Apotheosis A La Mode

The Buddha used sea foam as a metaphor for the Universe.  All existing things rise like a bubble through the water, float for a time on the surface, then subside back into the Great Medium.  Nothing, he posited, was ever "created" or "destroyed," it simply changed into different states of existence.

I tell to agree with this view and find that quantum physics particularly confirms this idea.  I further add to the quantum view the Electric Universe hypothesis that the Universe is suffused with and operates via an all-pervasive and infinite electro-magnetic force.  Since the Universe appears to have rules and follow certain formulae, I conclude that the Universe is on the whole a Rational Individual, which some may choose to call God or Allah or the Great Nothingness.  All things exist because the Universe's rules make them not only possible, but probable.

Life exists because the Universe exists.  Life is sentient because the Universe is sentient.  Life is self-aware because the Universe is self-aware.  In a sense, there is no "individual," there is only the Universe extant in various forms that are created by the rules.

What gets me on this track is the rather large number of articles, discoveries and inspirations of late that seem to be infusing all media.  There appears, to my mind at least, a growing awareness of something much larger than our comparatively minuscule existence.

It is not so much of a single idea or discovery that is changing things, as much as it is an overall adjustment to the Collective Point Of View.  From the individual up to the global, we all seem to be changing perspectives, particularly about what we find important and meaningful.

This Change is currently showing up in our common culture as a Populist Wave, aided and abetted by what appears to be a substantial change in the revelation of scientific discovery.  I choose the word "revelation" advisedly, since I firmly believe that much of what is leaking into the Popular Mind has been known at some level for a long time, not the least of which was Buddha's ancient observations.

One should note that I am not talking about shifts between political or religious ideologies.  Rather, I am referring to the Common Culture rising above those ideologies to something more profound and...well, Universal.

People are not usually aware of great changes when they are in the midst of them.  We generally recognize the profundity of events after they have passed and we can assess the effect they have had on the future.  I would say, though, that most people are aware of something big when it happens, though we are generally incapable of knowing just how big they are without perspective.

What I perceive is a collective move away from "leaders" and "authority," to a more holistic definition of "freedom" and "liberty."

When I watch the videos of Social Justice Warriors (SJW), I sense that these are people incapable of dealing with personal freedom and liberty.  They have a burning desire to follow, and to force others to do the same.  They have herd minds and are horrified at the idea of being a herd of one.  If every individual is a "leader" and "authority," they panic because they don't know whom to follow.  To them, a world of individuals is unacceptable chaos and they are truly terrified by the prospect.

We see the same phenomenon on large scales, too.  I believe that the current lashing-out of Islam, among others, is similar on a group scale to the angry, wailing SJW.  Not only is the institution of Islam itself afraid to give up control, its adherents are afraid to be uncontrolled.  The violent reaction is an attempt to re-establish authority because both the group and the individuals define themselves by controlling and being controlled.

I only single out Islam because it is the most visible.  The Vatican has been trying to reassert itself and people like Vladimir Putin has been trying to regain control for the Orthodoxy.

Governments, too, have been desperately raking followers back into the fold.  The EU and US have been in desperation mode, trying to lock down control over their perceived empires.  China is in a sheer panic because its entire raison d'être is in danger of collapsing.

What is happening - and has been for centuries - is an apotheosis.  Individuals are slowly realizing that God is not "out there" with a set of codified "Thou Shants" that control our every movement.  Rather, we exist as constructs of Universe's Rules.  We are not separate; we are manifestations.  There is no God "out there; we and all we perceive are God.

Granted, this process of apotheosis has been long and arduous.  It is a clash of the most fundamental aspects of Weltanschauungs.  It is an ultimate battle between Esoteric and Exoteric forces.  It is the collision of Gnostic and Agnostic.  The division is so profound, so fundamental, that it is now beginning to affect macroscopic organizations across the planet.

This concept is so large that I am only beginning to express it as more than just a feeling.  I can now see large-scale effects in the global society, as I think most people can now do.  The Populist Wave is not a new form of "leadership" or "authority," it is a complete rejection of those concepts and a desire to pursue one's own direction.

We now have the most powerful tool ever devised by our species at our fingertips.  We have the collected sum of Humanity's experiences and ideas within seconds of having a thought or idea.  We can instantly connect with about half of the human species in moments, and the number is growing daily.  From Buddha to Berdyaev, we can each stand on the shoulders of giants while moving little more than our fingers and eyeballs.

The question is not whether this movement will fail.  It is far too late for that.  Rather, how fast will it begin to move?  It is quite obvious that the Controllers and the Authorities are losing, and the pace is rapidly accelerating.  It's as if Humanity is stepping into the daylight after years of living in a prison of our own making.

What will we do with our freedom?

The Cacophony of Cultures

I tend to write a whole week's worth of columns on Sunday afternoon, so if you notice particular themes running through them, then much of it has to do with the mood I am in on Sunday afternoon.  But, since my lovely bride just brought me a bunch of chocolate chip cookies, perhaps my mood will lighten up a bit going forward.

My habit is to scan through the news and look for things that set me off.  I use Drudge for the right-wingnut view, the New York Times for the left-wingnut view, and Rense for the pure-wingnut view. For seasoning, I throw in the Financial Times, the Strait Times, the Allgemeine Zeitung, and the Times of India (aka the Bombay Bombast).  Stir in Russia Today and Xinhua, boil till thick and aromatic. Then I create a mental picture of the state of the world.  And this week, that state is a pretty sad one.

