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Ask me who I am, and I will tell you,
I am a figment of my own imagination.
Ask me who I am, and I will tell you,
I am here at this point in time and space. Who are you?
Ask me who I am, and I will tell you,
I am the water running under the bridge on which you are standing.
Ask me who I am, and I will tell you,
I am looking back at you through this three dimensional mirror.
Ask me who I am, and I will tell you,
I am the other you are looking through to see me.
Ask me who I am, and I will tell you,
I was here a moment ago, but now I am still here.
Ask me who I am, and I will tell you,
I will be gone, and you will still be here.
Ask me where I am, and I will tell you,
You can see me. You can hear me.
You can even touch me,
but you cannot come with me.

This article is about 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.

The right wing argument might be that it is better to be safe than sorry. Ordinarily I would agree with that statement, however there is something else I like to take into account and it is called the bigger picture. Right wingers, are not without their own bigger picture, but sadly it rarely reaches beyond their own self-interests and preservation of a rather narrowly focused status-quo.

I watch as many people who identify with this group swallow lies whole and glory in their dutifulness to authority in doing so.

In their most private thoughts do they ever question their allegiance? Do their leaders’ cries of wolf always work on them? Or do they accept the economy of truth as a necessary evil? I wonder if one ever really feels safe with a ruthless master. Who knows? I guess only they do.

But what if Bush saying Boo is not enough anymore for the rest of us?

Over on Long Sunday, to much delight, fierce allegoric battle with the work of Carl Schmitt waxes, wages on. There where nothing less than "the political" itself would seem to be at stake, you are free to join the fray, at the very least in your silent skimming millions upon millions way. "If I were to write two lines and by chance they rhyme, that would be a blunder." -Wittgenstein, roughly, and a little jealous of musicians

God

God created

God created big time

God created so much big time

There was little time left

Taboo: The Baby, Article Killer

I popped in to tBLOG today in order to give a tweak or two to the new TaBoo Tenente Ezine here, to have a peek at few re-vamped blogs, and to revisit the different article threads I'd ruined with my blather. This response of mine killed an entire conversation:

'Unborn Babies'

WHEN WE the rational people of the United States read the words "unborn baby" without any other context, we assume we are reading about a fetus. But I'm not sure what "you" mean here, at all. Are you referring to a fetus, or are you referring to the individual sperm that might be prevented from joining forces with an unfertilized egg?

In all the Old Testament the most convincing evidence for God’s existence and for mankind’s actual encounter with God is the answer given by the burning bush to Moses’ question, “What is your name?” It answered, “I am I am.” Consider the implications of that reply. It implies that there is only one God, because otherwise God would need to have a name to be set apart from other gods. Consider Moses' motivation in asking the question. If he knew there was only one God, he would surely have known He would need no name. Instead he actually assumes that I am I am (Yahweh) is this god’s name as have generations after him. They believe this so sincerely that saying the name Yahweh was forbidden for a very long time because to say the name of a God was to summon Him and could have dire consequences.

[Ghost of Adam S]	Welcome to the Thursday Morning meeting of Imperialists Anonymous. My name is Adam and I am an Imperialist.
[All]	Hello Adam.
[Ghost of Adam S]	Will somebody be so kind as to read "Who"?
[Ghost of Winston C]	My name is Winston and I am an Imperialist.
[All]	Hello Winston.
[Ghost of Winston C]	Who is an Imperialist? Most of us do not have to think twice about this question, we know! Our whole life and thinking was centred in domination in one form or another: the getting and using of resources and finding ways and means to monopolise more. We lived to dominate and dominated to live.

For reasons of possible copyright infringement, we'll leave this meeting of IA, but it continues here.

War Against Conservativism

Let us see then if we cannot in fact eff the ineffable ~ Douglas Adams RIP

Disreputable Lazy Aliens

So, the Disillusioned kid points up another of Dubya's (oxy)moronicisms:

"I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we're really talking about peace."

This whilst addressing the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, check it. Orwellian certainly, but i'm no longer surprised by the neo-cons contempt for the possibility of accountability.

What never ceases to amaze me though is how he gets away with spouting such utterly transparent rhetoric. This time he even refered to how it's done: education. As if his meaning of indoctrination wasn't plain enough, he then told us clearly how it will be reinforced: "faith groups" "educating" poor Americans about home ownership.

