishy, but the simple fact is that all of these statements may well be true, and being diligent as a thinker requires me to point this out.

The end of the journey is realizing that the journey is all there is, and accepting this.

In my metaphysics, I never stop creating.  I never stop being.  It’s all a great and enjoyable adventure, even when I am getting the shit beat out of me.  I’ll win in the end.  Then start again, hey: is it not a great game?

Laugh: the universe appreciates it.

A smile with a knife.

In one form or another, it is clearly still with us.

I will add that most people don’t know the song “Mack the Knife” is an adaptation from a Bertolt Brecht play in which a literal knife-killing gangster is used as a figurative moral equivalent to Capitalist exploitation.

Brecht, of course, was a Communists of sufficient piety that he was allowed to come and go from East Germany as he pleased. They never had cause to doubt his loyalty, and were never disappointed.

Freedom is only of value in a diverse society.  If everyone thinks and feels and does the same things, there is nothing that one could want that is not there. In Islamic nations, you could only want freedom if you wanted to do something not sanctioned by the Koran.  If you accept as valid all the Koranic teachings, the Haddith, and the wisdom of the Umma, there is no value in freedom.  This is why Muslims tend not to do democracy well.  That is why most of North Africa will likely soon be controlled by people our media will call Islamic extremists, but who are really just taking their faith at face value (and in so doing stepping backwards morally, in my view: there is a God, and he has placed a conscience within us for a reason).

Leftists don’t feel like they are missing anything.  When someone protests when the Ten Commandments is taken down, they feel that is the way things should be.  If someone says abortion is murder, they ignore them, since babies are not morally different than any other organ in the woman’s body, making a mastectomy and a late term abortion morally equal.  They are fine with this because they lack that foundational virtue of truly Liberal culture: empathy, the ability to see things from the perspective of other people.

As I noted a few posts ago, empathy levels in one student population, using one standard test, have dropped 40% in thirty years.  This seems like a finding that one could apply across the country.  I say this based on dealing with these creatures often in their own environments. [Someone asked in a comment how I do it.  The answer is simple: I’ve been under attack all my life.  Nothing they can dish out holds a candle to what I’ve been through countless times.  And I like sparring, because it makes my mind stronger.]

They are like members of Saddam Hussein’s tribe in prewar Iraq: they thought things were pretty good because they and their were in charge.  This they called freedom, and it was plenty.  You don’t screw with Saddam, but why would you?  He’s got your back.  As long as you take care of Obama he will take care of you (this is the feeling, but the population for which this is ACTUALLY true is much, much, much smaller than it realizes).

Cultural homogenization and autocracy go hand in hand. This is the root of my objection to gay marriage.  I could care less on many levels, not least of which is the fact that I’m not gay, so it doesn’t affect me.  But what I don’t like is the effort not just to reach a legal framework for gay marriage, but the thinking behind it which feels NO empathy for the religious sensibilities being trampled on, NO remorse for attacking them violently, and which in the end lacks a coherent morality outright.

What we need is a reason to live.  Getting legal recognition for men kissing in the chapel does not serve that purpose.  Fucking is not living.

I don’t deal well with purely reactive situations.  I don’t like waiting.  I prefer to do what I can in all situations to dictate the terms of engagement.  The best defense is completely destroying your opposition.  Temperamentally, of course, this would make me an effective leftist.  The problem is, I still have moral values that are not negotiable via opinion polls and peer pressure, and I possess the understanding to realize they are steadily making the world a darker and worse place, which is the categorical opposite of the what I intend in my own work.

What I wanted to say here, though, is that I have long thought that conservative politicians should play offense as well as defense.  We know that virtually all reporters for all networks and all news mediums are looking to create usable gaffes and errors.  You can only NOT screw up.  You can’t win.

But here is an idea: they approach you, proposing an interview.  Make it a condition of the interview that for every two questions they ask, you get to ask one.  You get to interview the interviewer.  You get to try and figure out who they are.  They sit there as if they are impartial information discoverers, but of course this is a patent lie in most cases.  What ACTUALLY characterizes the situation is passive aggression.  They smile and laugh while they attack you.

But in my solution, you get to ask questions like: So, Ms. Maddow, it is my understanding that if we factor in Social Security and Medicare funding that should be getting put away, but isn’t, our true annual budget deficit is $5 trillion.  Do you agree?  If not, what do you think it is and why?

Or: at what point, if any, does abortion become murder?  If the baby is born, and the doctor sets it out in the cold to be eaten by wild wolves–which is not morally different than simply letting it die, which Barack Obama voted for–is that wrong? 

Or: you opposed the existence of Guantanamo Bay as a holding center for hardened terrorists when Bush operated it.  Has your opinion on the wisdom of Bush creating that base changed in the last four years, and if so how?

Or: can you honestly say you understand how the Federal Reserve works?

Fair is fair.  Fuck things up if you want to win.  Do not play by other peoples rules: they make them that way for a reason.

Edit: hat tip to Demo Dick Marcinko there.  I did read a number of his books, a number of years ago. Whatever else he was–and I’ve talked with people who worked with DevGru and heard there is some diversity of opinion–he was himself.  Saying “fuck you world, I am me” has some value, in a great many cases.  I’m not a Randian, per se, but I like freedom, and I like people who use it creatively.