What I came across, though, was an article in the Gray Lady (New York Times) about a Chinese surgeon that wants to perform a full-body transplant on a paralyzed man.  That triggered a memory about an article from Newsweek about an Italian surgeon that wanted to perform a head transplant.

The first thing that struck me is the underlying philosophical differences.  From the descriptions of what is being done, they sound more or less the same thing.  The difference is that the Italians (westerners) are changing the head, and the Chinese (easterners) wanted to swap out the body.

Not sure why, but this difference intrigued me.

Even beyond the Frankenstein movie horror images (the book used an alchemical process to create an homunculus), these articles revealed a very deep division in points of view.

On the one hand, the Westerners were transferring a head to a new host body, while the Easterners were giving a body a new head.  Do you see what I see?  The Westerners place the center of being in the head, while the Easterners view the head in context of the whole body.

What does this have to do with the price of tea in China?  Probably not much, but it does highlight something that I often go on about here, and that is the fundamental assumptions that we all have and that are culturally induced.

In the West, we have generally come to assume that the head is the center of the body.  This is neither right nor wrong, though I tend to see it as incomplete.  The Eastern culture sees the entire body as a unified whole.  Again, neither right nor wrong, just incomplete.  They are complimentary assumptions and lead to a whole host of viewpoints that are completely in opposition to each other.

A great example is the Indo/Malay word hati.  Now if you ask a schoolchild how this translates into English, they will tell you "heart," and in a sense, they are right...and wrong.  In fact, hati strictly means liver, while jantung means heart - at least when it comes to physical organs.

However, in English we use the word "heart" for a much more intangible and philosophical thing: the seat of the emotions and wisdom.  In the Indo/Malay languages, this concept in located in the liver.  Don't ask me why, I haven't gotten that far in my ponderings, but the fundamental cultural divide is there.

Indonesians will tell you hati-hati (be careful), and perhatian (attention), or memperhatikan (take note of something).  Maybe they will say someone has berhati busuk, or evil intent, or berhati baik, a heart of gold.  In a book, when a character thinks to himself, he is speaking didalam hati, inside his heart.  But, if someone drinks too much alcohol, they will get sirosis hati.  There is no mistake that hati is liver, and it is quite apparent that the language embeds all of the aspects of the Western "heart" in the liver.

In this same vein, the Westerners will transplant a head and the Easterners will transplant a body.  Same basic procedure, completely different philosophies.

To me, and admittedly I'm a bit of a geek, this is one of the most fascinating parts of learning new cultures.  Oh sure, we all have our unique costumes and dances, architecture and food, but the most interesting part is the profound differences in the assumptions we make about the Universe as part of our cultural underpinnings.

Many people go through life without ever having questioned the very foundations of how and why we think that way we do.  They never experience completely different viewpoints or rotate around a problem and attack it from an angle that we are culturally blind to.

It's like religion.  Take Judaism and Islam.  They both abhor pork.  They both practice mutilation of male genitalia.  They both have stylistically similar languages with dozens of cognate words.  Yet, one claims to be descended from the legitimate child of a mythical character (Abraham), and the other claims to be descended from the illegitimate child of the same character.  For this, they have warred for centuries, laying claim to the same lands, when in fact, they are hardly separated philosophically.

Little differences that underlie big things.

That's why - and readers here seem to agree - my scribblings tend to take unusual tacks.  I tend to look at problems and issues from non-standard points of view, and even to create new ones by synthesizing alternative viewpoints.  I like to view the world as both a head transplant and a body transplant, because that one simple change can lead to all sorts of new ideas down the line.

The people I know who can do this all have one thing in common: they speak multiple languages.  The thinkers I tend to gravitate towards all speak at least two or three languages.  The people I most admire are polyglots.  And the things that sets them apart from others is their ability to examine the world as if through multi-faceted eyes, seeing angles that others cannot.

It's a valuable tool not to be locked into a single cultural perspective.

I went to school with the son of the guy who invented the Weed-Eater.  He kept the original in a glass case in his living room.  He got tired of the trouble and expense of sharpening and replacing blades on lawn edgers, so one day he tied a bunch of heavy-duty fishing line to a popcorn snack can and bolted in on to his machine.

My grandfather, trying to figure out a way to clean tanker cars on trains after hauling oil or chemicals, was inspired by the heating coil he used to keep his coffee warm on his desk.

They both became a multi-millionaires because he looked at a problem from a wildly different point of view, and that fact made an impression on me.

Of course, my solution is to wonder why I need to edge, or even have a yard, at all.

Triumph Of Chaos

Do you live in a nation?  A state?  A nation-state?

If you are not sure, then you can be forgiven, since the terms are rarely defined or even discussed these days.  And frankly, most of the political turmoil in the world today can be traced directly to efforts to dissolve the nation-state in favor of a kind of war-lord system governed by the UN (or whatever succeeds it).

To get to the heart of what is driving global madness, we need to first define some terms.  A 'nation' is an organic entity defined by language, culture, names, and other aspects of people's lives.  A 'state' is a political entity defined by lines on a map, taxation, legal systems, and so forth.  'Mercantilism' is an economic system that seeks to protect a nation's trading interests through the use of legal, military and regulatory means.  How they all fit together will become clear in a moment.