What do we call a system of beliefs which has millions of adherents, it's own meta-language, proscribed behaviour, ritual, seeks to spread it's influence at the expense of other belief structures, often causing war, and maintains it's tenets in the face of evidence to the contrary?

Religion, right?

1. I am the The Holy Market, who bringeth thee out of bondage. No form of interaction shalt thou haveth outside me. Nor Virtuous shalt thou considereth anything not for Sale, neither anything which Falsely preventeth Holy Sale.
2. Thou shalt associateth not the name of The Holy Market with disaster: for The Holy Market shalt holdeth him guilty who denigrateth Its Holy Name.
3. Observeth the Sabbath day, to keepeth it Holy, as The Holy Market commandeth thee. Six days shalt most of thee Labour, and do all Work thine; but the seventh day a Sabbath is to The Holy Market whenst must thou spendeth thy Surplus in Worship of The Holy Market.
4. Honoreth thy Father and thy Mother, as The Holy Market commandeth thee; that thy Business may be Profitable and thy Righteousness prolonged in Children thine.
5. Thou shalt not Murder thy Customers.
6. Neither shalt thou Adultery committeth; an Abomination it is the Holy Commerce of Marriage to undermineth.
7. Stealing shalt thou not be caught at.
8. Nor discovered in False Witness without Holy Profit shalt thou be.
9. Neither shalt thou ceaseth thy Neighbour's Estate to coveteth.
10. In all things shalt thou planeth, plotteth, schemeth and, failing these Holy Trinity Three, worketh the Goods of the World to Own, in accordance with The Holy Market.

I would contend that the Liberal form of democratic polity does not even belong to be indexed under the rubric, democracy. "Democracy," which, of course, possesses an etimology that can be traced back to the Greek word for the mob, Demos, involves direct deliberative participartory decision-making when it comes to public policy formation. I am not implying that a word's meaning can be fixed in stone by tracing it back to its inception; however, I do think that the term, Liberal democracy, is misleading; and, perhaps, obfuscates the fact that 'citizens' of a Liberal democracy are not directly empowered to participate in the construction of their nation's public policy initiatives.

In 1829 Eastern State prison in Pennsylvania conducted an experiment. They built an underground correctional facility that denied inmates any knowledge of the outside world. Inmates were deprived of sunlight; they couldn’t write or receive letters from loved ones; they couldn’t have visitors, or receive news of worldly events (and when taken out of their cells, they had to be hooded so as to prevent them from even seeing a natural living object). The idea was a puritanical one. You could reform the corrupted by denying them contact with the corrupting forces of society. Everyone, according to Quaker theology, has the “inner light of God” within them, so by replacing social interaction with solitary reflection, an individual might become reacquainted with ‘natural’ concepts of right and wrong and thereby rehabilitate himself.

 Today I went hiking. About halfway up the trail I had a moment. It happens a lot when I hike. I turn my head and see something out of the corner of my eye—a swathe of snow dotted by small yellow leaves, for example. And when I stop for a closer look, it hits me. I wouldn’t describe these moments as happy, though I certainly feel a sense of elation when they happen, and I wouldn’t describe them as sad, either, though “lacking sadness” is just as inaccurate. Neither do I feel any fear at these moments, yet my mortality is completely palpable. No doubt I’m talking about experiences of a spiritual nature, but I’m not going to assign that label without first divesting the word spiritual of all its New Age and religious connotations.

In the Western World when we say something is spiritual we mean that it’s transcendent—in other words, that it’s divorced from nature and from the body. This isn’t what I’m talking about. And I’m not talking about the New Age sense of being at one with the universe, either. When, and if, I use the word spiritual, I mean that I feel the full weight of existence. I feel empty yet full of longing, alone yet surrounded by company, sensual yet free of desire. There isn’t any transcendence and there isn’t any joining—just the intensity and grace of being alive at that moment. What’s more, these moments are accessible at any time. That’s something I’ve come to realize. The reason they’re accessible is that there’s nothing transcendent about them at all. They’re natural. They only seem resplendent and unfamiliar because our current way of life forbids us from indulging in them.  

