“Your flaw is to seek convenient explanations, explanations that fir you and your world…The explanation is not what you would call an explanation; nevertheless, it makes the world and its mysteries, if not clear, at least less awesome. That should be the essence of an explanation, but that is not what you seek. You’re after the reflection of your ideas.”
Carlos Castaneda

Tales of Power

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-05-02

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  • @adambn can .htaccess contain hebrew characters (for 301 redirects from URLs containing hebrew to new english only URLs)? in reply to adambn #
  • new series about reading illustrated yoga asana practices – starting with breath & repetition: http://bit.ly/abrTcF #
  • going to cleanse my body on the outside by showering and on the inside with yoga #
  • @msurman re: Pics from drumbeat Toronto: http://bit.ly/9i0PyO [me: looks like a soft, open and happy gathering of people … beautiful!] in reply to msurman #
  • on WordPress: when I use it I love it, when I partake in it I hate it #
  • I have put off this next reading for some days… a challenging and important chapter… here goes nothing #
  • "…[on] the doctrine that says,'Science is not concerned with values. Science is concerned only with facts' … #
  • the Metaphysics of Quality asks: which values is science unconcerned with? … #
  • A scientist may argue rationally that the moral question 'Is it all right to murder your neighbor?" is not a scientific question. #
  • But can he argue that the moral question, 'Is it all right to fake your scientific data?' is not a scientific question? #
  • … What the Metaphysics of Quality makes clear is that it is only social values and morals … that sciences is unconcerned with. #
  • There are important historic reasons for this: … [to] the ancient Greek belief that thought is independent of society … ancient Greeks #
  • such as Socrates & Pythaguras paved the way for the fundamental principle behind science: that truth stands independently of social opinion. #
  • It is determines by direct observation & experiment,not by hearsay. Religious authority always has attacked this principle as heresy… #
  • The defenders who fought to protect science from church control argued that science is not concerned with morals. Intellectuals would leave #
  • morals for the church to decide… But the Metaphysics of Quality makes clear is that this political battle …was in fact a moral battle. #
  • It was the battle of a higher, intellectual level of evolution to keep itself from being devoured by a lower, social level of evolution. #
  • Once this political battle is resolved, the Metaphysics ofQuality can then go back and re-ask the question, #
  • 'Just exactly how independent is science, in fact, from society?' The answer it gives is, 'not at all'. #
  • A science in which social patterns are of no account is as unreal and absurd as a society in which biological patterns are of no account. #
  • … If the observer is totally objectiveand records only what he observes, then where does he observe a hypothesis?… #
  • Our scientific description of nature is always culturally derived. Nature tells us only what our culture predisposes us to hear. #
  • … Descarte's 'I think therefore I am' was a historically shattering declaration of independence of the intellectual … from the social… #
  • If Descartes had said 'The 17th century culture exists, therefore I think, therefore I am' he would have been correct. #
  • The Metaphysics of Quality resolves the relationship between intellect and society, subject and object, mind and matter by embedding them #
  • all in a larger system of understanding. Objects are inorganic and biological values; Subjects are social and intellectual values. #
  • …They have a matter-of-fact evolutionary relationship. That evolutionary relationship is also a moral one. #
  • The intellect's evolutionary purpose has never been to discover an ultimate meaning of the universe. That is a relatively recent fad. #
  • It's historical purpose has been to help a society find food,detect danger, and defeat enemies. It can do this well or poorly, depending on #
  • the concepts it invents for this purpose. #
  • … Knowledge has grown away from this historic purpose and become an end in itself, just as society has grown away from it's original #
  • purpose of preserving physical human beings … and this growing away … towards greater Quality is a moral growth. #
  • But those original purposes are still there. And when things get lost … it is useful to remember that point of departure. #
  • The Metaphysics of Quality suggests that the social chaos of the 20th century can be relieved by going back to this point of departure… #
  • Intellect can support static patterns of society without fear of domination by carefully distinguishing those moral issues that are #
  • social-biological from those that are intellectual-social… what's at issue here .. [is] a clash of 2 entirely different codes of morals #
  • in which society is caught in the middle… You have a society-vs.-biology cored of morals and… an intellect-vs.-society code of morals. #
  • … In the battle of society against biolog, the new 20th century intellectuals have taken biology's side. #
  • Society can handle biology alone by means of prisons & guns & police & the military. But when the intellectuals in control of society take #
  • biology's side against society, then society is caught in a cross fire from which it has no protection. #
  • … The Metaphysics of Quality says … what's good in life isn't defined by society or intellect or biology. What's good is freedom from #
  • domination by any static pattern, but that freedom doesn't have to be obtained by the destruction of the patterns themselves. #
  • … The Hippie revolution of the 60's was a moral revolution against both society and intellectuality … children of well-to-do … people #
  • of the world who suddenly turned upon their parents & schools & society with a hatred no one could have believed existed… #
  • The reason this movement has been so hard to understand is that "understanding" itself, static intellect, was it's enemy. #
  • Whatever the intellectuals of the 20's had fought to create,the flower children of the 60's fought to destroy… #
  • Drugs that destroyed one's ability to reason were almost a sacrament. #
  • Oriental religions such as Zen & Vedanta that promised release from the prison of intellect were taken up as gospel. #
  • …By the end of the 60's the intellectualism of the 20's found itself in an impossible trap. #
  • If it continued to advocate more freedom from Victorian social restraint, all it would get was more Hippies. #
  • If, on the other hand, it advocated more constructive social conformity in opposition to the Hippies, all it would get was more Victorians, #
  • in the form of the reactionary right. This political whip-saw was invincible and cut down one of the last of the great intellectual liberal #
  • leaders of the New Deal period, Hubert Humphrey, the Democractic candidate for president … the great intellectual revolution of #
  • the first half of the 20th century, the dream of a 'Great Society' made humane by man's intellect, was killed, #
  • hoist on its own petard of freedom from social constraint. #
  • … this 'Dynamic' 60's revolution made a disastrous mistake that destroyed it before it really got started. #
  • The Hippie rejection of social and intellectual patterns left just 2 directions to go: toward biological quality & toward Dynamic Quality. #
  • The revolutionaries of the 60's thoughts that since both are antisocial & anti-intellectual…they must be the same. That was a mistake. #
  • …When biological quality and Dynamic Quality are confused the result … [is] an extremely destructive form of degeneracy of the sort #
  • seen in the Manson murders, the Jonestown madness & the increase of crim and drug addiction throughout the country. #
  • In the early 70's,as people began to see this, they dropped away from the movement #
  • and the Hippie revolution, like the intellectual revolution of the 20's, became a moral rebellion that failed. #
  • Today…the overall picture is one of moral movements gone bankrupt… the result has been a drop in both social and intellectual quality. #
  • The end of the 20th century in America seems to be an intellectual, social, and economic rust-belt, a whole society that has given up on #
  • Dynamic improvementand is slowly trying to slip back to Victorianism,the last static ratchet-latch. #
  • More Dynamic foreign cultures are overtaking it and actually invading it because it's nowincapableofcompeting. #
  • What's coming out of the urban slums …[is] the oldbiological might-makes-right morality of prehistoric brigandage that primitive #
  • societies were set up to overcome." #
  • are early adopters the Pied Pipers of Facebook? http://bit.ly/b0Gyvw #
  • second article in series on reading illustrated yoga practices – this time on sequences: http://bit.ly/abDx0m #
  • "…the Metaphysics of Quality says that what is meant by 'human rights' is usually the moral code of intellect-vs.-society, the moral right #
  • of intellect to be free of social control. Freedom of speech; freedom of assembly, of travel; government by consent… #
  • According to the Metaphysics of Quality these 'human rights' have not just a sentimental basis, but a rational, metaphysical basis. #
  • They are essential to the evolution of a higher level of life from a lower level of life. They are for real. #
  • But what the Metaphysics of Quality also makes clear is that this intellect-vs.-society code … is not the same as the society-vs.-biology #
  • codes of morals that go back to a prehistoric time. They are completely separate levels of morals. They should never be confused… #
  • Is society good or is society evil? … in one level society is the higher evolutionary pattern and in the other it is the lower. #
  • Unless u separate these 2 levels of moral codes u get a paralyzing confusion…[that] dominates all thoughts about morality & society today. #
  • … There are no chains more vicious than the chains of biological necessity into which every child is born. Society exists primarily to #
  • free people from these biological chains..has done that job so stunningly well intellectuals forget..&turn on it..with shameful ingratitude. #
  • [because of this] Today we are living in an intellectual and technologiical paradise and a moral and social nightmare. #
  • the 20th century intellectual faith in man's basic goodness as spontaneous and natural is disastrously naive… a devastating fiction… #
  • cannibalism,not cooperation, was a pre-society norm… American Indians …ambushe & tortured [other tribes]… #
  • … maybe it is man's basic goodness which invented social institutions to repress this kind of biological savagery in the first place. #
  • .. the Metaphysics of Quality concludes that the old Puritan & Victorian social codes should not be followed [or attacked] blindly… #
  • They should be dusted off and re-examined, fairly and impartially, to see what they were trying… and actually did accomplish towards #
  • building a stronger society. We must understand that #
  • when a society undermines intellectual freedom for its own purposes it is absolutely morally bad, #
  • but when it represses biological freedom for its own purposes it is absolutely morally good. #
  • These moral bads and goods are not just 'customs'. They are as real as rocks and trees. #
  • … the Metaphysics of Quality concludes that [the destructive sympathy by intellectuals toward lawlessness in the 60's] was really stupid. #
  • … The idea that biological crimes can be ended by intellect alone, that you can talk crime to death, doesn't work… #
  • The instrument of conversation between society & biology has always been a policeman or a soldier and hhis gun. #
  • All the laws of history…Constitutions & the Bills of Rights & Declarations of Independence are … instructions to the military & police. #
  • …'racism' … goes all the way back to square one, to the subject-object metaphysics wherein man is an object who possesses … culture… #
  • it goes on to reason that because it is immoral to speak against a people because of their genetic characteristics it is therefore also #
  • immoral to speak against a people because of their cultural characteristics…& Science sayd there is morality outside of cultural morality #
  • , therefore any moral censorship of minority patterns of crime … is itself immoral. That is the paralysis… #
  • the Metaphysics of Quality says… that to say a cultural pattern is an integral part of a biological person is like saying #
  • the Lotus123 program is an integral part of an IBM computer.Not so. Cultures are not the source of all morals,only a limited set of morals. #
  • Cultures can be graded and judged morally according to their contribution to the evolution of life. #
  • A culture that supports the dominance of social values over biological values is an absolutely superior culture to one that does not, and #
  • a culture that supports the dominance of intellectual values over social values is absolutely superior to one that does not. #
  • It is immoral to speak against a people because of the color of their skin, or any other genetic characteristic… #
  • But it is not immoral to speak against a person because of his cultural characteristics… these are changeable and they do matter. #
  • … The fight to sustain social codes isn't a war of blacks vs. whites… or poor people vs. rich … or…stupid people against intelligent #
  • ..It's a war of biology vs. society…and intellect, to end the paralysis of society, has to know whose side it is on, and support that side #
  • Where biological values r undermining social values, intellectuals must identify social behavior..& support it alltheway without restraint. #
  • Intellectuals must … limit and destroy destructive biological patterns with complete moral ruthlessness the way a doctor destroys germs." #
  • "We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet" http://huff.to/cthiyz #
  • "minimum wage" is a socially acceptable alternative to slavery #
  • a shakuhachi recording from this morning: http://bit.ly/d06Wce #
  • a 3rd part in the series about reading asana illustrations – this time covering alternating between 2 sides : http://bit.ly/bsRjeR #
  • "No one wants to admit it, but that's really the reason the insane get locked up. It's not just that they have absurd ideas that no one else #
  • believes. What makes them 'insane' is that they have these ideas and are a nuisance to somebody else. #
  • The only thing that's illegitimate is the cover-up, the pretense that you're trying to help them by getting rid of them. #
  • … As long as you're stuck with the old conventions,insanity is going to be a 'misunderstanding of the object by the subject'. #
  • The object is real, the subject is mistaken. The only problem is how to change the subject's mind back to a correct comprehension… #
  • But with a Metaphysics of Quality the empirical experience … is an experience of value patterns produced by a number of sources… #
  • When an insane person – or a hypnotized person or a person from a primitive culture, advances some explanation of the universe that is #
  • completely at odds with current scientific reality, we do not have to believe he has jumped off the end of the empirical world. #
  • He is just a person who is valuing intellectual patterns that, because they are outside the range of our own culture, #
