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During my more paranoid moments, things like this remind me of those smallpox-infected blankets that cleared the way for AmericaSubmitted by Prometheus 6 on October 4, 2006 - 4:17am.
on Africa and the African Diaspora | The Environment
I don't believe them. Why? Because the whole process started with an unnecessary lie on Trafigura's part.
Globalization brings wealth and opportunity to many people around the world. But to poor slum dwellers in the failing state of Ivory Coast, it has brought horrible sickness and death after hazardous waste, shipped nearly halfway around the world, was stealthily dumped in backyards around Abidjan. This need not and should not have happened. As reported in Monday’s Times by Lydia Polgreen and Marlise Simons, the waste — a fuming mix of petrochemicals and caustic soda — that started out in the Mediterranean and ended up in Africa could have been safely disposed of earlier in its journey. But Trafigura, the Swiss trading company that leased the tanker, balked at paying European prices. Instead, 85,000 people ended up seeking medical treatment, and at least eight have died. The details and legal responsibilities are still being sorted out. But the lesson is plain. Without strict, and strictly enforced, international rules on waste disposal, dangerous cargoes will find the course of least resistance, least cost, and least regulation, scarring the lives of some of the world’s poorest, worst governed and most defenseless people. This story began in July, when a Greek-owned Panamanian-flagged tanker, leased by Trafigura, stopped in Amsterdam and attempted to unload its waste. That fell through when a Dutch company that had contracted to do the job for $15,000 found far more noxious material in the ship’s hold than it had been led to believe. Completing safe disposal there would instead cost $300,000, plus perhaps as much again in delays. That sent Trafigura looking for cheaper alternatives. But for a company that had revenues of $28 billion last year, it was not a prohibitive price — especially considering what happened. The ship moved on to several more ports, ending up in Abidjan, where Trafigura hired a local disposal company that did the nocturnal backyard dumping. Trafigura says the Ivoirian authorities told it that the local company could do the job safely. If that is true, those officials were recklessly incompetent. In any case, a stronger system of international regulations — backed up by a threat of fines or other penalties — might have forced Trafigura to think twice about whom it was hiring. Unless such regulations are tightened and reliably enforced, the sick and the dead in Ivory Coast will have suffered for nothing. And the whole story will soon be repeated in some other country where costs are low, rules are slack, and, as an inevitable result, human life is cheap. I am, on occasion, tempted to deal on this level. This:
is so fundamental an error to my understanding that I find it difficult to even approach the rest. In looking for the correct thread to plug this tidbit, that I just now came across from GS Chandy - what do I come upon but yet another random Work related tableau....,
Quite correct. Most westerners have never experienced the true pain of conscience not since early childhood. The senseless dumping based sickening and murder of Africans is after all, rooted in a defective conscience. Triafigura no more feels the prick of conscience over its calculation of profit, than Andrew Postman genuinely, sincerely feels the need to substantively alter his energy diet. Way of life equals polity, and everything else is merely conversation. As for Sushil more generally, I came across his essays a couple years ago. Having visited India a few times and marvelled at the relative lack of pedestrian violence in that society compared with here - what with the grinding poverty afflicting so many - he really is speaking from a profoundly alien frame of reference, yet one held in common by hundreds of millions more people there than in all of the U.S..
What he says, while alien to your understanding - is mainly correct. In the west, people typically confuse negative emotion with emotion. Consequently, the energy of their consciousness is squandered in uncontrolled leakage sparked by mechanical thought associations. Most westerners are genuinely incapable of a moment of unadulterated emotional awareness, such being the basis of that thing called conscience.
Practical, subjective understanding of the difference between emotions and negative emotions is difficult - it begins with the terminological distinction, otherwise one might take them to be of a whole, and this is a fundamental error of understanding. Sushil faces an uphill battle for your understanding that is exponentially more prodigious than the one you have summarized here. p.s. P6 - I've never corresponded with dood, and had no part in bringing him past your back porch, world's just funny small that way - personally, I l.o.v.e. the random quantum entanglements aided and abetted by the digital aether..., What he says, while alien to your understanding - is mainly correct. It is not alien to my understanding. It is incorrect. I think. I feel. End of story.
This reminds me of a discussion I once had with a guy who said you should never go beyond documented fact, never speculate, when seeking solutions because people "tend to" spin out into imaginative wonderlands. I cited Einstein's thought experiments to show not only can imagination be rigorous, rigorous imaginative inquiry is necessary for discovery. DOES not is way different than CAN not.