In fact, I’m sure this is why the word spiritual has the connotations that it does. By calling something spiritual we essentially define it as an abstraction. In retrospect the experience is co-opted as a gift from God or from his angels and made to seem supernatural. Spirituality then becomes a euphemism to cover up a basic truth about ourselves—that we’re animals. We haven’t been trained in this culture to deal with the natural world and so we’re afraid of it. Consequently, the epiphanies we might have while hiking are either labeled and explained away as transcendent religious phenomena or avoided altogether. I think Freud was onto something when he talked about artistic sublimation, only I don’t think it explains artistic fecundity, I think it explains religious ecstasy. Because natural feeling has been made practically taboo in today’s world, we project it onto the other. We make it socially acceptable, that is, by relating it to an accepted religious or new age concept. We turn nature into culture. In turn, the experience is murdered, thus the violence civilization does to the environment is also done to ourselves and our experiences.

Consider the smugness with which people proclaim our superiority over the animals. The assumption is that our superiority has already been proven, so it hardly needs stating (just as the supremacy of whites over blacks and men over women was once proven). Anyone who challenges that assumption must have a few screws loose and hasn’t yet learned the proper uses of rational thought. After all, we are the top predators—at the top of the food chain. What is there to argue? But in the animal kingdom hierarchies aren’t as clear cut as we’d like them to be. In a symbiotic world made of finite resources it doesn’t make sense to talk about who is and who isn’t the top dog. Competition doesn’t drive evolution, adaptation and cooperation does (I’ll leave it to John Livingston and K.C. Cole to make my point on that matter). Conquest might help you to survive, at least in the short term, but it won’t make you any happier. It’s like a marriage: if you deliberately deny your partner’s happiness then you’ll deny your own happiness as well, provided you stay together and can’t seek fulfillment elsewhere. No matter how dutifully your physical and material needs are tended to, if your partner is reduced to a slave, he/she won’t be able to give you what you really want—a creative and genuine and stimulating relationship. If our only concern is to subdue and control the outer world, then we won’t have genuinely ‘spiritual’ moments within that relationship. Life will be dull. And unfortunately (for the environment, that is), in our relationship with nature, divorce isn’t an option. And neither is murder, though that seems to be the course we’ve chosen.

From Disreputable Lazy Aliens

Today, 'Darwinism' and 'Darwinian' have entered into our common vocabulary. To read the Origin is therefore to grasp an opportunity to estimate how closely that common understanding relates to its supposed source. - Jeff Wallace [from his introduction to "The Origin of Species", Darwin, Charles. (1998, Wordsworth Editions Ltd. Ware, Hertforshire UK) ISBN 1 85326 780 5 itself a reprint of the 1st (Nov 1859) edition of "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or, The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life." Darwin, Charles]

So, although i had not yet read Wallace's invitation, when i bought the book, i had already decided to do exactly that. It has been something of a wade, not because the book or it's scientific information is at all difficult, but rather that there is much exhaustive detail in expounding Darwin's positions that is nothing new to anyone who has been taught elementary biology and while this may be of interest to historians or biologists, i am neither.

OK, so Survival of the fittest, right? No. That phrase was first used by Herbert Spencer in his 1851 work Social Statics, relating to free market economics. Only in his fifth edition of The Origin, did Darwin himself use the phrase, which had become popular and indeed popularly synonymous with his own descriptive phrase Natural Selection. As the linked Wikipedia article further states, however: At this time the word "fittest" would have primarily meant "most suitable" or "most appropriate" rather than "in the best physical shape". In fact, much of the revision and clarification Darwin added to his work, in later editions, was precisely to clarify his ideas in strictly evolutionary biological terms, both to answer his critics and distance himself from often Malthusian influenced social theories.

Of more importance to the understanding of the 'common vocabulary' use of 'Darwinian' ideas however, is the fallacious idea of 'Survival'.

Halle Berry is going on Tavis Smiley's TV show to talk about her "Blackness."

huh?

Do you mean to tell me that Halle Berry has accomplished nothing else but to have her interview with Tavis Smiley is a discussion about her Blackness?

Let me tell you something, comfortable Black folks do not have to have a "discuss" their Blackness.  It is kind of like a Christian is identified by their actions not by them telling you they are a Christian. 

