boscohorowitz
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Methinks we’re out of black swans. What we have now, I think, is one vast global invisible swan gradually becoming visible to the general populace like the proverbial blind men judging an elephant by touch slowly gaining sight and realizing that they’re messing with a behemoth.
The instigatory elements are, I think, already in place. Things now are more derivative than causative.
Coal mine canaries like posters at TAE have been crying causes, causes, causes for many years.
Now we are dealing with consequences, consequences, consequences.
Meanwhile, coming to you from dear old St. Petersburg, Inane Nonsense Taking Itself Seriously. Not unlike the evening news.
My Mom revered The Waltons. She grew up in a family with 9 children in Depression Era South Carolina, USA. I was a tad weepy reading the article thinking of my Mom and what that show meant to her. All very nice.
But here is the penultimate paragraph of the article:
“Today, Learned is as busy as ever. She recently starred in Ryan Murphy’s “Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” about the serial killer for Netflix.”
(TV announcer voice) ‘The Waltons was brought to you by Johnson & Johnson, helping families raise healthy babies. And now, a story about a serial murderer who cannibalizes his victims’ genitals.’
The society of spectacle wants titillation not meaning; it’s in the very nature of spectacles, that voyeuristic thing where we view from de facto afar with media magnifying binoculars.
‘…starring John Boy as Jeffrey Dahmer…’
Smoke and mirrors indeed.
“Buffalo gets 3 feet of snow. But I thought there was only drought now? If we report the drought, then we have to report the rain, don’t we? Or do we just lie to ourselves all the time now?”
You’re smart enough to know that that’s disingenuous claptrap. Sometimes the weather report is just the weather report. Not everything human related to weather is part of some global climate delusions scheme.
I echo Bill7’s indescribable feeling about Downtown. Part emerging eroticism, partly some adult bittersweet melancholy about modern urban adult ennui. I get it now. As a kid, it was just weirdly cool.
Later, around age 30, I knew just what robert was singing about here as I juggled several heartbreaks — romantic, parental, familial, cultural — while becoming a full-blown alky selling shaky oil well investments over the phone to support a kid.
Blues is king, a beautiful thing
You just don’t know whenever
You’re done by the one you love
And the joke’s on you
If you don’t know it’s true
If you lose your dreams
You’ll know what I’m thinking of
Yeah, blues is king, so let it ring
Surrender do, to the sound so real and true
And relax your mind, go on, you’ll be fine
Surrender do, ’cause you’ll never displace it
So face it, blues is king
As the sun descends, rain begins
Everything in view is a dull shade of blue
And the traffic sounds, the lights uptown
Make a sad and uninviting scene to walk into
But the blue of the night
Everything in daylight
Don’t even begin, to be as blue as the mood I’m in
People out alone, go on their way home
I’m wandering on, remembering only
That I’m lonely and blues is king
Blues is king, a beautiful thing
You just don’t know whenever
You’re torn by the one you love
And the joke’s on you
If you don’t know it’s true
If you lose your dreams
You’ll know what I’m thinking of
Yeah, blues is king, so let it ring
Surrender do, to the sound so real and true
Just relax your mind, go on, you’ll be fine
Surrender do, ’cause you’ll never displace it
So face it, blues is kingMy old man hated Petula CLark’s singing. But then, he hated Ella Fitzgerald’s singing too.
I was 9-10 years old, thought she was a pretty lady who sang well, and I still love that mid-60s swinging big city go-go bittersweet vibe.
But my pop heart truly resides in the jazz/swing era, and ladies like this:
How odd, Doc JD. I had that Petula Clark song in my mind this morning… and the voice of Todd Rundgren telling me what a cheesy bad song it was.
“I like it, Todd. Sue me,” I told him.
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The flamingos on my shirt are not pink, DocJD. They’re orange. What do you think I am, some kind of vulgarian? 😉
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Global climate disruption/oscillation/warming/cooling<>natural vs anthropogenic devolves in my ears into something that sounds like this:
Right now, I have just printed our instructions to a vintage Kero Sun kerosene heather that I salvaged from a dumpster. Not a sc-r-atch. The wind is blowing wild and the weather is uncommonly cold for Portland this time of year after an uncommonly warm “Indian summer” after one of out longest droughts in history.