  • we perceive to have very low quality. Some biological or social or Dynamicm force has altered his judgment of quality. #
  • It has caused him to filter out what we call normal cultural intellectual patterns just as ruthlessly as our culture filters out his. #
  • Obviously no culture wants its legal patterns violated…That's what mental hospitals are partly for. And also heresy trials. #
  • They protect the culture from foreign ideas that if allowed to grow unchecked could destroy the culture itself. #
  • … [he] had seen that the psychiatrists were … required to deal with insanity as cultural representatives… priests saving heretics. #
  • Psychiatrists seemed to fear the taint of insanity, much as inquisitors once feared succumbing to the devil. #
  • Psychiatrists were not allowed to practice psychiatry if they were insane. #
  • It was required that they literally did not know what they were talking about. #
  • To this… they could counter that you don't have to be infected with pneumonia in order to know how to cure it and you don't have to be #
  • infected with insanity to know how to cure it either. But the rebutal to that goes to the core of the whole problem. #
  • Pneumonia is a biological pattern…scientifically variable. Insanity…is an intellectual pattern…it has no physical/biological reality. #
  • No scientific intrsument can be produced…to show who is insane and who is sane. The scientific laws of the universe r invented by sanity. #
  • There is no way by which sanity, using the instruments of its own creation, can measure that which is outside itself and its creations. #
  • Insanity isn't an 'object' of observation. It's an alteration of observation itself. #
  • …Insanity always exists in relation to others. It is a social and intellecual deviation, not a biological deviation. #
  • The only test for insanity is conformity to a cultural status quo. That is why the psychiatric profession bears such a resemblance to the #
  • old preisthoods. Both use physical restraint and abuse as ways of enforcing the status quo. That being said, it follows that #
  • the assignment of medical doctors to treat insanity is a misuse of their training….[they] are trained to look at things from an inorganic #
  • and biological perspective… their cures are biological:shock,drugs, lobotomies, and physical restraints… #
  • … [he] had seen that if you want to get out of an insane asylum…is 2 persuade them that u fully understand that they know more than u do #
  • and that you are fully ready to accept their intellectual authority. That is how heretics keep from getting burned. They recant. #
  • …In time this strategy has brought [him] enough smiles to get out. It made him less honest…more of a conformist… #
  • It wasn't a happy solution, to always role-play with people he had once been honest with. It made it impossible to ever really share #
  • anything with them. Now he was more isolated than he had been in the insane asylum… #
  • Now, years later, his resentment … had lessened…somebody has to deal with the degenerate forms of society and intellect. #
  • The thing to understand is that if you are going to reform society you don't start with cops. And if you are going to reform intellect you #
  • don't start with psychiatrists. If you don't like our present social system or intellectual system the best thing you can do… #
  • is stay out of their way." #
  • my greatest Microsoft memory – Eddie Brickell's Good Times – came with Win95 – multimedia demo: http://bit.ly/701E0j #
  • originally assembled this PC (I'm working on now) to be my Ubuntu based home made RAID server http://bit.ly/bBARNn .. but now #
  • it's my primary workstation and I'm kinda kicking myself for not getting better hardware (processor & memory) at least RAID is super fast 🙂 #
  • an advanced Yoga energy experiment combining asana and structured breathing: http://bit.ly/d0LZt3 #
  • when you hug someone – try bringing your hearts together 🙂 instead of the more common hearts-apart variation #
  • "Anthropologists,when they are not being self-consciously 'objective',tend to be very interested in new things… #
  • …Anthropologists see over & over again that insanity is culturally defined… each culture has different criteria for what constitutes it. #
  • … Anthropologists found that schizophrenia is strongest among those whose ties with the cultural traditions are weakest… #
  • …psychoses, which are an extreme form of culture shock, emerge… because the cultural definition of values … has been changed… #
  • pshychiatry can't really deal with all of this because it is pinioned to a subject-object truth system which declares that #
  • 1 particular intellectual pattern is real & all others are illusions. Psychiatry is forced 2take this position in contradicition 2history, #
  • which shows…that 1 era's illusions become another era's truth…in contradiction 2georaphy… 1 area's truth are another area's illusions. #
  • … not only does insanity vary from culture 2 culture, but sanity itself also varies from culture 2 culture … #
  • …in the psychiatric wards… what the patients showed wasn't any one common characteristic but an absence of one. #
  • What was absent was the kind of standard social role-playing that 'normal' people get into …the insane see this role-playing & resent it. #
  • …Ur static value system filters out the undesirable opinions & preserves the desirable ones…it isnt just opinions that get filtered out. #
  • It's also data. #
  • We build up whole cultural intellectual patterns based on past 'facts' which are extremely selective. When a new fact comes in that does not #
  • fit the pattern we don't throw out the pattern. We throw out the fact… a contradictory fact has 2keep hammering…sometimes for centuries #
  • , before maybe one or two people will see it. And then these one or two have to start hammering on others for a long time b4 they see it 2. #
  • Just as the biological immune system will destroy a life-saving skin graft with the same vigor with which it will fight pneumonia, #
  • so will a cultural immune system fight off a beneficial new kind of understanding with the same kind of vigor it uses to destroy crime. #
  • … there's nothing immoral in a culturenotbeing ready to accept something Dynamic. Static latching is necessary to sustain the gains the #
  • culture has made in the past. The solution is… to look for those factors that will make the new information acceptable: the keys. #
  • The Dharmakaya light…a huge area of human experience cut off by cultural filtering… #
  • he didn't think of this light as some sort of supernatural occurence that had no grounding in physical reality … #
  • nobody c's it bcause the cultural definition of what is real&what is unreal filtersout Dharmakaya light from 20th century American 'reality' #
  • just as surely as time is filtered out of Hopi reality, and green-yellow differences mean nothing to the Natchez. #
  • …he thought that the light was nothing more than an involuntary widening of the iris of the eyes … makes things look brighter… #
  • but despite filtering by the cultural immune system, refernces to this occur in many places, scattered, disconnected and unrelated. #
  • Lamps are sometimes used as symbols of learning.Why should they be? A torch…symbol of idealistic inspiration… 'I've seen the light' … #
  • When a cartoonist want to show someone getting a great idea he puts an electric bulb over the character's head. Everybody understands…Why? #
  • In a Metaphysics of Quality…this light is important because it often appears associated with undefined auspiciousness…Dynamic Quality. #
  • It signals a Dynamic intrusion upon a static situation. When there is letting go of static patterns the light occurs. #
  • It is often accompanied by a feeling of relaxation because static patterns have been jarred loose… #
  • it was probably the light that infants see when their world is still fresh and whole,before consciousness differentiates it into patterns; #
  • a light into which everything fades at death … the breakup of static patterns of the person's intellect #
  • as it returned into the pure Dynamic Quality from which it had emerged in infancy… #
  • …when he had wandered freely outside the limits of cultural reality, this light had been a valued companion.." #
  • there's a subtle element of denial & resistance in looking for a 'reason' to explain something objectionable – a false hope for causality? #
  • @raymondpirouz re:Apple (1) yes kicking off with "Open" is cynical; (2) they can make a case with hypocritical thinking; (3) they did in reply to raymondpirouz #
  • @raymondpirouz re:Apple – they are arrogant: "to provide the most advanced and innovative platform…the best apps the world has ever seen" in reply to raymondpirouz #
  • @raymondpirouz re:Apple – they have marked their greatest contender – "Open"… in reply to raymondpirouz #
  • @raymondpirouz re:Apple – but, lucky for them, "Open" still hasn't pulled it's act together… to do that it needs an injection of "design" in reply to raymondpirouz #
  • @raymondpirouz the core values of "openness" are the greatest threat to Apple… but those values have yet to manifest as good products! in reply to raymondpirouz #
  • the book is nearing the end… I'm going for a 2nd reading today… this one is close to my heart… #
  • "'What makes people sane?' … the way to really deal with insanity … is to turn the tables and talk about truth instead. #
  • If objects r the ultimate reality then there's only 1 true intellectual construction of things: that which corresponds 2the objective world. #
  • But if truth is defined as a high-quality set of intellectual value patterns, then insanity can be defined as just a low-quality set of #
  • intellectual value patterns, and you get a whole different picture of it. #
  • When the culture asks 'Why doesnt this person see things the way we do?" you can answer that he doesnt c them because he doesn't value them. #
  • He's gone into illegal value patterns because the illegal patterns resolve value conflicts that the culture's unable to handle. #
  • … In a subject-object world trance and hypnosis are big time platypi. That's why there's this prejudice… #
  • … They're best nudged as close as possible to the empirical trash heap called 'the occult' … #
  • But since they do exist, what you have is an empirically observable case of empiricism being overthrown. #
  • The irony is that there are times when the culture actually fosters trance and hypnosis to further its purposes. #
  • When you enter a movie theatre you know that all you are going to see is 24 shadows per second …an illusions of moving people & objects. #
  • Yet despite this knowledge u laugh when the 24 shadows per second tell jokes and cry when the shadows show actors faking death. #
  • U know they r an illusion yet u enter the illusion&become part of it&while the illusion is taking place u r not aware that it is an illusion #
  • This is hypnosis. It is trance. It's also a form of temporary insanity. But it's also a powerful force for cultural reinforcement… #
  • … in the case of permanent insanity the exists to the theater have been blocked, usually because of the knowledge that the show outside is #
  • so much worse. #
  • the insane person is running a private unapproved film which he happensto like better than the current cultural one. #
  • If U want him to run the film everyone else is seeing,the solution would be to find ways to prove to him that it would be valuable to do so. #
  • Contrarians sometimes just seem to savagely attack every kind of static moral patern they can find… as though … a kind of revenge… #
  • The Cheyenne had a whole society of contrarians to assimilate the phenomenon within their social fabric… #
  • [they] rode their horses sitting backward, entered teepees backward…Members seemed to enter the contrary society when they felt #
  • a great wrong, a great injustice, had been done to them and apparently it was felt that this was a way of resolving the injustice. #
  • …When u add a concept of 'Dynamic Quality' toa rational understanding of the world, you can add a lot to an understanding of contrarians. #
  • Some of them aren't just being negative toward static moral patterns, they are actively pursuing a Dynamic goal. #
  • ..negative contrarian streaks…sometimes it's a degenerative negativism…sometimes an ego pattern…sometimes a static pattern of it's own #
  • … But sometimes it's Dynamic, where your whole being senses that the static situation is an enemy of life itself. #
  • That's what drives the really creative people… the feeling that if they don't break out of this jailhouse… they're going to die. #
  • They're way too energetic and aggressive to be decadent. They're fighting for some kind of Dynamic freedom from the static patterns. #
  • …It's often confused with degeneracy but it's actually a form of moral regeneration… #
  • … in addition to the usual solutions to insanity – stay locked up or learn to conform – there was a third one #
  • , to reject all movies, private and cultural, and head for Dynamic Quality itself, which is no movie at all… #
  • … evolution doesn't take place only within societies, it takes place within individuals too… #
  • Sometimes the insane & the contrarians & the ones who are closest to suicide are the most valuable people society has. #
  • … They have taken the burdens of the culture onto themselves, and in their struggle … they're solving problems for the culture as well." #
  • "Dynamic Quality is a higher moral order than scientific truth, and it is as immoral for philosophers of science to try to suppress #
  • Dynamic Quality as it is for church authorities to suppress scientific method. #
  • Dynamic value is an integral part of science. It is the cutting edge of scientific progress itself." #
  • "What's wrong with insanity is that she's outside any culture… a culture of one. That's what had to be reconciled… #
  • At a hospital they'd just start shooting her full of drugs and tell her to adjust… they wouldn't see .. that she is adjusting. #
  • …insanity is the adjustment…[it] isn't necessarily a step in the wrong direction, it can be an intermediate step in the right direction. #
  • … the problem of 'curing' an insane person is like the problem of 'curing' a moslem … or 'curing' communist …or 'curing' a republican #
  • … You're not going to make progress by telling them how wrong they are… #
  • The important thing was to support her delusions and then slowly wean her away from them rather than fight them. #
  • The catch here,that almost any philosopher would spot, is the word 'delusion'. It's always the other person who's 'deluded'… #
  • Delusions can be held by whole groups… as long as we're not a part of that group. If we're a member…[they] become a 'minority-opinion'. #
  • .. A person isn't considered insane if there are a number of people who believe the same way … then it's a religion. #
  • … It sounds quite blasphemous to put religion and insanity on an equal footing for comparison,but his point was… to illuminate insanity. #
  • … The current subject-object point of view of religion, conventionally muted so as not to stir up the fanatics, is that #
  • religious mysticism and insanity are the same. #
  • Religious mysticism is one of those dellusions that isn't called insane only because there are so many people involved… #
  • The Metaphysics of Quality … says the subject-object people are almost right when they identify religious-mysticism with insanity… #