On the island of Java, where I live, there used to be a number of nations broadly defined as Javanese and Sundanese.  The Javanese primarily inhabited the lowlands, while the Sunda stayed mostly in the mountains, with a fuzzy dividing line between the east and west of the island.  These nations were distinguished by language, culture and cuisine.  Javanese and Sundanese are distinct dialects with many sub-dialects.  Culturally, one of the most obvious is the patterns of batik (printed cloth) that distinguished one region from another, but there are also physical and architectural differences.  On the plate, the Javanese prefer spice to the Sundanese preference for bitter flavors.

Over the top of these nations is a political entity called the Republic of Indonesia, which is a modern state, with all the bureaucratic trappings of other republics.  This political entity uses the Indonesian language, which is wholly distinct from both Javanese and Sundanese, and the state identifies itself with a flag, anthem and other symbols of the modern state.

The driving force that unified the two nations under the state was mercantilism, the mutual interest of both groups to protect their business interests and promote those interests through the use of common regulations, a legal system for disputes and a military to project force on outside challengers.

The modern nation-state arose in the 1400s in Europe, primarily in Venice, Genoa and other Italian city-states.  The distinct cultures formed naturally through familial ties and language/culture.  In order to reduce friction between the powerful trading families and focus on expanding business, they created a system of laws and regulations to level the home playing field.  They then built, for the time, mighty militaries to protect their ships and caravans from raiders and ensure safe delivery of goods and the more important return of money.

Over time, nations, states and mercantilism combined with cartography and the ability to define boundaries and borders and record them on maps and negotiate them with other entities to create the modern nation-state.  A fine example of a nation-state is Switzerland.  It is actually three nations - Italy, Germany and France - combined under a political system defined by boundaries to protect its business interests through mercantilism.  The inhabitants speak different languages and enjoy different native cultures (nation), but share a single government and military (state) symbolized by a common flag, anthem and other such things.

For the better part of 600 years, the nation-state has grown to cover most of the globe and has defined how we humans interact with each other.  Legal system compete to offer the most fair and secure environments for business, while the militaries go to war to protect and expand markets.  It is something we are all used to and hardly ever think about any more.  In fact, maps have hardly changed for decades now and we are generally shocked when extreme events rewrite boundaries, such as the fall of the Soviet Union.

Though the whole thing is rather chaotic, it has been relatively stable and allowed complex legal systems to develop that control activities within and between the various nation-states.  However, a major shift has been underway for the better part of the 20th century and into the 21st century.  Powerful interests have been trying to dissolve the nation-state in favor of a global system of laws and regulations, with a global military to protect trade.  The first step was the League of Nations after WW1, with the United Nations springing from its ashes in the wake of WW2.

Multi-national corporations have been a major driving force behind the effort to end the nation-state.  There are obvious advantages to conforming one's business to a single set of rules and regulations, rather than having to manage and maneuver through piles of legal hassle in every country where one does business.  The International Standards Organization (ISO) and HDTV (replacing NTSC, PAL and SECAM) are prime examples of this effort.

Imagine McDonald's, with outlets and franchises in most of the nation-states on Earth.  Employment laws, food and sanitation regulations, environmental laws, taxation schemes, and much more apply in every location and are radically different place to place.  It would be so much easier for them if there were a single set of global rules, a single taxing scheme and other standardization.

It would also be nice if there were a single military that protected business interests in every jurisdiction and on the high seas.

McDonald's is only one of thousands of multi-national corporations, and nearly all of them have a vital interest in conforming global business environments to a single standard.  Thus, the ongoing push to end the nation-state.

All of this is being led, of course, by banking and finance, which is the nucleus around which business orbits and the heart of mercantilism for centuries.  The test grounds for this unified system is the European Union and the United States.  They are both a hodge-podge of nations that are being forced, with varying degrees of success, to synchronize into single states.

The EU is the latest effort and one that is a bit clearer for our purposes than the US.  The EU is dozens of very distinct nations with roughly 20 states overlaying them.  Over the past 30 years or so, there has been a major effort to centralize banking and government, issue a single currency, erase borders, converge militaries.  And if Grexit and Brexit are any sign, it is failing miserably.

In fact, people like Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump and Chiang Kai-shek, who are prominent nationists, are often ridiculed and berated by corporate interests because nationalism is anathema to the state and mercantile interests.  They have been vilified, fairly or not, because their efforts undermine the centuries-long effort to champion political systems over natural ones in the interest of commercialism and profit.

To understand the current global chaos and honestly assess whether a particular leader is really wrong, or is just being castigated for being a naturalist/nationalist, one needs to understand the distinction at the root of the problem.

We are facing a massive clash of entrenched interests - a clash of civilizations, if you will.  On the one hand are those promoting nationalism, which is to say the natural and organic organization of human beings.  On the other hand are the statists/mercantilists who promote business interests and profits over the interests of individuals.  Who is right or wrong in this argument is a subjective decision.

My view is that nationalism is a natural function of life.  We are all imprinted with the location and culture of our birth.  There is only one "home," though there may be many "houses."  People, no matter how much we attempt to modify it, will always desire the "home" to which they were born.  Everything else will always be foreign.  This comes from two things: the natural imprinting of the electro-magnitic field of a given location at birth, and the mother tongue, which carries one's culture with it (culture and language are inseparable).