I think. I feel. End of story. Indisputably correct..., but not what Sushil is talking about. Must differentiate among: -Self-remembering (head brain)-Self-sensing (physical organism) -Self-observation (emotional center) Simple Illustration; One of the most powerful altered states of awareness common to everyone's experience is the adrenalated timeslowing of fight/flight. Doubtless that has happened to you on more than one occasion. Doubtless, when it happened, it was purely accidental and invoked by abruptly threatening stimuli in your environment. You "can" experience that state. Your experience of it, however, is more than likely happenstance, or accidental. I'd speculate that you can neither "imagine" nor "will" that state into manifestation. The ability to invoke it at will is after all, a grail of advanced athletic or martial arts practice, and not many people acquire the experience or put in the Work required to do that. (actually all sports seek to silence thought and focus awareness in the much faster moving centre, that is of course what all that tedious practice practice, practice shit is all about, NO THOUGHT) Achieving comparable NO THOUGHT and focusing awareness in the yet faster and more elusive emotional centre is as hard a thing as there is to do. It is a skill that the discipline of prayer seeks to obtain. That said, where in this society can one find a culture of competency capable of helping one to acquire such a skill? More fools than I can shake a stick at, go about all the time talking to themselves and even outloud - inconveniencing others at dinner time to get their so-called prayer on - and have the ignorant audacity to call all that rambling blather "prayer". Wouldn't know what a real prayer was if it hit them in the forehead. That little rant aside, after 22 years of Work, I'm only capable of the most intermittent emotional awareness - and in those rare instances, only due to happenstance or accident. But I do my very best to observe and remember these. On only three occasions of extreme stress in my entire adult life has conscience literally taken voice and overwhelmed my thoughts.
"Therefore, Subhuti, all bodhisattvas, lesser and great, should develop a pure, lucid mind, not depending upon sound, flavor, touch, odor, or any quality. A bodhisattva should develop a mind that alights on nothing whatsoever; and so he should establish it." - The Diamond Sutra
The trick is to stop invoking the blocking processes rather than trying to block the blocking processes. The trick is to stop invoking the blocking processes rather than trying to block the blocking processes. Quite the trick, that..., thought is the blocking reflex, in large part a motor reflex THE reflex that is stressed, habituated, and rewarded in this culture, (making Sushil's point), and it is a reflex that acts to retard or suppress the self-sensing and self-remembering cognitive inherencies. Your peeps taught you to talk and to read and rehearsed this complex motor behaviour with you until it was an unconscious fact(ulty). A child begins as a fully self-sensing and self-remembering whole and is taught to become an only partially self-observing factotem - actually deprived of access to much of which she started with. This culture systematically robs children of their cognitive inheritance and in-so-doing, cripples and reduces them to a fraction of the slowest and most limited faculty at their disposal. While I'm obviously not recommending illiteracy, plastic arts, music, and farmwork as substitutes for the life of the mind/word/book - there is very much to be said for the absolute necessity of competent instruction/enrichment in these areas. As also, leadership and a culture of technical competency in areas of feeling/moving cognitive enrichment. This culture has lost its way, all by becoming locked into the slow and mechanical head-brain mode of functioning - the irony of it all is that it has become no more powerfully thoughtful, simply increasingly mechanical and fast approaching dead...,
one of the main reasons this all matters a very great deal...,
and why other models, which didn't anticipate or describe nearly as much can be dispensed with as mystical platitudes..., The trick is to stop invoking the blocking processes rather than trying to block the blocking processes. Okay, but it is the trick. THE reflex that is stressed, habituated, and rewarded in this culture, (making Sushil's point), and it is a reflex that acts to retard or suppress the self-sensing and self-remembering cognitive inherencies. Take the real consciousness out of the overlay of conditioning that obscures it.
That's just not the case. When born a human's brain isn't even complete. Vast changes take place after birth, through and past puberty. There are necessary human capacities and tendencies that can't exist until the brain develops enough to support them.