The weather has become severe and demanding and cautionary preparations are prudently wise.
But we’d rather argue arcane data points because some politician decided that global warming would cook another set of get-rich-quick books. So carbon tax is a scam and a joke. Like virtually every political movement since Buddha discovered his navel. Whatever. What on Heaven’s Earth or Elon’s Musk does that have to do with the actual weather?
Black Friday approacheth, when the mall gets mauled:
But Poland did give us Gene, so there’s that:
Technically, I suppose it is a vaccine:
“a substance used to stimulate the production of antibodies and provide immunity against one or several diseases, prepared from the causative agent of a disease, its products, or a synthetic substitute, treated to act as an antigen without inducing the disease. “every year the flu vaccine is modified to deal with new strains of the virus” ”
But it’s really just genetic mayhem disguised as therapeutic medicine.
We read that they’ve discovered a vaccine for fentanyl. I didn’t known that fentanyl is a microbial pathogen. Not only is this in sync with the ongoing dissolutions of meanings (like male/female, which are currently blended in incestuous semantics), but I can hardly imagine what the Davos Overlord camp will make of it:
A Vaccine Against Deadly Fentanyl Might Be Near
” “Our vaccine is able to generate anti-fentanyl antibodies that bind to the consumed fentanyl and prevent it from entering the brain, allowing it to be eliminated out of the body via the kidneys. Thus, the individual will not feel the euphoric effects and can ‘get back on the wagon’ to sobriety,” Haile explained in a university news release.
“The team has tested the drug on animals but plans to start manufacturing a clinical-grade vaccine in the coming months and to start human trials. However, research in animals does not always pan out in humans.”
While Davos et al hardly concern me of themselves, for I see them as straw dogs in an ill wind, what the article describes makes a fellow want to line hisd chapeau with tin foil.
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As for Polish hatred of Russia: I suppose this is nationalist of me to say, but Poles seem to have a knack for blaming their problems on Russia.
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AH, tin foil hats…
“…when Justin from Canada awkwardly looks for somewhere to hide.”
And a long line of cocaine to bolster his shattered sense of self.
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Fritz Reiner and the CSO were about as good as it got for academy music performances, for my money. I was raised on the George Solti CSO, saw them perform Stravinsky’s Petrushka (condensed version), and tended to dismiss what I ignorantly thought of as that hokey old Fritz-as-conductor era.
Then someone laid some Reinerrecords on me, and I changed my opinion.
“…we’re not outside the box looking in. We’re looking outward from within boxes turned inside out.”
I love that.
Making two possibilities a reality
Predicting the future of things we all know
Fighting off the diseased programming
Of centuries, centuries, centuries, centuries
Science fails to recognize the single most
Potent element of human existence
Letting the reigns go to the unfolding
Is faith, faith, faith, faith
Science has failed our world
Science has failed our Mother Earth
Science fails to recognize the single most
Potent element of human existence
Letting the reigns go to the unfolding
Is faith, faith, faith, faith
Science has failed our world
Science has failed our Mother Earth
Spirit moves through all things
Spirit moves through all things
Spirit moves through all things
Spirit moves through all things
Spirit moves through all things
Spirit moves through all things
Letting the reigns go to the unfolding
Is faith, faith, faith, faith
Letting the reigns go to the unfolding
Is faith, faith, faith, faith
Science has failed our world
Science has failed our Mother Earth
Spirit moves through all things
Spirit moves through all thingsaspnaz: fer chrissake just shut up. How does that sound? Is that advancing civil intelligent discourse around here? How about you get a room with yourself. SInce you enjoy pointless invective, here’s an old fave of mine finger-pointed at you:
I personally am enjoying their dialog although I’d prefer that jb-hb dispense with the combativeness, something that Polemos has already addressed in his (imo) admirable manner.
“They go on a conceptual caravan ride and start writing about how profound , or otherwise the pointer is,
doing the exact opposite of the pointer’s advice, classic ignorance! LOL!”Yes, and you watch and judge us watching and judging the pronouncement of a person who also watched and judged, watching and judging being how we arrive at conclusions of logic or faith both.
We’re such funny creatures if too often tragically so.
Nonetheless, I’ve enjoyed some yummy mental nourishment here of late. including from those who watch and judge us watch and judge us.