Like homing pigeons, we all have an innate desire to return to the place where we were born.  How strong that desire and how much one is susceptible to it varies, but it is always there.  Part of that most basic motivation is the desire to keep that "home" in some sort of pristine or original condition, a kind of defense mechanism that makes us fight for the sanctity and sovereignty of our birthplaces.

The other part of this equation - language - is even more deeply rooted.  Though I speak a number of languages, and I am fluent in four of them, English is always my default.  It is the language of my thoughts and it molds my worldview.  I can no more change that that I can change my brain.  It is the language that carries culture, and culture that influences language.  One can never be divorced from the other.

Thus, we see globally a fundamental clash between what humans are and what we feel, against what we have created.  Political and economic sciences have been separated from the most fundamental aspects of what it means to be human.  Despite centuries of education and social manipulation, the statist/mercantilist interests cannot remove these most basic impulses from humanity.  Efforts to genetically manipulate the organism may one day succeed, but I am skeptical.

In the real world, though, there are the Donald Trumps on the nationalist side - though I think he runs solely on instinct.  On the other side are the "globalists," whose efforts are, as we saw above, to synchronize a global system of laws, regulations and militaries to protect business and profits.  They are fundamentally opposed ideologies and can no more mix than oil and water.  They are mutually exclusive.

So when you see the Trumps and the Putins vilified in the corporate media, or people railing on about racial, globalist or religious ideals, at the heart of it is a clash of worldviews, a weltanschauungskrieg, or "war of philosophies."

I, for one, believe that the nationalists will win.  Beneath the rhetoric is a deep human truth that cannot be changed.  The statist/mercantilist effort seeks to replace what humans feel with an abstract ideology that must be learned - it is not installed at birth.  It is akin to a computer's BIOS and OS.  They can work together or clash, but when they clash, nothing will work.

I suspect the harder the statists push, the more the nationalists will resist until the whole thing collapses, or one side gives up, and I don't see that happening.  It is the proverbial rock and a hard spot, or in scientific terms, the irresistible force meeting the the unyielding object.

This will not end pretty.

Buddy, Can You Spare A Paradigm?

Few people take time to realize it, but we - as a species - are on the verge of a Great Shift.  All the bitching and hollering about this problem or that change are myopically focused on symptoms, but missing the cause.

Western civilization, at least for the past 3,000 years, has been predicated on two competing weltanschauungs (literally: world views).  All of our philosophy, science and art can be summed up in two basic camps of thought: Aristotelian and Platonic.  The former is also called the materialist view, meaning that the entire Universe can be directly measured and sensed with the human body.  The latter understands that there are unseen and unsee-able forces at work that can not be measured, but only felt or implied.

These two competing lines of inquiry have battled it out, with science sitting in the materialist camp and religion staking bivouacking in the esoteric camp.  They have divided the Universe into mutually exclusive beliefs that have been heretofore irreconcilable.

The problems began in earnest around the time of Galileo.  The Church (Platonic) insisted that the Universe revolved around the Earth, while the materialists (Aristotelian) insisted that it did not.  Poor old Galileo looked and Jupiter one night and noticed that four bright objects were circling something other than Earth.

Well, we just couldn't have that, could we?  So the Church excommunicated Galileo, forced a public retraction out of him and kept him under house arrest until he died.

Along came Janssen, Leeuwenhoek and Pasteur who discovered an entire new Universe that was undetectable with the five senses, yet measurable with instruments and controllable with technology.  Suddenly, we were confronted with something that crossed the lines of Aristotelian and Platonic.  A shaky peace was negotiated and humanity (at least the Western half) managed to limp out of the battle intact.

However, the truce was short-lived and bombs soon began falling anew until the subatomic nukes began popping off all over the place.  The quantum world put our safe zones into a tail spin.  We could neither sense nor measure directly this strange new realm, yet we could engineer horrible devices of destruction, take pictures of bones inside the living body, cause horrible burns and diseases all with things that had no apparent substance.

We were now firmly straddled across two disparate belief systems, both of which were simultaneously true and false.  We learned how to measure these things (Aristotelian), yet they were invisible to our senses (Platonic).  The phenomena permeated the Universe and underpinned its functions, but in the case of quantum mechanics, the very act of measuring them changed their nature.  They could also act instantly across vast distances of time and space, making the physical world of the materialists just the skin and bones of the esotericists.

And so here we languish at the threshold of the 21st century.  Those two all-encompassing world views that had served us so well for 3,000 years, though they were as oil and water to each other, have blurred into something that is both a blend of the two, and neither of them.

Here lies our conundrum and our opportunity.  We are in a position to merge all of our previous learning of the past three millennia and add great new purviews to them, as well.  We are on the cusp of a Great Awakening in which we will have amazing new insights and thoughts based on our new ruling paradigm.

The problem is, as with all new things (especially those which completely undermine all that has come before), there are those who have their entire lives invested in the old way of doing things.  Whether it's as simple as making a living, or as complex as trying to rule the world, a great number of people are unprepared and unwilling to change.  They are and will continue to fight it with every fiber of their being.

We have seen these things on a micro-scale.  The automobile put a lot of people out of work who had invested in the horse paradigm.  TeeVee put the fear of God into the film establishment,  Digital scared the hell out of the analogue folks.  The internet is killing print and libraries.