I'd demand a recount if I were you... by itself, thought cheapens life....,There's no such thing as thought by itself. That's just not the case. When born a human's brain isn't even complete. Vast changes take place after birth, through and past puberty. There are necessary human capacities and tendencies that can't exist until the brain develops enough to support them. name even just one of these necessary capacities that rivals say..., oh, for instance.., LANGUAGE ACQUISITION - which with the exception of one group of people on the entire planet - goes away prior to puberty. While I'd be the last person in the world to argue against lifelong cytoarchitectonic plasticity, or for that matter, argue for a uniquely neuronal basis for awareness, I'm fairly certain that you can't name a single one of these "necessary" capacities. I almost certain you've edged out on an unsupportable limb with this claim, I'll be delighted if you show me to be mistaken. One of the other uniquely interesting aspects typifying child mentality is eidetic memory. Since memory and emotion are intimately interwoven, far more so than thought and memory - it stands to reason that the suppression of emotional awareness is integral to the loss of total recall. We could discuss this in the context of dream states as well, given that only in dream states do people routinely experience full sensory recall, while in the ordinary waking state, something far less substantial is available to their introspective scrutiny. I'd demand a recount if I were you... The meanstream context in which that research occurred determined the terminology and the underlying functional model on which the article's description of its results is based. It's easy enough to fit onto the Work model. Not particularly meaningful, however, because A. You're not familiar with that model B. It's not particularly meaningful to talk to about all the centres until it becomes possible for a person to consistently and fully experience consciousness from the vantage of at least two centers - as a matter of course and not accident. In the full Work model, there are 7 centres. sexual - instinctual - moving - intellectual - emotional - higher intellectual - higher emotional the ones that matter for ordinary Work, and that are subject to easy verification are moving - intellectual - emotional..., There's no such thing as thought by itself. Not only is there such a thing, there's a name for it and fairly detailed description of it;
Rivals language acquisition? How about the ability to make moral judgements? How about self control?
Sounds like chakras. There is no thought by itself any more than there is gravity by itself or squareness by itself or velocity by itself. Don't confuse intellectual abstractions for substantial reality.
Fluency means the ability to think in the other language, this is something berlitz is decidedly unable to confer, even on highly gifted mimics that are quick to pick up vocabulary and pronunciation. Those who think in their native tongue and do a rapid translation (99.9999%) of all second language learners, are hardly engaged in anything approaching language acquisition. They're just picking up a secondary vocabulary - they still think in english and then speak or write in Spanish. As for the teenage prefrontal cortical development, if you consider lying and masking a "necessary capacity", then I concede the point. Personally (pun intended) I have never confused the formatory skill involved with lying and masking a necessary capacity. In fact, children and schizophrenics can see right through these formatory re-presentations of the persona, because like a berlitz 2nd language, they're ersatz. Not only this, but at one time it was alarmingly commonplace to stick a surgical probe next to the eye, run it parallel to the optical nerve and then twist it all around a little bit to recombobulate personalities - in fact it could be done in an office visit.
So much for necessary capability or even necessary cortical structure....,
Sure there is.., as a practical matter, because of the way in which neurons poll and cascade..., it makes perfect sense to talk about processes - as if - in isolation. Awareness has its very own congressional polling and voting procedures. Right now, some neglected neuronal constituency is "aware" of the temperature and pressure on the underside of your right little toe - not the typical pre-frontal P6 constituency (self-representation) of course, though your attention may have fluttered momentarily in its direction just now because it was called out - but in general, the self-sensing required to meaningfully say that that part of you participates in your substantial reality is non-existent. Say you stub that toe into the doorjamb, all of a sudden that heretofore neglected constituency will become abruptly and spectacularly focal in your self-representation, but for the most part, it is forgotten and ignored. Viewed in such practical and prosaic terms, I think it is safe to say that it is you sir who have confused intellectual abstractions and substantial realities. I could give you countless additional illustrations, but the point I'm trying to make is this, the "neuronal" (there's actually more to it than this) but for discussion's sake, the neuronal constituency in which emotional cognition is implemented is on only a slightly better footing in terms of access and representation within the congress of ordinary self-representation than that right little toe constituency. In his own peculiar way, this is what Sushil is on about, and it's what I'm on about and have been on about for a very long time. p.s., centres are functional rather than structural..., one might correctly assume that chakras are implicated in these functions, but the way to that is through the functional process rather than the subtle structure.
always and everywhere, remember yourself...,
Fluency means the ability to think in the other language, this is something berlitz is decidedly unable to confer, even on highly gifted mimics that are quick to pick up vocabulary and pronunciation. Language acquisition is what you asked about. And fluency comes with time and need.
Good. That's based on the ability to model the behavior of others. Most critical. And if you think that's all that's going on, you need to pick up on the latest research. Trust me, you do not want a baby's fully self-sensing and self-remembering whole brain
But it makes no sense to assume they actually exist in isolation.
- as if - Say what you like. You tickle me brah...,
My frontal lobes are telling me that this rhetorical stance is somehow anticipatory...., That said, you are entirely correct, I do not want just that. What I want is sublimation and solution. To take all the hard-won and detailed knowledge of a powerful old snake and reimplement that in the pristine cognitive apparatus of an innocent little lamb.