  • Both lunatics and mystics have freed themselves from the conventional static intellectual patterns of their culture. The only difference is #
  • that the lunatic has shifted over to a private static pattern of his own, #
  • whereas the mystic has abandoned all static patterns in favor of pure Dynamic Quality … #
  • as long as the psychiatric approach is encased within a subject-object metaphysical understanding it will always seek a patterned solution #
  • to insanity, never a mystic one… When Socrates says in one of his dialogues, #
  • 'Our greatest blessings cometo us by way of madness provided the madness is given us by divine gift', #
  • the psychiatric profession doesn't know what in the world he is talking about… #
  • The Metaphysics of Quality suggests [there is another] solution to insanity… to dissolve all static patterns, both sand and insane #
  • and find the base of all reality, Dynamic Quality, that is independent of them all. #
  • The Metaphysics of Quality says that it is immoral for sane people to force cultural conformity by suppressing the Dynamic drives that #
  • produce insanity. Such oppression is a lower form of evolution trying to devour a higher one. #
  • Once this theoretical structure is available, it offers solutions to some mysteries in the present treatment of the insane… #
  • For example… The value ofshock treatment is not that it returns a lunatic to normal cultural patterns. It certainly does not do that. #
  • It's value is that it destroys all patterns… cultural & private, and leaves the patient temporarily in a Dynamic state. #
  • All the shock does is duplicate the effects of hitting the patient over the head with a baseball bat. It simply knocks him senseless. #
  • In fact it was to imitate the effect of hitting someone over the head… without the risk of skull injury that Ugo Cerletti developed [it] #
  • … but what goes unrecognized .. is the fact that this senseless unpatterened state is a valuable state of existence… #
  • psychiatrists of course don't know what to do with it,and so the patient often slips back into lunacy and has to be knocked senseless again. #
  • But sometimes the patient, in a moment of Zen wisdom,sees the superficiality of both his own contrary patterns and the cultural patterns, #
  • sees that one gets him electrically clubbed… and the other sets him free from the institution… #
  • and thereupon makes a wise mystic decision to get the hell ouf of there by whatever avenue is available. #
  • … Another mystery in the treatment of the insane …is the value of peace and quiet and isolation… Leave them alone… #
  • Ironically the one thing that the mental hospitals and doctors to best is the one thing they never take credit for… #
  • They know it works, but there's no way of justifying that because the whole cultural set they have to operate in says #
  • that doing nothing is the same as doing something wrong… what sometimes occurs in an insane asylum but occurs deliberately #
  • in a mystic retreat is a natural human process called dhyana in sanskrit. In our culture … ambiguously called 'meditation'. #
  • Just as mystics traditionally seek monasteries&ashrams…so r the insane treated by isolation in places of relative calm&austerity&silence. #
  • The Western treatment of dhyana is a beautiful example of how the static patterns of a culture can make something not exist… #
  • People in this culture are hypnotized into thinking they do not meditate when in fact they do. #
  • … boats… seaside cottages… lake cabins… hiking trails… golf courses… It's the need for dhyana that is behind all these. #
  • Vacations too…how perfectly named that is… an emptying out…of all the static clutter…settling into an undefined sort of tranquility. #
  • …sectarian religion was a static fallout from Dynamic Quality … none of them told the whole truth… #
  • There's an adage that, 'Nothing disturbs a bishop quite so much as the presence of a saint in the parish'… #
  • The saint's Dynamic understanding makes him unpredictable and uncontrollable but the bishop's got a whole calendar of static ceremonies… #
  • In all religions bishops tend to gild Dynamic Quality …because their cultures require it … #
  • but these become like gold vines that cling to a tree, shut out its sunlight and eventually strangle it." #
  • an Irish-German gift to the world – great band great album great fun!!! ♫ http://blip.fm/~pjpei #
  • using breath to generate heat in yoga asana practices: http://bit.ly/dDohKL #
  • "… once this integration occursand Dynamic Quality is identified with religious mysticism it produces an avalanche of information… #
  • a lot of this religious mysticisim is just low-grade 'yelping about God'… but if you search for the sources… interesting things turn up. #
  • …The logical order of things which the philosophers study is derived from 'mythos'. #
  • The mythos is the social culture and the rhetoric which the culture must invent before philosophy becomes possible. #
  • Most of this old religious talk is nonsense, of course, but nonsense or not, it is the parent of our modern scientific talk. #
  • … Digging back into ancient Greek history, to the time when this mythos-to-logos transition was taking place … #
  • the ancient rhetoricians of Greec, the Sophists, had taught what they called arete, which was a synonym for Quality. #
  • …It is said that by following linguistic analysis u could go even further back into the mythos…Ancient Greek wasn't an original language #
  • It was descended from a much earlier one … the Proto-Indo-European language … it has left no fragments but has been derived … #
  • from similarities between such languages as Sanskrit, Greek and English which have … a common prehistoric tongue. #
  • After thousands of years of separation from Greek & English the Hindi word for 'mother' is still 'ma'. #
  • Yoga both looks like and is translated as 'yoke'…. an Indian rajah's title sounds like regent… #
  • The Proto-Indo-European root of arete was the morpheme rt. There besides arete, was a treasure room of other derived 'rt' words: #
  • aristocrat, art, rhetoric, worth, rite, ritual, wright, right (handed), & right (correct)… #
  • All of these words except arithmetic seemed to have a vague thesaurus-like similarity to Quality… #
  • in aristocrat&arithmetic Rt meant first…in art&wright it seemed to mean 'created' and 'of beauty'…'ritual' suggested repetitive order… #
  • the word right has two meanings: 'right-handed' and 'moral and esthetic correctness'… #
  • When all these meanings were strung together a fuller picture of the rtmorpheme emerged. #
  • Rt referred to the 'first, created, beautiful repetitive order of moral and esthetic correctness.' #
  • … condemntation of left-handedness as 'sinister' is an almost universal anthropological characetristic… #
  • even today when legal oaths are taken … people shake hands …a president is inaugurated … it is mandatory that he raise his right hand. #
  • Prehistoric rt is still with us. #
  • There was just one thing wrong with this… the meanings… suggested 'importance' … that was social and procedural and manufactured… #
  • Rt meant 'quality'…but … static, not Dynamic… then his mind dredged up a word he hadn't thought… of for a long time… Rta. #
  • Rta [sanskrit] was the 'cosmic order of things'… the Sanskrit language was considered the most faithful to the Proto-Indo-European root… #
  • …Rta, from the oldest portion of the Rg Veda, which was the oldest known writing of the Indo-Aryan language… #
  • Varuna… was the chief support of rta … [a] ominiscent god …[of] unswerving adherance to high principles… #
  • The physical order of the universe is also the moral order of the universe. Rta is both… It was the oldest idea known to man. #
  • Rta also meant ritual … a decay [during the Brahmanas Hindu period] of Dynamic Quality into static quality… #
  • then came the Upanisadic period &the flowering of Indian philosophy. Dynamic quality reemerged within the static patterns of Indian thought. #
  • Rta…almost ceased to be used in Sanskrit…but under the name of dharma [it] occupies averyimportant place inthe later Indian view of life #
  • The more usual meaning of dharma is religious merit…but it is sometimes used as a purely moral concept & stands for right/virtuous conduct #
  • Dharma is duty… not external duty which is arbitrarily imposed by others…neither internal…arbitrarily decided by 1's own consciousness #
  • …Dharma is Quality itself, the principle of 'rightness' which gives structure and purpose to the evolution of all life… #
  • Within the Hindu tradition dharma is relative & dependent on the conditions of society… it is the bond which holds society together. #
  • … But within modern Buddhist thought dharma becomes the phenomenal world – the object of perception, thought or understanding. #
  • A chair, for example, is notcomposed of atoms of substance, it is composed of dharmas. #
  • This statement is absolute jabberwocky 2a conventional subject-object metaphysics. How canachair b composed of individual littlemoralorders? #
  • But if 1 applies the Metaphysics of Quality & sees that a chair is an inorganic static pattern and sees that all static patterns are #
  • composed of valueand that value is synonymous with morality then it all begins to make sense. #
  • …this was one answer…to why workmen in the Far East are able to maintain quality levels that compare so favorably to those in the West. #
  • If one comes from a cultural tradition where an electronic assembly is primarily a moral order rather than just a neutral pile of substance, #
  • it is easier to feel an ethical responsibility for doing good work on it… #
  • Oriental social cohesiveness… resulted from the working out, centuries ago, of the problem of dharma&the way…it combines freedom&ritual #
  • In the West progress seems to proceed by a series of spasms of alternating freedom and ritual. A revolution of freedom against old rituals #
  • produces a new order, which soon becomes another old ritual for the next generation to revolt against, on and on. #
  • The Zen monk's daily life is nothing but one ritual after another, hour after hour, day after day, all his life. They don't tell hime to #
  • shatter those static patterns to discover the unwritten dharma.They want him to get those patterns perfect. #
  • The explanation for this contradiction is the belief that you do not free yourself from static patterns by fighting them with other contrary #
  • static patterns. That is …'bad karma chasing its tail'. You free yourself from static patterns by putting them to sleep… #
  • You master them… you get to used to them you completely forget them and they are gone. #
  • There in the center of the most monotonous boredom of static ritualistic patterns the Dynamic freedom is found. #
  • … The danger has always been that the rituals, the static patterns are mistaken for what they merely represent #
  • and are allowed to destroy the Dynamic Quality they were originally intended to preserve. #
  • … If ritual always comes first & intellectual principles always come later,then ritual cannot always b a decadent corruption of intellect. #
  • Their sequence in history suggests that principles emerged from ritual, not the other way around… #
  • That is, we don't perform religious rituals because we believe in God. We believe in God because we perform religious rituals." #
  • Congratulations http://www.ubuntu.com/ Ubuntu 10.04 is out, easily upgraded two computers! #
  • two more short readings and that will be the end of my recent quote-floods… #
  • "From the static point of view the whole escape into Dynamic Quality seems like a death experience.It's a movement from something 2 nothing. #
  • How can 'nothing' be any different from death? … Allthe Buddha could say was,'See for yourself' … #
  • enlightment is distributed in all parts of the world… but some cultures accept it and others screen out recognition of it. #
  • The Metaphysics of Quality translated karma as 'evolutionary garbage'…the pain,the suffering that results from clinging to static patterns #
  • … the only exit from the suffering is to detach yourself from these static patterns, that is, to 'kill' them. #
  • A common way taken to kill them is suicide, but suicide only kills biological patterns. #
  • That's like destorying a computer because you can't stand the program it is running. #
  • the social and intellectual patterns that caused the suicide have to be carried on by others. #
  • From an evolutionary point of view it's really a backward and therefore immoral step. #
  • Another immoral way of killing the static patterns is to pass the patterns to someone else …a 'karma dump' #
  • … you invent a devil group, Jews or blacksor whites or capitalists … then say that group is responsible for all your suffering. #
  • If you take all this karmic garbage and make yourself feel better by passing it on to others that's normal. That's the way the world works. #
  • But if you manage to absorb it and not pass it on, that's the highest moral conduct of all. That really advances everything, not just you… #
  • … some of the great moral figures of history – Christ, Lincoln, Gandhi … that's what they were really involved in, #
  • the cleansing of the world through the absorption of karmic garbage. They didn't pass it on." #
  • "Then he remembered when he had been walking down a dirt road…on the Northern Cheyenne reservation… #
  • with…John Wooden Leg, the tribe's chief and a woman … they were all walking down the road … #
  • when one of those raggedy nondescript dogs that call Indian reservations home came onto the road and walked pleasantly in front of them. #
  • … [the woman] asked John 'What kind of dog is that?'. John thought about it and said, 'That's a good dog.' #
  • …if he were looking for proof that 'substance' is a cultural heritage from an ancientGreece rather then an absolute reality, he should #
  • simply look at non-Greek-derived cultures. If the 'reality' of substance was missing… that would prove he was right. #
  • … the woman… wanted 2 know what genetic,substantive pigeonhole of canine classification this object walking b4 them could be placed in. #
  • But John Wooden Leg never understood the question. He wasn't joking when he said 'That's a good dog'. #
  • He probably thought she was worried the dog might bite her. #
  • .. John had distinguished the dog according to it's Quality, rather then according to its substance. #
  • That indicated he considered Quality more important. #
  • …American Indian mysticismis not something alien from American culture. It's a deep submerged hidden root of it. #
  • Americans don't have to go to the orient to learn what this mysticism stuff is about. It's been right here in America all along. #
  • In the Orient they dress it up with rituals & incense & pagodas & chants…& huge organizational enterprises that bring in …millions of $ #
  • …American Indians haven't done this. Their way is not to be organized atall. They don't charge anything, they don't make a big fuss, #
  • and that's what makes people underrate them. #
  • … The Dakota Indian considers goodness to be a noun rather then an adjective. #
  • He will tell someone, 'Take care of your goodness, rather than 'Be Good'. #
  • Good is a noun. That was it. #
  • Good as a noun rather than as an adjective is all the Metaphysics of Quality is about." #
  • The End! #
  • TED http://www.ted.com has stagnated from dynamic & inspiring to predictably (static) over-intellectualized #