All new things require the death of old things.  It is the nature of Universe.  As Genghis Khan once said, "Every man should kill at least one other man to make room for himself."

The Western world, and to great extent the Eastern, is faced with the death of two very old and dear friends: our weltanschauungs.  Because the Buddha straddled these two worlds 2,500 years ago, the East is less susceptible, but not immune.  There is still the nature of political force and control to be dealt with.

Billions of lives have been spent in building our current models of Universe.  Though they competed, they fed on each other giving impetus to many folks to carry on the fight.  It is very hard to simply release our grasp and let them go, especially since we are entirely unsure of what will replace them

And that is the crux of our challenge at this juncture in history.  We are witnessing the death of the very roots of our culture and civilization, and we can see the sprouts of the new, but until it bears fruit, no one is really sure what's growing.  For this reason, they cling tenatiously to what they know, even if they are fully cognizant that what they know is wrong, or at the very least incomplete.

Religion, science, governments and economics all have their reasons to stay put.  All have served their paradigmatic masters well, and they have prospered because of it.  But that world is dying and they want to stake out new territory to preserve their privileged ranks.  They are no more useful now than blacksmiths and wainwrights.  But where do we go without them?  This is uncharted territory.

The challenge before us is to craft an entirely new way of looking at the Universe.  It is inevitable and necessary and a task that will require introspection on a massive scale.  This is not choosing which shirt to wear in the morning.  This is choosing whether the shirt exists at all and what form it will take.  It is that profound.

We have to rethink every single aspect of our world, from toilets to towers, from floor tiles to flying things, from universities to Universe.  Things like the internet, 3-D printers and quantum computing are set to tear our world views asunder and leave us morally, ethically and cognitively dangling in the breeze.  The imperative nature of our task could not be more emphatic.  We literally must begin from scratch and create new institutions and philosophies.  It's taken 3,000 years to build the current world and we're only a couple of hundred years into the change-over.  There's a long way to go.

On the one hand, it is very exciting, like waiting for Mom and Dad to wake up on Christmas morning so we can run down and see what St. Nick left behind.  On the other hand, it is terrifying, like the thought that ol' Nick gave us a pass this year for our various misdemeanors.  That very self-related conflict is, on a mass scale, what we are faced with in the realm of civilization itself.

It is high time we threw off the gloves and started wrestling with our problems in a very personal way.  We must question all of our assumptions.  We must examine all of our institutions.  We must re-evaluate all the ways we do anything.

It's that big.

As Douglas Adams might say, it involves Life, the Universe and Everything.  There's precious little outside of that.

An Huxwellian Distopia

O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in't.

—William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act V, Scene I, ll. 203–206

I am hereby and forthwith declaring a new English adjective: Huxwellian©.  The current global distopia has exceeded the bounds of either Huxley's or Orwell's most shocking nightmares with elements of both in evidence, and so one must combine the two into something of a superlative to either alone.

Yes, the world has become an Huxwellian phantasm.  A la Huxley, we have populations unable to deal with daily life without the aid of pharmaceuticals.  In addition, we are on the verge (publicly at any rate) of being able to dispense human beings from bottles made to order.  It is not long before we will have Alphas and Betas running roughshod over Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons, and the latter enjoying it.  Certainly, the sharp class divisions and strict population controls are on the table for discussion if not already being implemented via GMOs and virus manipulation.

A la Orwell, we have a fascist security state with highly controlled economy, endless wars and Room 101 "rendition" centers.  Rationing is not overt, but rather is achieved by Inner Party Members shifting resources around and creating artificial shortages to control pricing.  And without a doubt, the MiniTruth is in full force changing history before our very eyes.  Witness nothing else beside the Boston Marathon bombings.

I believe that Huxley's world is probably the ultimate goal, with Orwell's vision the intermediate step to achieving it.  With 'unnecessary' history erased and culture severed from any connection with the past, the World State would be free to manipulate society in its own image, ultimately achieving the tranquil slavery and ultimate control of the brave new world.

Both writers envisioned a class of 'natural' people who exist outside the bounds of the State apparatus.  Orwell's proles and Huxley's savages are dying breeds of humans who neither fit into the Grand Vision, nor present much of a threat, as they consume their time with basic survival.

Both writers envision people incapable of thinking, much less expressing, ideas beyond the scope of their societal function.  Huxley's world has chemically modified worker classes that are dumbed down both in vitro and educationally.  They are unable to formulate ideas or desires that exceed their status in society.  In Orwell's world, the ever-shrinking vocabulary and constant manipulation of information prevents anyone outside the Inner Party from thinking outside the box.  Without words, there can be no thoughts.

In so many overt and covert ways, both visions of the future are in the process of being realized.

Entire populations are addicted to pharmaceutical euphoria - Huxley's soma.  These people are unable and/or unwilling to deal with reality and must chemically subdue their natural abhorrence to the world we are creating.  Millions if not billions of people are accepting GMO foods with nary a whimper of protest.  Our educational systems have already bifurcated into those dispensing the knowledge to run the world, and those offering just enough to push buttons and pull levers on command.

On the Orwellian side, the State has become all pervasive.  It invades our most private places and watches our every move with computerized precision.  Peace has become war and truth has become a lie.  Justice serves only the State and those found lacking are duly rendered into subservient drones.  Permanent war is the ends which justify the means.