That's based on the ability to model the behavior of others. Most critical. And if you think that's all that's going on, you need to pick up on the latest research. That is all that's going on, and if you can provide links to any research dispositive of alternative explanations, I'd be most delighted to update my hypothesis. The annals of evolutionary psychology and my most favorite psychological expositor the late Julian Jaynes had quite a lot to say about the primacy of lying. Matter of fact, Jaynes pinpointed the emergence of language based self-awareness with the overwhelming pressure to lie effectively in novel social contexts. Here's the problem for you sir, and it's a really hard problem for your explanation of other uses to address. Please state the ethological purpose in which your cherished frontal lobes are implicated - that trumps the survival value of competent lying? Not only will you find the human research daunting, but the primate research is equally supportive of my contentions. {I think you're going to find yourself confronted with overwhelming evidence in support of what I'm saying, but since you've threatened to hit me with the latest research, I remain hopeful that you will show me otherwise} Now here's the thing. If you sally back over the territory I've covered with you in this thread, with particular emphasis on the neuroeconomics tidbit, I think you'll find that the case I'm setting forth here has a WHOLE LOT TO DO with some of your core subject interests. i.e., politics, race, logic, language, and values.
The possibility of fluency can be driven by need. This question of "need" is very fundamental. It is why my preferred system of applied depth psychology is called "Work" - without the imposition of necessity, imperative necessity, the possibility of change is very slim indeed. The lack of necessity, the tendency to lie, the neuroeconomic paradox, are all of a piece. As also, the Dumping Ground, Continuation of Industrial Society, the Energy Diet, all of a piece - since in any instance - the possibility of change is suppressed by the absence of imperative necessity. Hmm....., Oh yeah, I almost forgot, one of the most interesting things about that neuroeconomics article (that slipped entirely down into the cracks in our discussion) is the mechanism being used to selectively suppress neural functions. Yesterday morning, as me and the little boy(7 years old) were driving to the Learning Center, I was momentarily lost deep in thought about the use of magnets to disrupt neural functions. Out of the blue, "daddy, why do magnets work like they do?" Understand, we had been talking about how to drive around this silly marathon being run right up the middle of KC and effectively cutting the city in half and blocking traffic from getting across. Then we'd fallen silent for a minute. I was ruminating and he was somehow participating in my ruminations..., then he had a question. I'm still ruminating on that particular question....., (I know how magnets work well enough to explain them to a 7 year old, his telepathy, or is that animal magnetism - not so simple)
My frontal lobes are telling me that this rhetorical stance is somehow anticipatory...., Nope. Exactly the opposite, in fact. Remember what this is in response to.
THAT is the point being addressed. I'm saying that if you had a baby's brain you would not be able to do much of anything you'd consider to be normal human functionality. And I understand the completeness of the unformed perceptions of infant brains isn't your central topic here; I am prepared to let this bit slip. I just want clear that my answer does not refer to any topic other than the one it does.
You should develop a pure, lucid mind, not depending upon sound, flavor, touch, odor, or any quality; a mind that alights on nothing whatsoever. Seriously. The alternative is to assume your understanding of the alchemist's state of mind in a search for another pattern that will free you from both yourself and your alchemist...leaving you in the condition in which your mind is pure and lucid, not dependant upon sound, flavor, touch, odor, or any quality.
Not my point. My point is the neural development which competent lying depends on has not even taken place in a child. Not just lying. Competent lying.
It does. That does not compel either of us to accept the others' interpretations. Yours are bound to specific authorities and vocabularies; mine are specifically loosed from same. That's why I don't really have to argue this stuff.
Excellent. Another point of agreement.
And this is why you say the thinking mind does not feel. But can you really say that describes a thinking mind?
Growing gills is driven by need, and I didn't really get concurrence from you when I made that assertion about the psychological intractability of racism on the experiment thread. I don't think we really agree at all about what is involved, with either language fluency or anti-racist psychological evolution.
The formatory mind (thinking mind) does not feel because it has acquired habits which protect it from the irreconcilable promptings of conscience. It is securely buffered against any such sub-threshold emotional awareness of the intrinsic unfairness and immorality of the interpersonal and neuroeconomic situation in which it is immersed. The formatory mind does not feel because it cannot tolerate the pain of actually feeling, it fears and rejects feeling, and it does so reflexively, but once the reflex is set, habitually and cumulatively.
Without a doubt. It describes the ordinary waking state and full thinking capacity of 99.999% of folks who participate in the Western cultural complex.