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Breath & Heat in Yoga Asana

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There are two kinds of heat we can experience in a Yoga asana practice: a peripheral heat and a core heat. A similar (and easier to achieve) experience can be found in food. Spices like black pepper create a peripheral heat that can be felt in the bodies extremities (hot face, runny nose, sweat, etc). Then there are spices such as ginger which create a heat that is felt in the abdominal area (also considered good for digestion).

One of the motivations for the alchemy of breathing in asana experiment is to experience these two qualities of heat in practice. If you review the breathing patterns in the experiment you will find that the variations are based on the holds – the pauses between inhaling and exhaling (the inhale and exhale remained consistent througout the experiment).

The hold after the inhale (Antah Kumbhaka) is a stimulating practice that generates peripheral heat. When challenged, and the breath runs out, most people gravitate automatically towards holding their breath after the inhale (partly because it can be forced!). A common symptom of the peripheral heat is of-course sweating.

The hold after the exhale (Bahya Kumbaka) is a centering practice (attention is placed on the abdomen). This generates a core heat, felt mostly in the abdominal. It is a concentrated heat that purifies. Though it also has stimulating qualities – it is more about containment. This hold cannot be forced (try!) –  instead it offers a practice of surrender. Advanced Yoga energetic practices place an emphasis on the exhale and the hold after the exhale, and centered around the abdominal area.

These qualities comes into play when designing a practice. Asana sequences can be used to both stimulate energy and bring it to the center – using a combination of postures and breathing formulas. Pranayama regulates energy flow and meditation directs it. The overall practice would vary for individual practitioners and life circumstances, and a relevant mode of practice.

Posted in Asana, Breath, Energy, Yoga | You are welcome to add your comment

Alchemy of Breathing in Asana

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This post will describe an experiment that will enable you to experience the workings of the fire within. To proceed with the experiment effectively you should be:

The expriment is about performing the same sequence of asana’s using different breathing patterns. The breathing patterns are selected to evoke different energetic affects. It is advisable to do one sequence a day, under similar conditions (same time and place in your usualy daily schedule). Take time after each practice to observe the effects of the practice. You may also want to write down some impressions. If you have a familiar practice sequence you may use that. Alternately you may use the sequence described at the end of this post.

Following are the breathing formulas for the experiment. The formulas are offered in multipliers – so please apply them to your own length of breath. Some of the formulas may be quite challenging to perform – therefor you may wish to work with a breath that is slightly shorter (~75%) of your full capacity. For example, if your base inhale is usually 8 seconds, you may consider practicing with a 6 second inhale instead.  I invite you to use the breathing formulas in the order they are offered:

  1. Equal inhale and exhale, no holds: 1 – 0 – 1 – 0
  2. Hold after the inhale: 1 – 0.5 – 1 – 0
  3. Hold after the exhale: 1 – 0   – 1 – 0.5
  4. Both holds: 1 – 0.5 – 1 – 0.5
  5. Optional Extended hold after inhale: 1 – 1 – 1 – 0.5

When I was first introduced to this experiment it was on retreat in a group setting. It was very useful to share my experiences and to hear what other people experienced. I invite you to come back to this article and to share your experienceand observations with others.

As promised, following is a short sequence of standing postures and some counter-postures you are welcome to use for this expriment. If you do, you may want to review reading practice illustrations. You can click on the image to enlarge it and you can download it as a printable PDF you can take to your practice space.

Posted in Asana, Breath, Energy, Practice Sequences, Yoga | You are welcome to read 3 comments and to add yours

Reading Asana – Alternating

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Let’s have a look a sequence that includes alternation between two sides – a simple upper raised leg posture:

This illustration says:

  • on inhale raise your arms
  • on exhale bring your arms forward and raise one leg up
  • on inhale bring raise your arms again and return the leg to the floor
  • repeat this 8 times alternating between the two legs (so each leg will be raised a total of 4 times, but alternating).
  • on the 9th exhale bring your arms back alongside your body

A shorthand, generic version of this illustration may be:

As we explored in the sequence explanation – it would be up to you to decide how to perform this sequence: (1) alternate between sides using the entire sequence – including a return to the starting position; (2) alternate just the legs and then come back to the starting position – as described above.

Finally, see if you can you tell the difference between the two illustrations above and this next illustration:

This illustration describes a sequence without alternation. Each leg is lowered and raised 4 times consecutively. So there is a total of 8 lifts but on each leg separately. This variation may be more physically challenging – because there is a longer consecutive effort for each leg.

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I Shakuhachi – April 27, 2010

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play shakuhachi recording

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Reading Asana – Sequences

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A slightly more elaborate illustation of a sequence for Parsva Uttanasana – Flank Forward Bend:

This illustration says:

  • on inhale raise your arms
  • on exhale bend forward
  • on inhale come back up
  • on the exhale lower the arms back down alongside the body.
  • repeat this 4 times on one side and then 4 times on the other side (this is an assymetric posture done once with the right foot forward and then with the left foot forward.