Without a doubt, we live in an Huxwellian world.  Take your double-plus good soma and go back to sleep.

Is it too late to change our course?

The answer begins with the realization of what course we are on.  I therefore present my new adjective to the world in order to define the problem - a necessary step before we can remedy it.  Without proper diagnosis there can be no cure.

At this moment, the only reason we proles and savages are protected is because there is a war at the top for ultimate control.  The Inner Party members - alphas and betas - are fighting among themselves to be King of the Hill.  This buys us a bit of time, but it is a situation that can not last forever.  The key to victory is education, not by buying it from the hypnopaedic centers, but by greedily reading the wealth of information in the cultural classics of civilization that have been carefully marginalized by so-called 'education'.

My choice of Huxwellian as a new adjective serves a double purpose.  It highlights two of the most influential novels/writers of the 20th century, as well as points out the fact that real knowledge does not come from single sources, but rather is a connecting of dots across multiple sources.  The single greatest failure of our educational systems today is the lack of true liberal arts curricula.  We must read theology, science, philosophy, economics, and especially history.  We must study music and art and absorb literature before we can not only make sense of where we are, but alter the course we are on.

Furthermore, we must decide whether we hold an Aristotelian or Platonic weltanschauung.  If none of this means something to you, then you have a lot of work ahead of you.  Are you a materialist or metaphysicist?  Even deeper than that, we must formulate a new weltanschauung, one that encompasses a whole new way to describe the Universe we experience.  The materialists are hopelessly inadequate to the task, but by the same token, the metaphysicists are unable to cope with the true scope of reality.  However, the only way we can create new fertile ground for thought and growth is to thoroughly understand where we stand at this moment.

We can not do that without standing on the shoulders of giants, and those shoulders are in books, in reasoning and in focused effort.  Without these things, then the new weltanschauung may indeed be Huxwellian.  We may come to accept a materialist world of chemical processes, controlled information and deprivation as normal and be unable to formulate any other view.  We may forget the spiritual and metaphysical, and doom ourselves to servitude without even being aware of it.

We have a bit of breathing space right now while the Inner Party member/Alphas and Betas duel it out for dominance, but our opportunity is limited and slipping away.  With resources such as gutenberg.org and others literally at our fingertips, there is no excuse for us to avoid educating ourselves.  In a way never before available to nearly every human being on Earth, we have a tool called the internet which has the potential to profoundly change our world and our selves.  But, we must seize the chance, because it will not last forever without our direct action.

You, dear reader, have the ability where you sit right now to receive as good an education as any Oxford or Cambridge graduate.  All they do is read and discuss, and the keyboard and screen in front of you is every bit as effective.  All you have to do is start using it.

How much time do you throw away wandering aimlessly through the mall or vegetating in front of the TeeVee?  How much of your life do you piss away watching YouTube lip-synchs and stupid people tricks?  How much richer would your life be if you spent that time standing on the shoulders of giants?  How much less susceptible to fraud and control would you be with a solid background in history and philosophy?

The revolution is literally at hand.  It is all those buttons your fingers are resting on this minute.

Steer them.

The only reason we need an adjective like Huxwellian is because we have done nothing to stop those worlds from manifesting.  You might begin by reading two books: Brave New World and Nineteen Eight-Four.  Be prepared, though:

The future is here.

How Fragile The Mind

Weltanschauung.

It's a German word composed of welt (world) and anschauung (overview).  Germans are masters at hooking together a couple of simple words to make really complex ideas.  The word means 'one's view of life, the Universe and everything, and one's place in it'.  Not what you'd call a narrow word.

From birth, we spend years on our parents' knees, in school and in our personal experiences building a weltanschauung.  We decide what to include and what to exclude, what our definitions are, and most importantly what boundaries we place on the Universe.

Some of us erect very narrow and simplistic walls, such as God is an old, bearded man in the sky and my country right or wrong.  Others construct much broader realms.  Still others place no limits on their Universes and instead allow for ever increasing information and ideas.

Those with the most narrow weltanschauungs are the most vulnerable.  They can have their Universe destroyed quickly and decisively by a single idea.  Their boundaries are so close to home that any attack whatsoever will hit dangerously close to the core.

Those with broader weltanschauungs push the point at which their definition of the Universe is challenged further out, until some reach the point where they have no expectations or definitions to destroy.  We call those people Buddha or Christ.

Our weltanschauung is the foundation upon which all else is built.  When it is undermined, all that we know and understand is completely destroyed.  Suddenly, we are faced with endless possibilities and boundless space.  Most people are terrified of this and work quickly to re-erect the walls of their Universe.  They don't want to deal with such vast unknowns.

Weltanschauungs can be very difficult to destroy.  Like putting a stick into an ant pile, thousands of little workers spring into action at the first signs of trouble and start piling the bricks up as fast as they can.  Without their definition of Universe, people are at their most vulnerable and pliable.  Their weakest flank is exposed and they will do anything to seal off the howling winds of Unknown.

For each of us, the Universe is created when we are given a Name.  If you read sacred texts, they almost all begin with the idea of some being 'speaking' the Word and creating the Universe.  How many of us consider that when we speak a Word, we create a Universe?  This is why we are forbidden to speak the Name of God, because that would limit God to some Universe, which cannot be done.