What does this mean as a practical matter? What specifically are you talking about? Quietism I know about, in fact, I have an evil streak that compels me to periodically go and engage the quietist nuns in my church in far reaching and rambling discussions - which they are almost unfailingly prone to do. Everything in the Universe is material: therefore the Great Knowledge is more materialistic than materialism. Everything in this universe can be weighed and measured. The Absolute is as material, as weighable and measurable, as the moon, or as man. It is true that matter is the same, but materiality is different. And different degrees of materiality depend directly upon the qualities and properties of the energy manifested at a given point. For a physicist of the nineteenth century, the idea of "degrees of materiality" would not have meant very much. It takes on real substance with the discovery of the quantum world, where laws are radically different from those of the macrophysical world. It is the study of irrational numbers and of the infinitely small which reveals a degree of materiality different from that of the macrophysical world. Since I strongly suspect this is a point of radical departure for you, I will not expound on my cherished belief in quantum mechanics and the role of the microphysical in consciousness. I'll give you an example of a mind that was temporarily hitting on multiple cylinders. One that was fully participating in sub-threshold awareness coupled with disciplined investigation and consideration to the point of inevitable discovery. You realize of course that Crick was tripping (had been tripping fairly routinely) when he cyphered the double-helix.
These are not rumors and this information has been posthumously confirmed. Crazy the lengths people will go to to stay in conformity with the mainstream. Anyway, The mechanism by which LSD works its peculiar magic on consciousness has been posited, and I'll leave you to your abstraction on lucidity on this note;
I didn't really get concurrence from you when I made that assertion about the psychological intractability of racism on the experiment thread. That's because you didn't explain anything I need explained.
You want to know how to get into that timeless state that comes with the fight or flight impulse, pretty much at will with no physical threat? Read a good book. The states you think are exceptional underlie the most common human experiences, and if you think it takes exceptional effort to become aware of them then that's what it will take for you. Our universal rules compel no one but ourselves. And there is no such thing as thought by itself.
What does this mean as a practical matter? What specifically are you talking about? The short form is, take the real consciousness out of the overlay of conditioning that obscures it, and use it to make awareness complete. You have the middle form above. The long form is Spiritual armor II.
You know from past conversations it is not. In any event, you've speculated about what I might know, may intend to do next, whatever...Why don't you not worry about that and say what you want to say? Why do you think I'm following you all over hell and back in this discussion, never even once invoking the "denial of evasion technique?" This is YOUR thread. I have no personal need of such information but say what you want. Go for yours.
Your habits of thought prevent you from even entertaining the possibility that you need to know more than you know, or still more crucially, have the capacity to DO more than you presently do. You dismiss shit all the time without even scratching the surface of what you've dismissed. This is of course your perogative. But from where I sit - it is a habit that diminishes your possible effectiveness as a change agent.
The only part of the above that's true, is the implied limit of what you understand. Sushil is not wrong. You simply don't know what he's talking about. Moreover, you don't know what he's talking about in a way that is comically analogous to how dwshelf didn't know what you were talking about. There is a spectacular irony in this...,
Come on, comparing fight/flight with flight of imagination is an open invitation to ridicule. You know better than that.
Take a test. Follow the second hand on a watch and count backward from 500. No need to report your results here, just note the results to yourself. Record where/when exactly, count or secondhand gaze, your attention failed.
Sure there is. Answer for yourself how close you came to 300 without a collapse on one or another side of your divided attention. Again, there's no one to cheat but yourself. However, if you didn't make it at least as far as 300 - then you already have intimate experience of "thought by itself". Remember, everything in this universe can be weighed and measured..., btw - the Spiritual Armor II link is broken, lack of /node before the /14006 Your habits of thought prevent you from even entertaining the possibility that you need to know more than you know, or still more crucially, have the capacity to DO more than you presently do. You dismiss shit all the time without even scratching the surface of what you've dismissed. You are not my target audience. You never were. You are on a path that not for common folk. A good first approximation of my ultimate intent here is to make folks conscious and accepting of the nationalism that already exists within out culture. If that happened a lot of shit can go on autopilot. That's my chosen purpose here. Why should I abandon it...or any part of the life I have that you see nothing of...to pursue what anyone else judges necessary?
Seperately, I dismiss anything that requires me to take something on faith in order to prove the case. And even then the new explanation must be better than my current one (i.e., leave me capable of more). Most of what you say strikes me as making things harder than necessary, but as they say, whatever's clever.