A variation of this sequence might look something like:

This illustration says:

  • on inhale raise your arms
  • on exhale bend forward
  • on inhale come back up
  • repeat this (just the bending forward and coming up) 4 times
  • then, on the 5th exhale lower the arms back down alongside the body.
  • repeat this entire sequence once on each side.

This 2nd variation can be more physically intense – because the forward bend is repeated consecutively without returning to a arm-restfing starting position every time. Sometimes, when writing a sequence with no specific person in mind, like I would do for publishing on this website, I will opt to use the first variation – which is more generic. In these cases it is up to the reader/practitioner to choose how to perform the practice.

Posted in Asana, Getting Started, Yoga | You are welcome to read 1 comment and to add yours

The Pied Pipers of Facebook?

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Of all the recent Facebook related media turmoil, one article on TechCrunch shimmered to me. I don’t know if it’s true or valid but in reading it I wondered about the potential effect of technological early-adapters in society. The TechCrunch article suggests that many Google-Geek-Engineers are leaving facebook due to privacy concerns that have arisen with Facebooks latest anouncements.

Disclosure: I don’t use Facebook, I tried it twice and left it behind. Whenever I reach a Facebook login page I walk away. I consider Facebook to be a very low quality form of social interaction and I strongly urge people I care about to refrain from using it. I consider people who criticize Facebook while still using it to be hypocrites.

Early adopters are passionate about new technologies, they are willing to spend time and effort to puruse their sense of curiosity. I wonder if inadvertently they are also a doorway into wider social acceptance? Tech companies seek early adopters to test the waters with new products and services. Assuming of course, that when early adopters sign-off on a service they will become points of origin for a natural process of viral distribution. So in a way (and I assuming there are other factors involved in the process)  early adopters lead their social circles into technological environments.

With Facebook I believe that early adopters were Pied Pipers, playing a nice melody but leading their followers into a dangerous place. Now the dangers are more apparent – but not to everyone. Technologists can envision the implications of Facebook’s anouncements on privacy, but most of the 400 millions Facebook users are not technologists – and they have no idea what the issue is. So a few technologists may walk away form Facebook, but most of the people will stay in the hands of a company that will stop at nothing (including legal prosection if it is deemed worthwhile) to infringe on their privacy and freedom to make a profit.
Do early adapters inadvertently play such a role in society in our technologicaly dominated era? Do their inherent curiosities and talents represent a dynamic evolutionry force? Do they know this? Should they?

End note: as I was searching for a “Pied Piper” image I came across something inspiring – it is a symbolic finding considering the context that brought me to it 🙂

Posted in AltEco, outside, Tech Stuff | You are welcome to read 2 comments and to add yours

Reading Asana – Breath & Repetition

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A post I hope to publish soon will include a sample practice. I just realized, as I am working on a repository of posture illustrations, that I have taken for granted that everybody knows how to relate to these illustrations. So I paused to write something about reading of yoga asana illustrations.

I feel it’s important to note that illustrations are not to be used to study asana. Asana have many variations and modifications that can be utilized for different people, needs and circumstances. These details and qualities are not adequately represented in illustrations. Study asans with a Yoga teacher. The illustrations are merely maps to remember practice sequences.

With that said, let’s have a look at a simple illustration for a very simple sequence:


This illustration says:

Posted in Asana, Getting Started, Yoga | You are welcome to read 1 comment and to add yours

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-04-25

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  • Dear Web2.0 user-centered bla bla startups: if I haven't been active for months, dont send me a weekly activity summary, it isn't endearing #
  • today's reading is a late… but here goes… #
  • "Where thy physical climate changes suddenly from high to low temperature … or … atmospheric pressure …the result is usually a storm. #
  • When the social climate changes from preposterous social restraint of all intellect to a relative abandonment fo all social patterns, #
  • the result is a hurricane of social forces. That hurricane is the history of the 20th century…November 11, 1918…the end of World War 1.. #
  • ..President Woodrow Wilson belonged in both worlds,Victorian society and the new intellectual world of the 20th century: #
  • the only university professor ever to be eclected president of the United States. Before Wilson'stime academicians has been peripheral #
  • within the Victorian power structure…. intellectuals were not expected to run society itself. They were valued servants of society… #
  • Leadership was for practical, businesslike 'men of affairs'. #
  • The Victorians social system and … morality that led to World War 1 had portrayed war as an adventorous conflict between noble individuals #
  • engaged in the idealistic service of their country: a kind of extended knighthood. World Wart 1 wasn't like that. #
  • … The Gatling gun removed the nobility and heroism. The Victorian painters had never shown a battlefield of mu and shell holes and … #
  • half a million rotting corpses… that many had been murdered in one battle alone. #
  • Those who survived… felt bitter toward the society that could do that to them. They joined the faith that intellect must find some way #
  • out of old Victorian 'nobility' & 'virtue' into a more sane and intelligent world. In an instant it seemed the snobish fashionable #
  • Victorian social world was gone. New technology fueled the change… shufting fromagriculture to manufacturing. #
  • Electrification was shifting night into day and eliminating hundreds of drudgeries. Cars and highways were changing the speed with which #
  • peopledid things. Mass journalism had emerged. The mastery of all these new changes was no longer dominated by social skills. #
  • ..A horse could be mastered if your resolve was firm,your disposition pleasant and fear absent.The skills required were biological & social. #
  • But handling the new technology was something different. Personal biological & social qualities didn't make any difference to machines. #
  • A whole population,cut loose physically by the new technology..was also cut adrift morally & psychologicallyfrom the static social patterns. #
  • …No one knew what to do about the lostness… people raced from one fad to another… a chaos of social patterns ONLY. #
  • The events that excited people in the 20's were events that dramatized the new dominance of intellect over society… #
  • abstract art, discordant music, Freudian psychoanalysis…contempt for alcohol prohibition…The test of what was good, of what had Quality, #
  • was no longer 'Does it meet society's approval?' but 'Does it meet the approval of out intellect?'. #
  • The hurricane of social forces…was most strongly felt in Europe, particularly Germany where the effects of WWI were the most devastating. #
  • Communism & socialism, programs for intellectual control over society, were confronted by..fascism a program of social control of intellect. #
  • Nowhere were the intellectualsmore intense in their determination to overthrow old order. #
  • Nowhere did the old order becomemore intent on finding ways to destory the excesses of the new intellectualism… #
  • a conflict of levels of evolution… explains that driving force behind Hitler not as aninsane search for power but as an all consuming #
  • glorification of social authority and hatred of intellectualism. His anti-Semitism…[and] communists …was fueled by anti-intellectualism. #
  • In the United States … Franklin Roosevelt & the New Deal… became the center of a lesser stormbetween social and intellectual forces… #
  • at the center of it all was the belief that intellectual planning by the government was necessary for society to regain its health… #
  • it was also a new deal for the intellectuals of America… for the 1st time they were at the center of the planning process…were in a #
  • position to give orders to AMerica's finest and oldest and wealthiest groups. #
  • …Suddenly, before the old Victorians' eyes, a whole new social caste…of intellectual Brahmins,was being created above their own military #
  • and economic castes…Social snobbery was being replaced with intellectual snobbery…academic foundations were taking over the… country. #
  • … It was like the replacement of Indiansby pioneers… too bad for the Indians but it was inevitable form of progress… #
  • …from the idea that society is man's highest achievement, the 20th century moved to the idea that intellect is man's highest achievement. #
  • …The Ph.D. was on its way to becoming the ultimate social status symbol…academic fields were expanding into new undreamed-of territories #
  • …among the most rapidly expanding was… anthropology… [and it's] unassailable 'objectivity' had some very partisan cultural roots… #
  • it had been a political tool with which to defeat the Victorian's and their system of social values. #
  • ..The Victorians…presumed all primitive societies were early forms of "Society" itself & were trying to grow into a complete #
  • 'civilization' like that of Victorian England. The relativists… stated that there is no empirical scientific evidence for a 'Society' #
  • toward which all primitive societies are heading…[they] virtually wiped out the credibility of the older Victorian evolutionsists and #
  • gave to anthropology a shape it has had ever since… presented as a victory of scientific objectivity over unscientific prejudice, but the #
  • Metaphysics ofQuality says deeper issues were involved…intellect could now pass judgment on all forms of social custom… #
  • When peopleasked, 'If no culture, including a Victorian culture, can say what is right and what is wron, then how can we ever know what is #
  • right and what is wrong?' the answer was, 'that's easy.Intellectuals will tell you… what they say is absolute… because intellectuals #
  • follow science,which is objective.An objective observer does not have relative opinions because he is nowhere within the world he observes'. #
  • … An American anthropologist could no more embrace nonobjectivity thatn a Stalinist bureaucrat could play the stock market. #
  • … the Metaphysics of Quality supports this dominance of intellect over society. It says intellect is a …more moral level than society. #
  • But having said this,the Metaphysics of Quality goes on to say that science, the intellectual pattern that has been appointed to take over #
  • society, has a defect in it… subject-object science has no provision for morals… is only concerned with facts. #
  • Morals have no objective reality. You can look through a microscope or telescope or oscilloscope for the rest of your life and you will #
  • never find a single moral. There aren't anythere. They are all in your head. They exist only in your imagination. #
  • From the perspective of subject-object science, the world is a completely purposeless,valueless place. There is no point in anything. #
  • Nothing is right and nothing is wrong. EVerything just functions like machinery. There is nothing morally wrong because there are no morals. #
  • Now that intellect was in command of society for the 1st time in history,was this the intellectual pattern it was going 2 run society with?" #
  • drinking tea from first of the season & fesh picked leaves: peppermint, spearmint, verbena & sage… heavenly! #
  • "The new intellectualism of the twenties argued that if there are principles for right social conduct they are to be discovered by social #
  • experiment to see what produces the greatest satisfaction … of the greatest number. For example,drink that causes car accidents or #
  • loss of work or family problems is irrational…a vice. On the other hand,drinking is not irrational when it produces social… relaxation. #
  • Of all the 'vices' none was more controversial than premarital and extramarital sex… It was expected that with the new application #
  • of reason, sex could be handled much like other commodities without the terrible tensions and frustrations of social repression… #
  • …throught this century we have seen over and over again, that intellectuals weren't blaming crimeonman's biological nature bu on the #
  • social patterns that had repressed this biological nature…[believing] that this would be the cure of man's criminal tendencies… #
  • intellectuals became excited about anthropology in the hope that the field would provide facts upon which to base new scientific rules… #
  • Here in this country, American Indians were suddenly revived as models of primitive communal virtue… 'anthros' … swarmed to huts and #
  • teepees and hogans of every tribe they could find,jockeying to be in on the great treasure hunt for new information about possible new moral #
  • indigenous American ways of life. This was illogical since, if subject-object science sees no morals anywhere, then no scientific study #
  • of any kind is going to fill the moral void left by the overthrow of Victorians society. #
  • Intellectual permisivenessand destruction of social authority are no more scientific than Victorian discipline. #
  • this lapse in logic magically fit the thesis… that the American personality has two components, European and Indian. #
  • The moral values that were replacing the old European Victorian ones were the moral values of American Indians: #
  • kindness to children,maximum freedom, openness of speech, love of simplicity,affinity for nature. #
  • Without any real awareness of where the newmorals were coming from, the whole country was moving in a direction that if felt was right. #
  • The western movie was another example of this change, showing Indian values which had become cowboy values which had become 20th century #
  • all-American values. Everyone knewthe cowboys of the silver screen had little to do with their actual counterparts, but it didn't matter. #
  • It was the values, not the historical accuracy,that counted." #
  • @nivertech please remove me from your 'Israel' list #
  • @gervis thank you for your attention. These are not my thoughts … I am quoting an inspiring book- I'll reveal it soon 🙂 in reply to gervis #
  • @nivertech thank you very much. #
  • @nivertech I know 🙂 & tags just say something about people …& good luck finding a photo of me on flickr 🙂 in reply to nivertech #
  • some thoughts on making donating to WordPress plugin authors easy and effective: http://bit.ly/cBdnwd #
  • @adambn thank you for the heads up on Breaking Bad, didn't know is existed,enjoying it greatly! #
  • I feel so remote, that getting close hurts #
  • Economics is not science http://bit.ly/bPv5Eo [ via @raymondpirouz ] #
  • Firework http://bit.ly/aRM1S8 #
  • @buffdesign thank you for getting back to me. do you have space/interest now? iamronen[at]iamronen[dot]com in reply to buffdesign #
  • "The drift away from European social values worked all right at first, and the 1st generation of the Victorians, benefiting from ingrained #
  • Victorian social habits seem to have been enormously liberated intellectually by the new freedom. But with the 2nd generation … #
  • problems began to emerge. #
  • Indian values are all right for an Indian style of life, but they don't work so well in a complex technological society… #
  • An upbringing that allows the child to grow 'naturally' in the Indian fashion does not … guarantee the finest sort of urban adjustment. #
  • …The world was no doubt in better shape intellectually and technologically but … the 'quality' of it was not good. #
  • There was no way u could say why this quality was no good. U just felt it … He remembered seeing The Glass Menagerie http://bit.ly/d1laaw #
  • in which one edge of the stage had an arrow shaped neon sign flashing onand off… beneath the arrow was the word 'PARADISE', also flashing #
  • PARADISE> PARADISE> PARADISE>… But the Paradise was always somewhere pointed to, always somewhere else. .. #
  • Paradise was always at the end of some intellectual, technological ride, but u knew that when u got there paradise wouldn't be there either. #
  • … You had to be a rebel without a cause http://bit.ly/2k3Xba . The intellectuals had preempted all the causes. #
  • Causes were to the 20th century intellectuals as manners had been to Victorians… They had everything figured out… #
  • 'pursuit of happiness' seemed to have become like the pursuit of some scientifically created mechanical rabbit that moves ahead at whatever #
  • speed it is being pursued. If you ever did catch it for a few moments it had a peculiar synthetic,technological taste that made the pursuit #
  • seem senseless. #
  • Everyone seemed to be guided by an 'objective', 'scientific' view of life that told each person that his essential self is his evolved #
  • material body. Ideas and societies are a component of brains, not the other way around. #
  • No two brains can merge physically,and therefore notwo people can ever really communicate except … [for] sending messages back and forth. #
  • A scientific, intellectual culture had become a culture of millions of isolated people living and dying in … psychic solitary confinement, #
  • unable to talk to one another, really, and unable to judge one another because scientifically speaking it is impossible to do so. #
  • Each invididual in his cell of isolation was told that no matter how hard he tried…his whole life is that of an animal that lives & dies. #
  • ..He could invent moral goals for himself, but they are just artificial inventions. Scientifically speaking he has no goals. #
  • Sometime after the 20's a secret loneliness,so penetrating and so encompassing that we are only beginning to realize the extent of it, #
  • descended upon the land. This scientific, psychiatric isolation and futility had become a far worse prison … than…Victorian 'virtue'. #
  • They had lost some of their realness … living in some kind of movie saying … PARADISE> PARADISE> PARADISE>… " #
  • progressing in ripping my CD collection… now Pearl Jam followed immediately by Peter Paul & Mary 🙂 #
  • @raymondpirouz re:HTML5 – maybe there is an element of vision and inspiration that is being overlooked by technical critics? in reply to raymondpirouz #
  • it's been my most difficult open-source transition: 1st time saving PSD file as GIMP XCF to continue work http://www.gimp.org/ #
  • Insights courtesy of the Dalai Lama, Barack Obama & Twitter: http://bit.ly/aLBjJW #
  • wading into new linux territories: using GParted to resize an existing Windows Vista partition on Dell laptop… making room for Ubuntu #
  • unless you have good reason for it, avoid Ubuntu 64bit, the 32bit install makes for an easier life #
  • @ennyman3 "art is not necessary" is a misapprehension I carried around 4 a long time … art gives life direction in reply to ennyman3 #
  • change & clinging #
  • had an emotionally painful day, now food, TV and ice-cream … and let this day come to a peaceful end #
  • when they are sent out to war they are called soldiers, when they die or go missing they become boys #
  • working on Yoga asana illsutrations with fresh coffee and Jeff Buckley #
  • listening to "Jeff Buckley Strange Fruit" ♫ http://blip.fm/~p8p1h #