Throughout our lives, we pick up Names.  At birth, we are given a Name that creates our family.  In school, we earn nicknames that create our social groups.  As a Catholic, I was given a Name at Confirmation that created a Soldier of Christ.  Most of us are given numbers, which are just Names with different letters, that create things called Taxpayers and Citizens.  We give ourselves Names so that when someone asks, "Where are you from," we can create a thing identified with a certain piece of dirt.

If you are lucky, you learn more than one language in your life.  One language limits our Universe to only those things expressed by that language.  But learning other languages expands our Universe to include things that cannot be expressed in our Mother Tongue.  In this way, our Universe expands.
 r
A few of us, though, push on into the realm of Things With No Names.  This weltanschauung is very hard to attack, since you cannot destroy something that doesn't have a Name.  No one can take from you that which cannot be named and defined.  Without a Name, things don't exist.

Those who understand this concept have remarkable power.  They are able to destroy the weltanschauungs of others and reconstruct them in any form they like.  If you can yank the Universe out from under someone, then in their mad rush to rebuild, you can hand them whatever materials you like.  They will dutifully stack them up to rebuild the boundaries of their weltanschauung.  This is how mental manipulation works.

This mental control can be done on a mass scale, such as the JFK assassination or 9/11, or it can be done on an individual scale, such as punching someone when and where they least expect it.  In the resulting confusion and cognitive dissonance, the aware Name can recreate another's Universe.

If the Name is the brick by which we build our universes, then Belief is the mortar by which we stack them.  Beliefs are those things we hold to be true despite all evidence to the contrary.  These things color our Universes because we deny all reality to believe certain impossibilities or non-sequiturs.  For instance, believing that one;s country is exceptional or that it can do no wrong, or one's god was slaughtered but rose from the dead three days later, are examples of things that shade and skew our view of reality.

The problem with weltanschauungs, especially those that are too narrow or fragile, is they make us vulnerable.  We can be controlled by those who have the power to manipulate our world view.  They can force us outside our mental constructs and put us on very shaky mental ground.

When you build a house, you want to believe that it is a solid, secure house.  But then something happens to cause your house to collapse and you are left in the cold, shivering and shaking with the rain falling on your head.  Someone comes along and says, "Here, come in my house."  Now they are in control.  Now it is their house that gives you shelter and you must accept their construct if you want get out of the cold and rain.

This is why it is so important to challenge our weltanschauung all the time.  We must constantly re-evaluate the bricks and mortar that we built our house with, otherwise it will be all too easy to destroy our house and leave out in the cold.

For this reason, we must listen to conspiracy theories and alternative researchers.  We must consider their arguments, if they are well-built, and look around us to see if there is evidence that supports the argument.

When we do this, we expand the walls of our house and find stronger and stronger bricks and mortar with which to build.  Granted, we might reject an argument because we don't see credible evidence of truth.  But sometimes we come across a strong argument, good mortar, that allows us to expand and strengthen our house.

The reson for this is that if our weltanschauung is large enough and strong enough, we can never be at the mercy of those who would use us by destroying our world view and offering their own as shelter.  We cannot be controlled if our house cannot be destroyed.

If we have properly considered alternative ideas, then when something happens to challenge our world view, we can deal with it and not be left in the cold.  If one day, NASA announces the existence of life off the planet Earth, our world view has already considered the possiblity and cannot be shaken by this new fact.  If one day it is proved that the government was complicit in 9/11, this new information cannot shake our foundation because we have already considered the possibility and incorporated it into our world view.  If it is proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that there is a massive conspiracy to defraud the world through the financial system, we have already made that part of our Universe and we cannot be controlled by those who would use our disorientation to control us.

The more possibilities you build into your weltanschauung, the less likely you are to be prey for predatory powers.  If we are certain that life is only a small part of our existence, then the threat of death has no power over us.

It is most important that we take time to regularly push the boundaries of what we hold to be true.  Even something as simple as acknowledging the possibility that some outrageous idea could be true gives us a strength that cannot be attacked.

The ultimate weakness of every human being is the limits of their weltanschauung.  Once those limits have been pierced, we are prey to whatever force that offers us shelter.  It is vitally important to constantly push the boundaries of possibility, to challenge our beliefs, to entertain new and strange ideas.  If we don't, then our walls of reality are too narrow and we are vulnerable.

The next time you feel compelled to reject an idea out of hand, stop.  Instead, listen to the idea.  Examine the evidence.  And if you can allow that something is possible, no matter how improbable, then you have just strengthened your world view against attack.

Many of us stop learned even before we leave school.  Our 'teachers' spend a lot of time building a world view for us.  Our job is to break those walls and expand them ourselves.  We are tasked with spending our entire lives pushing the limits of what we know, believe and consider possible.  The more we do this, the less likely it is that someone can take control of our reality.

Those who live in glass houses cannot throw stones, but those who live in double-paned, Kevlar reinforced quartzite glass houses can play baseball indoors, if we wish.

Jaya Riot

Ever have one of those days where there's so much to think about that it's hard to think about anything?

Sometimes I dread writing, because things come out that spook me.  Like the other day I posted the Dog Days of August piece, where I joked about Putin and Perry and the SEAL fiasco.  Two days later, right on cue, there's a photo of Putin after finding Geek vases while diving.  Perry suddenly comes on big time with the religion thing.  The SEAL story gets changed and bios are released.  Obama even goes to receive the bodies personally.