Come on, comparing fight/flight with flight of imagination is an open invitation to ridicule. You know better than that.You need the adrenaline effects too? You didn't mention that. small "w" work overtook and waylaid my ass y'day....,
see.., my take on this "path" is that it was formerly a lot more common. elements introduced into the climate of popular consciousness during the 60's have been rolled back, withdrawn, attenuated, etc....,
as above.., and I couldn't agree with you more - I guess I'm just hella stuck on the oceanographic and atmospheric research around what precisely made the climate of consciousness formerly more self-affirming and nationalistic, and here I'd substitute communitarian for "nationalist" in a heartbeat. to me, the paralysis and atrophy of community sensibility is the disease
Not my objective. Rather, I have come to frame the problem - and methods for addressing it - in strictly psychological terms. These are, after all, the only tools over which any of us have complete and uncompromising authority and control. As I look at mass movements resisting the community killing modus operandi of western culture, I see psychological methods being deployed, none of which I would adopt and attempt to apply. The question for me is one of formulating an appropriate and homegrown psychological approach...,
You need the adrenaline effects too? You didn't mention that. What qualia proceed in a hormonal vacuum? Neurochemistry is merely part of an hormonal continuum, isn't it? Affording me a segue back into the question of community as the topological organization of individuals. The underlying chemistry of our communities has been profoundly altered.., in obvious and not-so-obvious ways. A good first approximation of my ultimate intent here is to make folks conscious and accepting of the nationalism that already exists within out culture. If that happened a lot of shit can go on autopilot.These two bits are very closely related...., These are, after all, the only tools over which any of us I suppose you could say that my ultimate intent is to make folks conscious I don't think anything can ever go on autopilot again.., we are deep in the fourth quarter of a culture war that has damaged us Many of us have become as conscience-less, empty, and deranged as the culture in which we are embedded. What has us in its clutches is truly machinic in how it operates to wear down and turn out any configuration of logic, language, and values different than its own.
Obama, Steele, Blackwell, Ford, Patrick, Swann, each one symptomatic of the death of what formerly existed. Each one a kneegrow podperson...., a Talking Android made manifest on a national scale. Progress or de-evolution? You need the adrenaline effects too? You didn't mention that.What qualia proceed in a hormonal vacuum? Neurochemistry is merely part of an hormonal continuum, isn't it? No and yes...however, adrenaline is neither sufficient nor necessary for the time-free state.
That was then. This is...the reason I deal on P6 as I do. Not my objective. I disagree strongly. And it's not a point that needs resolving to continue the overarching conversation, but you have without question been trying to establish your particular vocabulary and technology as The Way to Go, If you argue for several days against some action I intend and I ask why, you can't possibly expect me to accept "Oh, I'm not trying to change your mind." You guys are grown-ups.
You're using collective concerns to gather folks, but your actions are intended to strengthen folks against the current state of affairs via personal development. Is that your goal? Enhanced personal development? Or to increase the odds folks will use personal development to counter collective ills?
In order to extract more, it is necessary to have in our organism a certain quantity of corresponding fine substances. Then the fine substances contained in the organism act like a magnet on the fine substances contained in the inhaled air. We come again to the old alchemical law: 'In order to make gold, it is first of all necessary to have a certain quantity of real gold.' 'If no gold whatever is possessed, there is no means whatever of making it.' Second, Work to increase my power of attention..., Third, accumulate the fine substances on which this power depends..., voila...,
Understand that your statement focuses on each individual. And that's fine. But it means you are NOT pursuing a collective response. And I am looking for collective responses.
So what is it you're bringing to me? What would you have me do? What is it that I've only scratched the surface of?
And yet you operate on base lead...and you do not dispose of it, you transform it. If you are conscious and healthy you have the fine material with which to start the transformation. note: hardcore code switching going one here...gold is void, lead is void...
Wake up Pay attention Don't block
These objectives are inseparable...,
- and you know what else, even a gutted and badly ailing national tapestry of hoods has one highly unusual characteristic in common - the exceptional topological density of churches.., to live in a Black community in America is to live within walking distance of a church or churches - not ashrams, not temples, not mosques, plain old churches ripe for metanoetic conversion. that christian infrastructure is really only useful for distributing christic memes - when in Rome...,
I'm bringing you the horse that must come before the cart, while you respond as if we were debating the primacy of chickens or eggs..., (: Recognize that our terms and methods are not interchangeable - and give me the benefit of the doubt for making best efforts to re-engineer some difficult and archaic material down into a modern derivation that people can use - on the fly. Re-engineering, mind you, with a definite eye toward what is already ergonomically in play within what remains of our communities - my shit is unimpeachably empirical and applied. It is more psychologically than historically true that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, individually and collectively.
Okay...
From my perspective, that's as concise a definition of the philosophical problem as I've seen. And on a practical level, I don't want to have to sort out the jacklegs.
Oh, I recognize our terms etc aren't interchangeable. That's why I answer the challenges you pose in my own terms. Reengineering requires you to understand people's needs as sane, so that you can tell them how your teaching helps them achieve them. The Sutra of Innumerable Meanings says, "Dip the dust of desire in a drop of the teaching." CN, you've studied as broadly as anyone I've met and your frestyling skills are excellent. But if you really see what the archaic material indicates, just describe what you see. And on a practical level, I don't want to have to sort out the jacklegs. It's a process. Once the genuine process is in motion, you don't have to.