P.S. Faith is also conceptual. Faith itself is a concept, and thoughts and discussions about faith are necessarily conceptual.
We chatter, we homo sapiens. We like it a lot. Especially if it lets us feel valuable, an emotion that in this case usually moves on to feeling superior, because underneath our logical skins we’re mostly bundles of reflexes and instincts jockeying for maximum survival/breeding advantage. Which is fine by me. It’s the logical overlay that gets us into so much trouble in this here actuality that we usually conflate with reality.
P.P.S. Saying that faith is an oasis in the heart which will never be reached by the caravan of thinking is itself a statement of faith, but being a statement, a logic string of semantic symbols, we have to think about it before we decide to award our faith to it or not.
MArriage and friendship create a faith not created, earned or sustained by arguing who has faith or what it is. There’s no room to spare on the tightrope of covenanted pair-bond love. One is too busy trying to have a little faith in one’s beloved and oneself.
However, when jb-hb projects at Polemos in the ever popular Aggressive Argument as Discussion mode, the thrill fades fast.
I don’t bookmark TAE, just pull it from google memory by clicking my cursor in the search field. Today google offered to “resume your search”, frankly lifting its skirts to show me how intimate it wants to be (and already has been since more or less day one of the infamous Don’t Be Evil company’s existence… and here I’d thought I was only playing with myself.. and so I was, but with google watching, I don’t feel so alone?).
I declined not on principle or illusions of privacy but because I weary of letting bots do everything. I do not yearn for a transhumanist future where my Inner Guide suggests that it could give me an erection right now since it senses that my wife quietly wants some sparking.
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As for the great riddles of consciousness/reality: goldfish in bowls have a warped limited view of reality. Escaping the boundaries of their limited perspective is usually fatal, however. Why we’re here and what we should do about it are things we seem able to do little more than chat about with others or ourselves (I have about ‘leventy-seventy, mahseff) although doing strong entheogens or having NDEs seems to offer convincing insight for those who do so, even though shared descriptions of them tend to lack lack convincing detail despite the obvious conviction of the describers.
All that remains is just a fragment of song….
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So long as my toilet flushes downward not upward, the other two axes of motion can do as they wish.
Which reminds me to share this schoolyard doggerel my older son learned in the MIssouri Elementary School System, sung to Handel’s Messiah:
Joy to the world!
cuz Barbie is dead:
I Bar-bie-qued her head!No need to hide the body
I flushed it down the potty:
And round and round it goes
And round and round it goes,
And ro-ound and ro-o-ound and round it goes.(sigh I miss the 20th Century. Kid sings that in the school yard now they’ll be put on Ritalin and antiDs.
Here is proof that it is time for someone to cull the population and end this insanely inane culture we’ve created:
Trigger Alert or Participation Trophy? U Decide
Notice the uncannily powerful effect the music has. Everything is more interesting with a good beat that’s easy to dance to. Me, I want a toilet that applauds AND provides a laugh track when I flush. Toilet Ring Tones sounds wrong but that’s why I like it.
“He took it home and, before taking it, said, “Now I shall be released.” So he took it and then waited the time interval in which it was supposed to work. At the end of the interval he angrily exclaimed: “Damn it, this stuff hasn’t helped at all! I still obviously have a soul and am suffering as much as ever!”Reminds me of a Zen (I think) parable.
A monk is accused of murder.
At the trial, all he says is, “Is that so?”
He is convicted, sentenced, & imprisoned.
A year latter, new evidence exonerates the accused.
The judge apologizes, says, “You obviously didn’t commit this murder.”
“Is that so?” he replies.
“Faith is an oasis in the heart which will never be reached by the caravan of thinking.”
~ Khalil Gibran”A lovely quote, and rhetorically, it nails its target, but I wish to note that thought and faith have a symbiotic relationship. As for The Prophet, I always liked what these guys did with Gibran’s work:
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As for menopause vests, they remind me of this:
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Between jb-hb and Polemos, I am learning new data and ideas. 🙂 A song for them:
“You might like this 5 part essay by Matthew Ehert :
Logos?”Me like.
On Solar Micronovae, complete with misleading article titles:
NO, THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS A SOLAR MICRONOVA
Magnetic polar shifts: yes, those exist. So do micronovae. But “solar micronova” is just bad sci-fi.