It's amazing how predictable this stuff is, if you know what to look for.

I mean, you've got financial markets going nuts, wars and rumors of wars, people admitting they personally fabricated the POTUS birth certificate, the price of gold going ballistic, and nascent global revolutions.

The revolutions are the the things sticking in my craw the most, I suppose.  Really, we should be more selective with our words, since we are trying to deprogram our minds here.  These global events are NOT really revolutions.  They are the ultimate product of welfare states and manipulation by banksters and media.

What we are seeing are a bunch of gangsters expressing their displeasure with not having taxpayers buy them the latest XBox/Nintendo/360 what-evers.  In other words, all the death and destruction is little more than temper tantrums by mentally and emotionally stunted welfare rats.  Those bipedal animals are nothing more than an army of convenience, bought and paid for with your tax dollars and 'trained' by the public school system.

I say, 'trained,' but the truth is more like 'dis-educated'.  I just made up that word, so remember where you got it.

The whole thing is a planned set of events designed to create tyranny.  It is the hegelian dialect in process.  It's already begun, with the UK rolling out face-recognition toys on the streets and in the neighborhoods.  It's all the fault of the internet and 'social' media.  Cameron has called for limitations on the internet.

Of course, in a country where you have to pay an annual TeeVee tax, what do you expect?

The riots are nothing more than the old mafia protection racket writ large.  Governments for centuries have maintained a welfare class for just this purpose.  To paraphrase George Carlin, 'the poor are there to scare the shit out of the middle class to keep them working to support the elite class.'  I think the truth of that is splattered all over the media at this point.

The Indonesian newspaper Kompas, is blessedly free of political correctness issues.  They (and I use direct translation here) lay it all at the feet of the 'black skins,' but there's enough blame to cover the 'yellow,' 'brown' and 'white' skins, as well.  I really love that Indonesian is a very blunt language.  It's just no bullshit-straight to the point.

Perhaps that's what's wrong with the West just now.  It's too easy to hide things in English.  Too many subtle shades and weasel words.  If you're able to flavor your thinking with so many options, you reach the pinnacle of language manipulation, called government.

But that's another article.

I get the sense that people are slowly starting to see the Big Picture.  From what I scan on the net, the masses just aren't buying it anymore.  When you can get an Indonesian to discuss politics, to a man they see the 'man behind the curtain.'  They are not fooled by Libya or Afghanistan, and bin Laden, as well.  And the markets couldn't be less interesting to them.  I think they represent a very large segment of the world.

And that's the point here.  When you step outside the constant barrage of media and look back, there's a much larger world.  All the wailing and gnashing of teeth that if America goes down, it takes the whole world with it.  Sorry, don't think so.  Westerners tend to have a very inflated view of their importance, but really, they are a small minority of the world population.  I get the distinct impression that if EurAm tree were to die off, the smaller trees in the forest could get some much needed light.

I mean, come on.  Westerners have been wondering around sticking flags in everything and calling it 'mine' since the 1400s.  After they raped and pillaged and looted and plundered, they left and forgot about the 'colonies' until one day, they stood up and said enough.

If you're wondering what REAL GlobalRev is about, it will be a complete rejection of the "Western Paradigm."  You will see people attacking the real sources of the Problem, not each other.  There's no doubt it's coming.  I can feel it.  But it will be against the producers of these faux revolutions: the colors, the springs, that sort of thing.

The problem with weltanshauungs is that they die violent deaths.  People don't let got of their delusions easily. The Western elite have gotten used to sitting on top of the Hill.  They have come to believe their own BS.  At the core, though, they are nothig more than petty thieves and gangsters who have stolen the king's clothes and are parading around in front of the mirror.

After a while, you get so busy protecting what you've got, you forget that you got it by having nothing to protect.  At that point, you have the ouroboros, the snake eating its tail.  The body starts eating itself in an ironic bid to stay alive.

If we study history, we can see this stuff coming a mile away.  It's as predictable as night follows day.  Nero fiddling while Rome burned is exactly what's happening in the so-called revolutions breaking out across the globe.  "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows."

The ultimate point here is, yes, the riots are causing a tragic loss of life and property, but be careful where you lay the blame.  The people committing these acts are little more than mindless animals.  They are being kept by a group of ruthless folks who will destroy anything to protect their little pile of gold.  Once we peel back the curtain, we clearly see the withered, putrefying corpse of a long-dead idea.

That idea spawned a great many things, and used correctly they are quite valuable.  But the idea has reached a dead-end.  It's become so drenched in lies and secrets that it must now destroy anyone who can find it.  That anyone is us.

Remember HAL in Kubrick's 2001?  He killed the crew in order to prevent them from finding the truth about the mission.  It's the logical conclusion to a lie or a secret.  One must eliminate the risk of being found out.  We are the risk.

Like Western medial treatments for cancer, it's a race against time.  Can the doctor kill the cancer before he kills the patient?  We have been injected with a lethal dose, because the elite see us as a cancer.  They, being the megalomaniacs they are, are trying to wipe us out without killing them, too.  So, we have to wonder, which will go first?  The cancer or the patient?  And the deeper question, is the patient worthy of saving?  Damn these philosophical moral judgments.

The time has come to use a whole lot of perspective, a healthy dash of truth, and keep on lovin' throught the pain.