Sane? What needs - practical/otherwise - are being met in those supernumerous churches? From where I sit, the dust of desire is being folded into something that dripped out of a preacher's nose....,
I believe that interpersonal communion as a catalyst to intrapersonal communion is the most powerful mode of psychological development available to human beings. If you invert Matthew 7:3 it not only indicates that the individual cannot see his own shortcomings and should therefore be slow to judge others, rather, it simultaneously (esoterically) indicates that others can see the individual more clearly - and if so inclined - assist him in achieving an objective view of his ultimate nature, i.e., developing toward realization of his full evolutionary potential. Now, how hard can it be to trojan this teaching into the code that's already running in all those church platforms?
What needs - practical/otherwise - are being met in those supernumerous churches? You miss the point. It's YOU that has to meet their need. And your incredulousness over considering them sane is plainly visible. THAT is what you have to overcome in order to speak to them effectively. Think about how you felt the last time a white person in a store responded to your question with a "WHAT is this darkie bothering me about?" attitude. How much personal advice are you ready to take from such a person?
Hard enough that you need help? Those church platforms are social institutions, C. Plus I've already said I think the church has shot its wad...so have you, but it was a bait-and-switch thing it seems. As a person I respect you can bounce ideas off me, but it's totally opposed to my approach of disentanglement. this is one of the bestest ever. I'm still upthread a ways - but this discussion is the cornerstone of Ra Un Nefer Amen's series Medu Neter. I'm with nulan and the indian cat on this one. Amen has some good examples of the tension between thinking and feeling - and it's right at these subtle levels of awareness - of being-ness, of no-thingness that we "be." Tapping into that no-thingness is tapping in to the divine - and it means manifesting an automatic alignment to live divine law. I don't know what that looks like - but I hold that at this point - it's almost beyond comprehension. It like being so clean that you become aware your oneness and your nothingness at once...that's got to be a head trip...all powerful and all limited all at once.
that I'd use the word perception here. perception is an action. what is being discussed here is not exactly active...it's an alignment of your inner soul-self-one with your outer self by submitting to the author of the inner...and that's not an active thing - but perception follows submission...and true perception cannot precede submission.
dismalcraps and repoopicans?
That falls under the category of blocking the blocking actions. around competent lying. Competency in this arena is contingent on so many things. Lying (internally and externally), then, is at the center of this laundry list - and it is a thinking activity rather than an emotional activity...isn't the least credible lie born of desperation and heightened anxiety - unless one has had tons of PRACTICE.
this is some good stuff here folks. it's not particularly accessible (thanks nulan, as always), but it's chunky and funky. i'm enjoying this immensely - and i'm also clear that this discourse has profound implications for black people and our organizations here and globally...it may seem too theoretical for some of your readers, but the concepts raised here are a recurring theme when folks come across "insurmountable obstacles" and other moments for which they are incapable of devising effective solutions. it's all right here - one way or another. thanks again to both of you.
The moon is an inductive coil. Our center of gravity along with that of the earth is in the astronomical moon. Growth is not possible until we form the moon in ourselves. Do you understand?
Until they're effectively repurposed, Church platforms are shot in precisely the same way that turntables were shot in 1986. Hijacked and played by parasites who no longer know how to make them Work, the Church now fails to meet the basic needs of its constituents, yet these are loath to surrender the comforting ritual habitual of the format. What to do P6, what to do...? It would be wasteful to ignore them, imprudent to antagonize them, so what's an enterprising Black Partisan going to do with all that heavenly botnet waiting to be put to productive use?
Absolutely!!! Of course I need help. Instead of thinking about them as an inveterate pastafarian think about them as game pieces on a vast socio-political board. How would you use them in ways that they would not be recoil from being used?
CN: No. Again, that's for you to decide. I've told you of my intent. Yes, P6 should not be blocked.
Incidentally
I find this manipulative to the point of being evil. It's specifically what I will NOT do. How the hell you going to put up that Tucker Carlson "revelation" and turn around and pretend to question my motive in trying to leverage Black church memetics and infrastructure into a position of greater socio-economic and political utility within the Black communities which they occupy, but don't particularly well serve? Do you recall not so many months ago you blogged about the acceptable use of subterfuge by those who are powerless? Apparently not, so I chalk this implied indictment of my aim - to the twin evils of memory failure on your part and a moment of BRC inspired self-righteousness. (btw - sister Rosetta still wants you to visit the neighborhood COGIC and stop blocking) The fact of the matter is that Black churches are being ruthlessly exploited for material ends by cynical individuals who don't give a goddamn about their congregants. How many times have you blogged on this very theme? These individuals and the communities they disserve are in turn being manipulated for political and cultural ends by still more cynical phukkers - who don't give a goddamn about Black folks - at all. All of this to the point where a formerly vital set of institutions appear to have completely lost their way, and are bordering on irrelevance. Seeking to improve the utility of underperforming institutions is not evil. Sitting on the fence throwing rotten tomatos is evil, but you'd have to discriminate with feeling in order to note the difference. I'm going to let you in on a little secret P6. When I was 25 years old, I swore off, for all time, the use of my sermonizing faculties. I have never gone back on that vow. As a story-teller, stage hypnotist, and public speaker, the only living practitioner I take my hat off to is Louis Farrakhan. That was a hard thing for me to do, to forswear the use of a primary talent - but I did it because I knew that I didn't have the goods to back up the gift - and I was not about to abuse the gift for evil ends. So instead of clouding minds talking about shit I hadn't completely verified or Worked out on my own, I chose to Work on myself.