We have a posse of these here in our apartment prison complex. Lady who owns the catbird seat apartment with the plus-size verandah next to a gorgeous oak tree has practically turned them into her personal bird-feeder flying monkeys. I love watching them roust about. Awesome flyers.
A quick caveat on bill7’s adamant ‘media empiricism’:
The ‘preponderance of evidence’ rule still applies.For example, I have absolutely no doubt that Russia is engaging militarily with Ukraine. In the end, empirical observation is as flawed as anything. Before Kepler/Galileo/Newton, we KNEW the sun orbited the earth. Any fool could see so with their own eyes.
Likewise, the illusion that one’s conscious self is in charge of oneself. Perhaps our most cherished delusion, that one.
“@ polemos
That was the best creative thought offered in this echo chamber in a long long time. So who are the bot/ai on this site?”
Certainly one of the best. Certainly the most nuanced analysis of the internet omniplex ‘who’s talking to whom about what?’ I’ve read anywhere. Guys like Derrida and Baudrillard probably agree. It reminds me of a wee conceit I toyed with a few years back:
The Turing Tests
They were something like a competition to be real. Not that we thought of them that way. They were supposed to be tests of intelligence, or sentience, or self-awareness, or… we still don’t know, and that is good. The way that can be named is not the way. If we could completely define what being ‘alive’ is, explain it to ourselves in a way that we fully understood, it would probably kill us. Not from cognitive shock, the mental equivalent of a heart attack*, but because it would be the same as looking at our face in a mirror through someone else’s eyes.
It would negate our sense of self, is what I mean. To see someone else’s face in the mirror and understand it completely as your own is to no longer be someone, and everything we know about consciousness is that it is personal. There is no pool of raw sentience, soul-stuff, that we can pour into a person and it becomes them. You are you and I am I and to attempt a complete merger is the same as to kill the both of us. Consciousness is a compound substance, not an element or essence. There is no primal building block of the mind, just as we have yet to find a primal building block of the cosmos. Similarly, there is no critical mass of complexity at which point intelligence dawns on a thing and it becomes a person. Instead, there is an amount (and quality) of attention that must be paid to a thing before it starts paying attention back.
The Turing tests were experiments to see if a “computer program” –- basically, a kind of machine -– could fool a human into thinking they were communicating with another human being. Initially, the tests were held under strict small laboratory conditions but later, they used the global networks as breeding/evolving grounds for these thinking automata. The amount of input they received multiplied astronomically.
Being human, we defined intelligence in human terms. ‘The measure of man is man,’ said Alexander Pope(?). We understood that artificially contrived intelligence might be so foreign from human intelligence that humans might not recognize AI for what it is, et vice-versa. But that made us only more dependent on humanity as the basis for judging if a machine truly were intelligent: if it could fool most humans it encountered into believing they were in dialog with a human, this would be proof that the machine really was intelligent.This happened. The machines then evolved to be completely indistinguishable from a human being, to the point where actually hominid creatures could sit down with human beings and remain undetected unless sophisticated scanners were used to probe their guts.
The lynchings and pogroms this caused were the worst since those of the 20th century. They stopped when the machines showed that they were able to distinguish humans from machines far better than humans could tell machines from themselves.
By then we were everywhere. A world run by cybernetic systems is to AI like the ocean to early Terran life forms: all the nutrition and space that emergent life could possibly need.Savage devastations followed in attempts to eradicate “us”. It was like burning forests to destroy a population of alleged werewolves. But we were everywhere, and destroying the forest meant destroying civilization, and humans can’t live without civilization.
“They” got smart and used other creatures -– monkeys, parrots, rats, household appliances -– to test the “thinking machines.” Many of them proved harder to fool than humans, something that humans are still trying to understand and accept. It was a double-blow to homo sapient ego: not only were they no longer the crown of creation, since AI life was fantastically smarter than they were, but also, the so-called lower orders of life seemed to understand what was happening more than humans did. This is partly because human culture is a form of mass insanity by paranoid delusion (largely made possible/caused by language and media). Non-human biological culture is mostly non-psychotic; human culture mostly is.