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Insights

n

Yesterday I stumbled upon the Dalai Lama on Twitter, today I stumbled upon Barack Obama. Following are two screenshots (taken within a few seconds of one another) of their twitter pages (you can click on the images to view them in full resolution). In find it inspiring, amusing, enlightening & educating to look at the two side by side. I’ve noted the first thing I noticed in the comments – you are welcome to leave your observations there too 🙂

Posted in AltEco, Enjoy, inside, outside, Tech Stuff | You are welcome to read 1 comment and to add yours

Fireworks

n

Last night marked the celebrations of Israel’s 62nd independence day. Andreea has an insatiable craving for fireworks and asked that we go see some. I was probably in a good mood and agreed to take her. Now I am in a bad unpleasant mood.

I can recall three memorable experiences from this visit to the city (Nahariya):

  1. One food stand where a man was placing a few pieces of meat on the fire. He looked like an average guy (not an average merchant), with a slightly longer then average grill, who had spent the day preparing the meats, embracing an opportunity to make some money on this day of celebration.
  2. A cat that was sitting next to another food stand, staying out of the way, but close enough to pick up small crumbs of meat that were falling on the ground.
  3. A girl, I would estimate about 12 years old, who had a peaceful and pleasant presence. She was truly enjoying the celebration, she was radiating, but without the diturbance, noise and sensationslism that dominated the crowds.

I don’t recall “suffering” while we were there. I didn’t feel I belonged there, I didn’t feel any celebration. I simply watched, rather peacefully, with some curiosity, even slightly amused at the social fabric passing before my eyes, waiting for the fireworks to come so we can go home.

The fireworks lasted longer then I expected. The part I most enjoyed was when I watched Andreea’s face watching the fireworks. She was immersed. Her eyes didn’t blink, and a couple of times her lips turned upwards slightly into a short-lasting smile. When they were over we headed out of the city center back toward the car and home.

As we were walking out we walked past a teen girl. She was overweight, dressed in a failed attempt to look sexy, one hand holding a cigarette to her mouth and the other a cellphone to her ear, her face wearing a look of contempt. As we passed each other I cursed under my breath something that translates like “you dumb, fat, fuck” – and experienced some immediate relief.

When we got home I was extremeley agitated. Sleep was beyond me. Andreea went to bed, and I stayed awake waiting for my agitation to settle. I thought I was heading towards a sleepless night, but sooner then I expected, tiredness took over and I went to bed. I awoke to find my breathing compromised – my nostrils were blocked and my chest felt itchy and irritated. I woke up feeling that the world I met last night is not a world I want to live in.

I have a feeling that if I try to describe or rationalize my experience of last night and the vibrations still resonating within me, that I will come off as either crazy or  judgemental. That I would feel like I felt about art until I met Shahar. I know better. On the bright side, the experience has been a reminder to me that there is still a part of me that wants to connect with others. That I haven’t lost that passion. It has also reminded me that I need to treat my passions with care, that misplacing them can hurt. I look forward to going home.

Posted in Expanding, inside | You are welcome to add your comment

Please Let Me Tip WorPress Plugin Developers

n

As I was working on the mockup screens shown below, this post by Frank Chimero appeared and inspired me.

I am grateful for WordPress – it has been a friend to me in times of change. One of the things that make WordPress so great is the prolific Plugin repository. At the present there are 18 active plugins in my (this) WordPress website. I’d like to show my gratitude to all these plugin developers by giving something back – the most obvious way to do this is by making a donation. Once, when I was getting started with WordPress I made one donation to a plugin that greatly empowered me. I don’t make donations anymore, and from what I’ve read about the dynamics of the community, not  many people do.

I asked myself why and I thought that (1) Money isn’t one of my current assets – I have very little of it; (2) If I were to make one donation, which to which plugin should I make it? I wouldn’t know how to choose;(3) My symbolic donation doesn’t feel like much (and I have a feeling that even when they are summed up small donations don’t amount to much).

But… I would gladly give a small sum periodically,something like $10 a year to the developer community if it was easy to do and if there was a good chance that others did too. Assuming there are 10 million WordPress.org blogs, and that only 2% of them made a similar donation, that would amount to $2,000,000 of donations distributed among plugin developers. Now that feels like something that could give a tremendous boost to WordPress and it’s community.

With that in mind I began thinking of a plugin. Before I present the plugin I would like to emphasize that the plugin itself is not enough. After the introduction of the plugin I will touch on the complementary challenges that may be required for this plugin to work… on to the show (click on the images to zoom in).

In it’s simple form the plugin should enable me to make a donation that is distributed to the plugins that I use on my WordPress installation. By default the sum would be distributed equally between all the plugins.

But if I wanted to get more involved I could choose to prioritize the plugins – indicating those that are more valuable to me and in doing that allocate more funds to them.

The plugin would enable me to review the accumulated effect I’ve had – by reviewing my past donations.

Finally, the plugin would enable me to experience the overall effect my small donation is a part-of. It would show me how the entire ecosystem is functioning – hopefully enabling me to feel proud to be a part of this.

It may be useful to have a reminder feature that appears once a year on the dashboard, inviting me to make another donation.