If it makes you feel any better, and I hope it will, the fact of the matter is that I don't take partisan action that hasn't been considered and approved by my elders. That's one of the simpler yet most profound benefits of social entanglement and interpersonal communion. It also helps that the elders will back your play with their considerable social capital.
How the hell you going to put up that Tucker Carlson "revelation" and turn around and pretend to question my motive in trying to leverage Black church memetics and infrastructure into a position of greater socio-economic and political utility within the Black communities which they occupy, but don't particularly well serve? Because I disapprove of both, being the same thing. Freestyling the description doesn't change what it is in either case.
A people without power must use deception and guile. But not on each other.
while laudable in principle, have never proven themselves effective in practical fact. one of these days, after you've cajoled and placated the enormously swollen ego(s) of a Reverend Dr. and First Lady of a church, in order to get them to hear about doing something useful for their congregation, then you come back and tell me - with the benefit of first hand knowledge - and not high-handed theory - exactly how you convinced them to listen. then, after you've persuaded that church to run cable and install a curricular node for its youths (and now elders too), then you come back and tell me - with the benefit of first hand knowledge - and not high-handed theory - exactly how you got them to invest. finally, after you've introduced an afro-centric curriculum into a context - a priori hostile to the same - come back and tell me - with the benefit of first hand knowledge - and not high-handed theory - exactly how you made it Work. Thankfully, I view the intricacies of dealing with micro-dictatorships as a game theoretical challenge - rather than an insurmountable obstacle or moral quandry.
one of these days, after you've cajoled and placated the enormously swollen ego(s) of a Reverend Dr. and First Lady of a church, Can't do it. It's the whole Mammon thing. |
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This site best viewed with a jaundiced eye
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Sister Rosetta Tharpe says STOP BLOCKING P6!!!!!!!
The link between Mind and Social / Environmental-Issues.
The fast-paced, consumerist lifestyle of Industrial Society is causing exponential rise in psychological problems besides destroying the environment. All issues are interlinked. Our Minds cannot be peaceful when attention-spans are down to nanoseconds, microseconds and milliseconds. Our Minds cannot be peaceful if we destroy Nature.
Industrial Society Destroys Mind and Environment.
Subject : In a fast society slow emotions become extinct.
Subject : A thinking mind cannot feel.
Subject : Scientific/ Industrial/ Financial thinking destroys the planet.
Subject : Environment can never be saved as long as cities exist.
Emotion is what we experience during gaps in our thinking.
If there are no gaps there is no emotion.
Today people are thinking all the time and are mistaking thought (words/ language) for emotion.
When society switches-over from physical work (agriculture) to mental work (scientific/ industrial/ financial/ fast visuals/ fast words ) the speed of thinking keeps on accelerating and the gaps between thinking go on decreasing.
There comes a time when there are almost no gaps.
People become incapable of experiencing/ tolerating gaps.
Emotion ends.
Man becomes machine.
A society that speeds up mentally experiences every mental slowing-down as Depression / Anxiety.
A ( travelling )society that speeds up physically experiences every physical slowing-down as Depression / Anxiety.
A society that entertains itself daily experiences every non-entertaining moment as Depression / Anxiety.
FAST VISUALS /WORDS MAKE SLOW EMOTIONS EXTINCT.
SCIENTIFIC /INDUSTRIAL /FINANCIAL THINKING DESTROYS EMOTIONAL CIRCUITS.
A FAST (LARGE) SOCIETY CANNOT FEEL PAIN / REMORSE / EMPATHY.
A FAST (LARGE) SOCIETY WILL ALWAYS BE CRUEL TO ANIMALS/ TREES/ AIR/ WATER/ LAND AND TO ITSELF.
To read the complete article please follow either of these links :
http://www.planetsave.com/ps_mambo/index.php?
option=com_simpleboard&Itemid=75&func=view&id=68&catid=6
http://www.earthnewswire.com/index.php?
option=com_forum&Itemid=89&page=viewtopic&t=11
sushil_yadav