Why do we have to find ourselves defending our self worth just to have folks ignore our good works? Halle Berry is Black, it's nothing to talk about, nothing to discuss.

A need to defend good works doesn't just end with the people we consider famous.  We have to defend ourselves everyday:

the intent of this post is to challenge certain belief systems that are playing major roles in the reflections that we are currently faced with and to boldly suggest that we are, each of us in our own ways, all responsible for the mess we are in as a people and that we CAN do something about it and MUST do something about it if we have intent to sustain life and love.

for example, in a post to this website on 07.26.05 - 2:57 pm Ianqui said....

".... And no body has influence like the government does--they're the ONLY ones with enough power and influence to get the American people to change their ways."

with all due respect to ianqui i suggest she is dead wrong on this point. in fact, leaving it to the govt to "change the people" is how we got ourselves in this mess in the first place. the govt is a REFLECTION of the people. more specifically, it is a reflection of the DENIAL of the people. we leave it to the govt to "fix" everything for us. we leave it to the govt to "protect us" and to secure our future and our "entitlements" for us.

Understanding Stem Cells

The Radical Right thinks that stem cells and abortion have something in common. In fact they think that these two things have everything in common.

From a legal point of view the definition of when life begins is at stake. If the definition would allow the destruction of a few cells just after conception, then the issue of outlawing abortion would be hopeless. From the legal point of view one can not have different definitions for life depending on different processes.

A couple of years ago I said that this all has to do with legal definitions.

For example, one could take a skin cell and put the DNA from it into an empty human egg. The DNA would start to multiply and create a mass of embryonic stem cells. Imagine a brilliant scientist who creates an artificial human egg to hold the DNA. He names it a "skin cell holder." And, he renames the cells created from the skin cell procedure “replacement cells.”

Good morning Boys and Girls!

This was sent to me by a friend. I don't know who originally came up with it and I've done some extensive Fox News style editing, so I can't give credit. If I'm infringing on someone's copyright, please let me know and I'll remove it - but by golly, I liked it.

Living Will

I, _________________________ (fill in the blank), being of sound mind and body, do not wish to be kept alive indefinitely by artificial means.

Under no circumstances should my fate be put in the hands of ethically challenged perckerwood politicians who couldn't pass ninth-grade biology if their lives depended on it.

If a reasonable amount of time passes (say, six months) and I fail to sit up and ask for a __________________ (cold beer, Margarita, Bloody Mary, Martini, Rum & Coke, shot of Wild Turkey, etc...you get the idea) and asking to get laid, it should be presumed that I won't ever get better. When such a determination is reached, I hereby instruct my spouse, children and attending physicians to immediately pull the plug, reel in the feeding tubes and I.V.'s, wave goodbye, and call it a day.

Art Meat Blog is the name of the Free Art for Bloggers service I started.  Basically I am compiling all of my sketches, cartoons and doodles in one place for others to use on their blogs and posts.  Simply copy and paste the coding under any image you'd like to include.

Why?  Why did I do this?  Often times when I get onto sites like PBA or KOS I get overwhelmed by text and don't know where to even start reading.  I thought adding some color form and texture to the web wood be a good thing.

Enjoy them :)

Update, sorry for the wrong link, should be fixed now.

This is in response to the discussion at LongShot’s blog.

Community was the central theme to Jesus' preaching. And, it was also the theme to Karl Marx's philosophy. The word Communism comes from the word community. Communes popped up during the 1960s in response to the desire to find a group of people who were willing to work together for the common good of the community.

These experiments tend to fail because members of the group don’t feel like they are properly rewarded for the effort they put into the community. Some members put in very little effort and feel that they should share equally in the results. Some people make large efforts and burn out after a time period and they longer feel the need to put forth the same effort. The reward is always an equal share, so it doesn’t really matter how much effort one puts forth. Jesus preached that we should not be concerned with worldly rewards and therefore always put forth our best efforts. God expects our best efforts. This is ideology, in reality everyone cares about what they get out of the deal. Only Monks and Nuns who live the ideal commune lifestyle are happy to put forth the effort and share equally what they get out of it. Their reward is spiritual, not material.