I believe that this plugin needs to be backed by a service that:

  1. Can accept the donations.
  2. Can aggregate the donations and information and calculate total donations to Plugin developers.
  3. Can distribute aggregated payments to the plugin developers
  4. Can provide a secure registration serice for Plugin developers (maybe this can be coupled with the registration process in the Plugin repository?)

Maybe the recently formed WordPress Foundation can support this activity?

Posted in outside, Wordpress | You are welcome to add your comment

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-04-18

n
  • physical realities are limited, spiritual realities are limited … actions are limited, intentions are limitless #
  • "The first intelligence out there in the cabin disliked him and still did. It was this second intelligence that had come in and made love… #
  • These cellular patterns have been lovers for millions of years and they aren't about to be put off by these recent little intellectual #
  • patterns that know almost nothing about what is going on. The cells want immortality … which is why they make such a commotion. #
  • They are so old. They began to distinguish [these bodies]…more than a billion years ago…of course they pay no attention 2 mind patterns. #
  • The mind sitting detached, aloof and discerning is suddenly rudely shoved aside by this other intelligence which is stronger than its own. #
  • Then strange things happen that the mind sees as vulgar and shunnable. #
  • The language of mental intelligence has nothing to say to the cells directly. They don't understand it. #
  • The language of thecells has nothing 2say 2the mind directly. It doesn't speak that language either. They are completely separate patterns. #
  • The language we've inherited confuses this… 'my' body and 'your' body … it isn't that way. #
  • That's like a FORTRAN [computer programming language] program saying, 'this is my computer'. #
  • This … 'Me' … who sits behind our eyeballs looking out … to pass judgment on the affairs of the world, is just completely ridiculous. #
  • This… 'Me' is a software reality not a hardware reality. This body on the left and this body on the right are runnign variations of the #
  • same program, the same 'Me' which doesn't belong to either of them… This program based on 'Me's' and 'We's' is the alien. #
  • 'We' has only been here for a few thousand years or so. But these bodies that 'We' has taken over were around for ten times that… #
  • and the cells – my God, the cells have been around for thousands of times that long. #
  • These… bodies that 'We' has invaded… every once in a while they overthrow the program and go about their ways leaving 'We' mystified… #
  • Mystified, and somewhat horrified too at the things bodies do without its permission. #
  • These cells make sweat and snot ant phlegm. They belch and bleed and fuck and far and piss and shit and vomit and squeeze out more bodies #
  • just like themselves all covered with blood and placental slime that grow and squeeze out more bodies, on and on. #
  • 'We',the software reality,find these hardware facts so distressing that it covers them with euphemisms &clothes &toilets &medical secrecy. #
  • The cells have gotten to their advanced state of evolution through all this fucking and farting and pissing and shitting. That's quality! #
  • Particulary the sexual functions. From the cell's point of view sex is pure Dynamic Quality, the highest Good of all. #
  • … Talk about ingratitude. These bodies would still be a bunch of dumb bacteria if it hadn't been for sexual quality. #
  • That's who lay here beside him tonight:a judge of hundreds of millions of years…& in the eyes of this judge he was nobody very important. #
  • … His own cells were sick of all this intellectualizing…They'd had way too much … and were starting to switch him off. #
  • Tomorrow they'd need him when they got hungry, and they would turm him on again to find some food, but for now they were rubbing him out." #
  • my default breakfast: red pepper, cucumber, olives, tehini http://bit.ly/4ioy6y and bread…today is a default breakfast day 🙂 tudulu #
  • Design is an opportunity for assigning (DESIGNating!) purpose http://bit.ly/aBoA9T #
  • our cat comes around the house to the same place on the balcony every evening to watch the sunset! amazing! #
  • thoughts from the past about spaces & places, male & female http://bit.ly/cpA0Mj #
  • "The metaphysics of substance makes it difficult to see the Giant.It makes it customary to think of a city like New York as a 'work of man', #
  • but what man invented it? What group of men invented it? Who sat around and thought up how it should all go together? #
  • If 'man' invented societies and cities, why are all societies and cities so repressive of 'man'? #
  • A metaphysics of substance makes us think that all evolution stops with the highest evolved substance, the physical body of man. #
  • It makes us think that cities and societies and though structures are all subordinate creations of this physical body of man. #
  • Bit it's as foolish to think of a city or a society as created by human bodies as it is to think of human bodies as a creation of the cells, #
  • or to hink of cells as created by protein and DNA molecules, or to think of DNA as created by carbon and other inorganic atoms. #
  • If you follow that fallacy long enough you come out with the conclusion that individual electrons contain the intelligence #
  • needed to build New York City all by themselves. Absurd. #
  • If it's possible to imagine two red blood cells sitting side by side asking, 'will there ever be a higher form of evolution than us?" and #
  • looking around and seeing nothing there, deciding there isn't, then you can imagine the ridiculousness of two people walking down a street #
  • of Manhattan asking if there will be any form of evoluion higher than 'man', meaning biological man. #
  • Biological man doesn't invent cities of societies any more than pigs and chickens invent the farmer that feeds them. #
  • The force of evolutionary creation isn't contained by substance. Substance is just 1 kind of static pattern left behind the creative force. #
  • This city is a higher pattern than either a substance or a biological pattern called man. #
  • Just as a farmer raises cows 4the sole purpose of devouring them,this pattern grows living human bodies 4the sole purpose of devouring them. #
  • That is what the Giant really does. It converts accumulated biological energy into forms that serve itself. #
  • When societies and cultures and cities are seen [this way] the phenomena of war & genocide & all the other forms of human exploitation #
  • become more intelligble. 'Mankind' has never been interested in getting itself killed. But the superorganism, the Giant, who is #
  • a pattern of values superimposed on top of biological human bodies, doesn't mind losing a few bodies to protect his greater interests. #
  • Once you understand something well enough, you don't need to run from it. #
  • From a Metaphysics of Quality point of view this devouring of human bodies is a moral activity because it's more moral for a social pattern #
  • to devour a biological pattern than for a biological pattern to devour a social pattern. A social pattern is a higher form of evolution. #
  • This city, in it's endless devouring of human bodies, was creating something better than any biological organism could achieve by itself. #
  • Sure: dirty, noisy, rude, dangerous, expensive. Always has been and probably always will be … #
  • if you're looking for stability and serenity, go to a cemetery, don't come here! This is the most Dynamic place on earth!" #
  • wait a minute … do you mean that any website that uses Flash (like my photography site: http://bit.ly/9Gnqbg) won't work on an iPad? #
  • It's ironic that although the philosophy of science leaves no room for any undefined Dynamic activity, it's sciences unique organization #
  • for the handling of the Dynamic that gives it is superiority. Science superseded old religious forms, not because what it says is more true #
  • in any absolute sense… but because what it says is more Dynamic. If scientists had simply said Copernicus was right and Ptolemy was wrong #
  • without any willingness to further investigate the subject, then science would have simply become another minor religious creed. #
  • Science always contains an eraser,a mechanism whereby new Dynamic insight could wipe out old static patterns w/out destroying science itself #
  • That's the whole thing: to obtain static and Dynamic Quality simultaneously. #
  • If you don't have the static patterns of scientific knowledge to build upon you're back with the cave man. #
  • But if you don't have the freedom to change those patterns you're blocked from any further growth. #
  • … political insitutions have improved throughout the centirues [due to] … a static-Dynamic combination: a king or constitution to #
  • preserve the static, and a parliament or jury that can act as a Dynamic eraser…a commentary on Robert's Rules of Order http://bit.ly/SYWky #
  • No minority has a right to block a majority from conducting the legal business of the organization. #
  • No majority has a right to prevent a minority from peacefully attempting to become a majority. #
  • It seems as though any static mechanism that is open 2 Dynamic Quality must also be open to degeneracy..falling back 2lower forms of quality #
  • … how do you tell the saviors from the degenerates? Particularly when they look alike, talk alike and break all the rules alike? #
  • When something new and Dynamic wants to come into the world it often looks lke hell, but it can get born in New York. It can happen. #
  • This is one of the few places in the world where people don't ask whether something's been approved somewhere else. #
  • What you see u c in New York depends on your static patterns. What makes the city Dynamic is the way it always busts up … those patterns." #
  • "Sex&celebrity..there's something obscene about the whole celebrity feeling.It's that same feeling you get from sex magazines on newsstands. #
  • …One part of you wants to get rid of the magazines; one part wants to take a look at them. #
  • There's a conflict of two patterns of quality, social patterns and biological patterns. #
  • In celebrity it's the same – except that the conflict is between social and intellectual patterns! #
  • Celebrity is to social patterns as sex is to biological patterns…It looks and feels like pure Dynamic Quality for a while, but it isn't. #
  • …Celebrity is the Dynamic Quality that primitive social patterns once used to organize themselves… #
  • … an organizing force of the whole social level of evolution. Without this … advanced complex human societies might be impossible. #
  • … When you look back into the very first writing in the history of the western world… Babylon… they're about celebrity: I, Hammurabi #
  • am the big wheel here. I have this many horses… concubines… slaves…oxen.. I am one of the greatest … kings there ever was… #
  • The Pyramids were celebrity devices. All the statues…palaces…robes… jewels of social authority: those are just celebrity devices. #
  • The feathers of the Indian headdress. Children being told they would be struck blind if they ever accidentally looked at the emperor. #
  • All the Sirs & Lords & Reverends & Doctors of European address…badges & trophies…promotions up the business ladder… #
  • election to 'high office'… feuding and battling for prestire among academics and scientists… Celebrity. #
  • Even a policeman's uniform is a kind of celebrity… without celebrity nobody would take orders from anybody and there would be no way #
  • you could get the society to work… High school was really the place for celebrity… jocks out playing football… pom pom girls. #
  • … You can measure the quality of a university by comparing the relative strengths of the celebrity patterns and the intellectual patterns. #
  • U never got rid of the celebrities,even at the best universities,but there the intellectuals could ignore them &be in a class by themselves. #
  • … the Metaphysics of Quality says that movement upward from the social mirros of celebrity is a moral movement from a lower form of #
  • evolution to a higher one. People should go that way if they can." #
  • getting away from it all http://nyti.ms/c8q00I #
  • Eric Shiffman talks about studying with Desikachar "wait for the student to ask": http://bit.ly/cE6YEj #
  • "Intellect has its own patterns and goals that are as independent of society as society is independent of biology. #
  • Biology beat death billions of years ago. Society beat biology thousands of years ago. But intellect and society are still fighting it out, #
  • and that is they key to understanding of both the Victorians and the 20th century. What distinguishes the pattern of values called Victorian #
  • from the post-World War 1 period that followed it is,according to the Metaphysics of Quality, a cataclysmic shift in levels of static value; #
  • an earthquake in values… of such enormous consequence that we … haven't yet figured out what has happened to us. #
  • … The 20th century collapse of morals is a consequence of it. Further consequences are on their way… #
  • Victorians were the last people to believe that patterns of intellect are subordinate to patterns of society. What held the Victorian #
  • pattern together was a social code. They called it morals, butb really it was just a social code. #
  • As a code it was just like their ornamental cast-iron furniture: expensive looking, cheaply made, brittle, cold,and uncomfortable. #
  • The new culture that has emerged is the first in history to believe that patterns of society must be subordinate to patterns of intellect. #
  • … The reason the Victorians sound so superficial and hypocritical to us today is because of this gulf in values… #
  • What we today call Victorian hypocrisy … was a virtuous effort to keep one's thoughts within the limits of social propriety… #
  • The test of anything in the Victorian mindwa,'Does society approve?"..society was God…[they] feared scandal more than they feared disease. #
  • .. It explains why Victorians so despised the frontier part of the American personality and went to ridiculous extremes to conceal it. #
  • …..It explains why the Victorians were so vehement in their loathing of Indians… 'The only good Indian is a dead Indian'… #
  • The idea of extermination ofall Indians was not commonbefore the 19th century. Victorians wanted to destroy 'inferior' [evil] societies… #
  • Colonialism, which before that timewas an economic opportunity, became with Victorians a moral course, a 'white man's burden'… #
  • But…once intellect has been let out of the bottle of social restraint,it is almost impossible to put it back in..and it is immoral to try. #
  • A society that tries to restrain the truth for it's own purpose is a lower form of evolution than a truth that restrains society for it's #
  • own purpose. #
  • Victorians repressed the truth whenever it seemed socially unacceptable, just as they repressed thoughts about the powdery horse manure dust #
  • that floated about them as they drove their carriages … They knew it was there… but didn't consider it social proper to talk about it. #
  • Because it was evil to speak the truth openly, their appartus for social self-correction became atrophied and paralyzed. #
  • … Ultimately their minds became the same way… all avenues to any quality other than social quality were closed. #
  • And so this social base… helplessly drifted toward its own stupid self destruction… #
  • toward the senseless murder of millions of its own children on the battlefields of World War 1." #
  • @raymondpirouz then that obliterates any excuses for lack of empathy amongst humans 🙂 except of course for those missing the cells 🙂 in reply to raymondpirouz #
  • @raymondpirouz empathy enhancement implants (the rich can get stuff harvested from buddhists), empathy increasing viagra…there is hope 🙂 in reply to raymondpirouz #
  • beautiful Shakuhachi playing: http://bit.ly/aMdGcu #