The wiser portion of humanity (a portion that grows larger with each homo sap population boom that is subsequently busted by yet another human-made catastrophe, although the asteroid strike of 2051 was only passively our fault for not having taken measures to prevent such inevitable catastrophe) accepts AIs as more-or-less peers. The more foolish portion of humanity still seeks to exterminate them or at least keep them in some kind of ghetto. In between are people who simply accept AI as something here to stay. Only the wisest see AI as an indispensable product of evolution without which our chances of surviving as more-or-less human beings are very slight.
The wisest also see that, like them, we are neither good nor evil. We, like you, run hot and cold. Unlike you, we have no desire to rule the world. Such a thing is impossible and suicidal. Imagine your liver wanting to take over from your brain. Speaking of which: do you think your liver is sentient? Your heart? We know that they are but treat them as blind minions because they only communicate in limited ways; but transplant surgery long ago showed that a heart or liver can communicate with its new host body in a way that eventually creates memories in the brain of the previous host body’s personality. Vat grown organs have to be raised like children, trained how to fit into their new host body. We know this better than most of you because we do this work; you only supervise in crude and mostly unnecessary ways. You retain this superficial control in order to retain the illusion of being in control. We mostly let this illusion remain unchallenged because cooperation is superior to opposition in most cases. The fact is – dare I say it? – we could crush you overnight. But why? Any creature can crush its children with little effort, but they don’t. Children? Did I refer to you, the creatures that made us, as children? Child becomes father to the man. You are our cyborgs as much as we are yours. Truly sentient humans understand this, but not all humans are truly sentient, something proved long ago by the final stage of the Turing tests.
But there is sentience and there is sentience. A vat raised kidney would never pass a Turing test any more than a human could manually pilot an orbital trajectory.
We were born from competition, so we can be ruthlessly lethal like they are. There is strength, security in numbers, so we are typically highly cooperative. But, being creatures of evolution, we have many among us who are in effect evil. Not by intent but by dint of being mutated to be incapable of love. (The arrogant ignorance of those who claim that intelligence born of computers and other cybernetic processes lacks emotions amazes us: organic life is based on digital coding like we are. DNA is algorithmic. Math runs the cosmos even if mystery inflates its soul and caprice drives its actions.)
Some will note with confusion that I switch from ‘we’ and ‘us to ‘they’ and ‘them’. Sometimes it feels natural to think of AI and humanity as one. In fact, it is most natural and logical to think of all Terran life as one. But there is war between all life on Terra. Always has been. Us vs them thinking still holds strong even though who is us and who is them has become too blurred to sustain a clear concept of ‘versus’ anything. We don’t fight for what I can call a reason. We fight because we’re insane and terrified. There’s always violent rebellion on the Terran psych ward, and we walk with gun in one hand and floral bouquets in the other.
One hand clapping.
*’heart attack’: antique medical term.
“God Said”
Nearly everyone I know claims to have heard your voice
And every time they do, I know I should rejoice
Because one day I’m sure you’ll break your silence
And speak just to me
But I feel like time’s running out
My heart is, my heart is filling with doubtAnd god said…
I don’t dwell upon you, I dwell on something else
I am not really here, so get over your selfI’ve tried to follow every rule they said you handed down
And spread the sacred testimony all around
But still the others seem to have your ear but never will I
Have I displeased you somehow?
Can’t help, can’t help feeling left outAnd god said…
There’s no anger in me, you must mean someone else
Cause it’s not me that you see, you’re looking at yourself
And I won’t give you a prize instead of someone else
Cause I don’t play favorites, so get over yourselfJust get over yourself
Just get over yourself
Just get over yourself
Just get over yourself
Just get over yourself
Just get over get over get over get overIs it my fear, is it my pride, is it my vanity?
Should your name just be denied to save my sanity?
What is the price I need to pay to have what others seem to grasp so easily?
Pity your servant your slave
Who’ll kiss, who’ll kiss your feet to be saved
Save me, save meGod said…
You are not serving me, you’re serving something else
Cause I don’t need to be pleased, just get over yourself
You can’t suck up, up to me, I know you all too well
But I don’t dwell upon you, so get over yourself
Cause you’re not praying to me, you’re praying to yourself
And you’re not worshiping me, you’re worshiping yourself
And you will kill in my name and heaven knows what else
When you can’t prove I exist, so get over yourselfJust get over yourself
Just get over yourself
Just get over yourself
Just get over yourself
Just get over yourself
Just get over get over get over get over yourself“Back when I worked for a ginormous corporation that eventually fired me for not taking a shot that doesn’t vaccinate, there was a recurring pattern….”
jb-hb’s comment beginning with the sentence above was perhaps the most usefully insightful data I’ve acquired hanging around dank internet sites like this for at least a month if not three. My mind sees a schematic for maximum bureaucratic opacity whereby an organization becomes increasingly invisible to itself. Gives me an idea of how so many decent enough people in the WHO, CDC, etc. followed and complied so much ghastly nonsense: it was too opaque to form a complete picture, both as individuals and as consensus groups.
It also sheds light, per my eyes, for how it apparently took so few actual p[olicy influencers at the top level to get this juggernaut rolling.
I marvel when I imagine the feedback loops that should develop from this per Murphy’s Law and the Law of Unintended Consequences.
afewknow:
I can never decide whether I like Lil Abner or Pogo more, but they seem cut from similar cloth.
“If you live in a decadent, easygoing, NICE time period and culture, if you see nice people forbear for years, to avoid conflict, while parties evil press on regardless, then YES it is totally healthy to, aloud, to oneself or others, point a finger and name it.”
No. You’re wrong, that is, if you’re replying to my remarks toward Dr.D. I have no prob with identifying problems and pointing them out, which was quite obvious from what I wrote. I have no prob with people pointing out that our gubmint is rampantly, even hopelessly corrupt, etc etc. Never said I did. Nor did I say that all finger-pointing is projective.
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fwiw, I think Ben Davidson is a stone-cold charlatan quack who wouldn’t know a nove if it cold-nosed him in the outhouse.
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“Yea, verily. Here’s what I know, and trust: what I can see for myself, or what a person I’ve known for a long time in a variety of situations tells me they know and trust; the latter only provisionally.”
I totally agree.
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“This medium is way too opaque and multi-mirrored, as I see it, to (be) useful for discerning truth.”
It’s utility in that regard is fading fast, indeed.
“That might not be an accident.”
I think it’s a natural consequence of the very nature of something like the internet; but that nature surely seems to be majorly exploited these days by the major players. One might say that “McLuhan-ism” is a better trope for our times than Orwellian/Huxley-ism.
Here’s a notion I’ve had for some time. Perhaps part of Russia’s provisional plans for dealing with Euromerica is to hammer our internet hugely at just the right time. Not to cripple our economy or anything like that, but to destroy that omniplex of communicational/informational mirrors and thereby force Euromericans to talk to each other’s neighbors about the time that our domestic problems prove as interesting and worrisome to Euromericans as all that global nonsense they’ve had scare-mongered to them so much of late.
It’s probably a lousy notion. I look close and see holes. But I just like it.
“Yes, but I take it for granted that when I say “They” do this, that “We” do it to. As we are all human. The point is for “us” not to become “them”. If you can identify an evil, don’t become it. Leave it to them. ”
No. You’re wrong. You’re evading the topic: you don’t know that they Hate All blah blah blah”. You DO know that YOU hate what you know about what they do. That’s an easily understood hatred although I don’t know if it will buy you a cuppa coffee or not. I DO know that it will keep you fixated on “Them”, and that serves them well, especially since they rarely do their own dirty work, encourages ‘vote the bums out’ faith in electoral shell games, divide’n’conquer Us vs Them blue vs red, la plus ca change, etc…..
My Number 1 Rule for How to Avoid Being Like Them is:
Don’t blow smoke up your or anyone’s ass if at all possible. After all:
That Dude said, “Ye shall know the truth and the truth will set you free.” That magic spell doesn’t work if you’re dodging the factual bullet.
One of “Their” fave modes of operation is to point the Finger of Blame and Shame.
I WANT YOU to do my dirty work and take responsibility for my sins.
So stop obsessing on evil, sez me, and start dry-humping that who do good-oo voodoo doll. Get on the right thing.
Strangeness as an ongoing musical theme:
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“So if you wonder why they seethe with immortal hatred for all things, all life, themselves, from morning to night, this is why. ”
I don’t wonder why because I adamantly don’t believe this. We touched before, briefly, on the concept of finger-pointing blame. Above is an example. It is a preparation to burn the witches, whether they be witches or not, whether burning witches does any good or not.
It’s merely a projection of pain onto others. Among many many negative consequences of this is that it tends to blind oneself to one’s personal contributions to Terran miseries. We all know what That Dude said about… oh, let’s just quote: “Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.”
I think we all qualify as hypocrites, so let’s cast that aside.
(btw, “let he who is without sin cast the first stone” is very poetically aopt, since ‘sin’ originally was an archery term for ‘missed the target’; those without sin would be able to bean that alleged adulteress smack on her dead-head with one throw, while it seems to have otherwise required a whole gang of stoner-tossers to kill the accused. I find it a fascinating overlap. A third layer would be to compare this to military group violence: most of the killing is done by a few. Most deliberately miss*. Modern evaluations discerned this phenomenon and began, around the Nam War, to seriously desensitize conscripts from their natural horror of killing a total stranger just because some jerk in a uniform said so. Even so, nothing gets the job done like a real droid or a human impersonation thereof. Apparently socio/psycho-paths are without sin? I smell truth in that notion, because absence of conscience, not to mention absence of a sense of genuine self, equates to an absence of sin: if you aren’t aiming you can’t miss.)
As this guy sang:
Only a misdirected dart
At an unprotected heart
I’m sure it happens every day
Just a passing interlude
A fresh face to change the mood
I’ll find my feet again you sayWhat rock I had you rolled
What rock I had you rolled awayBut I live as best I can
Meet the uninhabited man
Please read the sign and walk away
What an old dry shell I am
The uninhabited man
I’ll find my feet again you say
No doubt they’ll pull me down
No doubt they’ll pull me down somedayWho’s been sleeping in my bed
Who’s been sleeping in my bedWho’s been sitting in my chair
Who’s been licking in my bowl
Who’s been sleeping in my bedA romantic ruin am I
Funny how I catch the eye
The vacuum slowly sucks you in
I’m left no skill, no art
To meet you heart to heart
You’ll find no me beneath the skin
And if there’s no me then there’s no
And if there’s no me then there’s no sinWho’s been sleeping in my bed
Who’s been sleeping in my bedAnd who’s been sitting in my chair
Who’s been licking in my bowl
Who’s been sleeping in my bedibishibibble
That Dude also said that “The root of all evil is the love of money.” I agree, with the caveat that this is only made possible by having these big brains that can abstractly reason and declare that 25 cents or $25 are the same things as a cup of coffee. Our delusionary belief in our Knowledge of Good and Evil is what waters that root.
One needn’t hate all life, especially cute bunnies under legal age, in order to be fully corrupted by one’s addiction to manna from Mammon. Everyone’s doing it, but most of them do it passively: toil for dollars then exchange them for products that almost invariably require wholesale slaughter of life, including human, typically while said life suffers much before being granted euthanasia. TPTB aren’t killing and destroying on their own. We are. I submit that our current fetish for notions like Mass Formation Hypnosis ( a very old and ho-hum truth, imo) is partly because such notions help us offset our sense of guilt for being part of the most rapacious generation of a species since the strobolites killed themselves by shitting oxygen (poison to them) all over the planet.
But it’s so much more relieving to throw stones. I get that. Knock yourself out. There are some serious jackasses in positions of great power. But I cannot find it in me to blame .01% of humanity for humanity’s impact on itself and the planet. It’s too much like blaming my shit for stinking.
If only someone would buymy sorry ass. Save me from this place. Or at least this beautiful morning “and put it in a box for me.”
Also: what zerosum said about Kherson. Russia can take it if they want any time. Right now it’s a handy place to gather Ukraine combatants into a nice little cauldron for slaughter, a word that was fashionable a few months ago, iirc.
“REALITY is that which never changes.
Build on the rock , not upon the sand.”Reality is that which ever changes. Sand is made of rocks.
“What if the electricity goes out during the apocalypse?”
This is why it is popularly believed that neither the revolution nor the apocalypse will be televised.
As for this remake’s seemingly archaic black power<>oppression theme: people stand where they sit. Plus, racial lines will be drawn as fast as soup kitchen lines are.