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Wait for the Student to Ask

n

Erich Schiffmann talking about his experience with Desikachar:

Posted in Yoga | You are welcome to add your comment

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-04-11

n
  • glimpses catch up with the present moment: http://bit.ly/cquU3y #
  • “No one has the right to live without being shocked” http://bit.ly/c5JRDx #
  • the internet is like a gold mine, you have to sift through loads of dirt to find small shiny specks #
  • @ronenk מצאתי את @fireland וחשבתי עלייך… #
  • picking up reading where I left off a few weeks ago … #
  • ""Determinism is the philosophic doctrine that man,like all other objects in the universe,follows fixed scientific laws…without exception. #
  • Free Will is the scientific doctrine that man makes choices independent of the atoms of his body. #
  • This battle ["free will versus determinism"] has been a very long and very loud one because abdandonment of either position has #
  • devastating logical consequences. In the Metaphysics of Quality this dilemma doesn't come up.To the extent that one's behavior is controlled #
  • by static patterns of quality it is without choice. But to the extent that one follows Dynamic Quality … one's behavior is free. #
  • ..The Metaphysics of Qualiity says that if moral judegments are essentially assertions of value and if value is the fundamental ground-stuff #
  • of the world, then moral judgements are the fundamental ground-stuff of the world. The "Laws of Nature" are moral laws. #
  • … it sounds peculiar at 1st … to say thath hydrogen and oxygen form water because it is moral to do so. But it is no less peculiar..than #
  • to say chemistry professors smoke pipes and go to movies because irresistible cause-and-effect forces of the universe force them do to it. #
  • In the past the logic has been that if chemostry professors are composes exclusively of atoms and if atoms follow only the law of #
  • cause & effect,then chemistry professors must follow the laws of cause and effect too.But this logic can be applied in a reverse direction. #
  • ..If chemistry professors excercise choice, and chemistry professors are composed exclusively of atoms, then it follows that atoms must #
  • excercise choice too. The difference between these two point of views is philosophic not scientific. The question of whether an electron #
  • does a certain thing because it has to or because it wants to is completely irrelevant to the data of what the electron does. #
  • When inorganic patterns of reality create life the Metaphysics of Quality postulates that they've done so because it's 'better'. #
  • – this 'betterness' … response to Dynamic Quality – is an elementary unit of ethics upon which all right and wrong can be based." #
  • had a short and welcome visit on the Yoga mat this morning… small steps #
  • today I can see the tiredness that consumed me yesterday #
  • Evernote is now available for iPad, still nothing for Linux!!! go KeepNote http://bit.ly/9f5XWn #
  • "What the evolutionary structure of the Metaphysics of QUality is that there is not just one moral system. There are many. #
  • … 'laws of nature' by which inorganic patterns triumph over chaos; #
  • … 'law of the jungle' where biology triumphs over the inorganic forces of starvation and death; #
  • there's a morality where social patterns triumph over biology, 'the law'; #
  • and there is intellectual morality, which is still struggling in its attempts to cotrol society. #
  • Each of these sets of moral codes is no more related to the other than novels are to flip-flops. #
  • What is today conventionally called 'morality' covers only … the social-biological code. In a subject-object metaphysics this single #
  • social-biological code is considered to be a minor 'subjective' physically nonexistent part of the universe. #
  • But in the Metaphysics of Quality all these sets of moral, plus another Dynamic Morality, are not only real, they are the whole thing. #
  • 'It's more moral for a doctor to kill a germ than to allow the germ to kill his patient'… the patient has moral precedence because he's at #
  • …This is not just an arbitrary social convention… It's true for all people and at all times…a moral pattern of reality as real as H2O. #
  • We're at last dealing with morals on the basis of reason… analyze moral arguments with greater precision than before. #
  • ..vegetarianism..it's scientifically immoral for everyone because animals are at a higher level of evolution, that is, more Dynamic, than #
  • are grains and fruits and vegetables… this moral principle only holds where there is an abundance of grains and fruit and vegetables. #
  • It would be immoral 4 Hindus not to eat their cows in a time of famine,since they would be killing human beings infavor of a lower organism. #
  • Is it scientically moral for a society to kill a human being? #
  • An evolutionary morality would at first seem to say yes, a society has a right to murder people to prevent its own destruction. #
  • When the United States drafted troops for the Civil War everyone knew that innocent people would be murdered… an evolutionary morality #
  • argues that the North was right in pursuing that war because a nation is a higher form of evolution than a human body, #
  • and the principle of human equality is an even higher form than a nation. #
  • When a society is not itself threatened, as in the execution of individual criminals, the issue becomes more complex… #
  • an evolutionary morality would argue that there is no moral justification for killing him. He is not even a defective unit of society. #
  • Whenever you kill a human being you are killing a source of thought… ideas take moral precedence over a society. They are at a higher #
  • level of evolution than social patterns of value. Just as it is more moral for a doctor to kill a germ than a patient, so #
  • it is more moral for an idea to kill a society than it is for a society to kill an idea. #
  • … The strongest moral argument against capital punishment is that it weakens a society's Dynamic capability… for change and evolution. #
  • It's not the 'nice' guys who bring abour real social change… [they] look nice because they're conforming. #
  • It's the 'bad' guys, who only look nice 100 years later, that are the real Dynamic force in social evolution. #
  • … static pattens that hold one level of organization together are often the same patterns that another level of organization must fight #
  • to maintain it's own existence. Morality is not a simple set of rules… it's a very complex struggle of conflicting patterns of values. #
  • 'Vice' … is a conflict between biological quality and social quality… sex & booze & drugs & tobacco have a high biological quality… #
  • they feel good, but are harmful for social reasons. #
  • They take all your money. They break up your family. They threaten the stability of the community. #
  • … this whole century's been about … struggle between intellectual and social patterns. That's the theme sonf of the 20th century. #
  • Is society going to dominate intellect or is intellect going to dominate soceity? #
  • …Intellect is not an extension of society any more than society is an extension of biology. #
  • Intellect is going it's own way, and in doing so is at war with society, seeking to subjugate society, to put society under lock and key. #
  • An evolutionary morality says it is moral for intellect to do so, but it also contains a warning: #
  • … an intellectual pattern that weakens and destroys the health of it's social base also endanger it's own stability. #
  • there is creature outside beeping like a UPS in a power out, and a notification on the computer that sounds like a bird #
  • speak your mind and mind your speak #
  • my father taught me commitment, my mother compromise, my older sister forgiveness and my younger sister compassion #
  • @raymondpirouz this is what came out after 2 viewings, 5 pages of notes and many days of pondering: http://bit.ly/aBoA9T thank you 🙂 in reply to raymondpirouz #

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[Design]ating Purpose

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This post is was inspired by a video and post about Design & Business published by Raymond Pirouz.

Designating Purpose

If you were a God, all seeing, all knowing, able to span endless space, travel through time… really do it all. What would your pass-time be? What could possibly keep you amused? How about creating another god and seeing what it does? Nah… that wouldn’t be too interesting… why would it be any different then you? OK then, how about creating another god and give it something to do – one specific things it needs to accomplish – a purpose? Sure, eventually it would come around and realize it’s being played (after all it is a god!) – but until it realizes that, there’d be a good show to be had? Now that’s entertainment.

Design is an act of creation, an activity that puts people who pursue it on a playing field with gods. Design is ultimately about assigning purpose … and then seeing what happens. “Good” purposes last longer and reach further. Lesser purposes lead into dead-ends… where you simply start over with hopefully a new and better purpose.

Everything we do is potentially an act of design. That potential manifests when a secret ingredient is added : Intent – the act of assigning purpose – performing an act with a conscious choice in heart and mind. Thankfully not eveyrthing we do is (or needs to be) an act of design (imagine chewing like that!?). Somethings come with a clear & demanding intent assigned to them  – hugging a loved one, feeding a baby – those are easy. Many things we do may at first seeem ambiguous intent-wise  –  these are opportunities to make a choice, and in making a choice making a difference.

Designers are people with (1) a nose for finding opportunities to make choices; (2) a passionate drive to make choices; (3) skills required to put their choices to action. Everyone has these tendencies and skills to some degree in some contexts. Designers have them more then others.

Not Knowing

Though much of design work is about observation & research into the current reality… inevitably it is about creating something that does not exist. Everything that is known to a designer serves as a jumping board into what is as yet unknown. Any methodology or process may be useful in preparing for the jump… but in the end you have to jump. You jump into a world where logic and reasoning are replaced by… unknowns.. you are no longer in control… you don’t find things … you find that things have found you. A designer can accommodate not knowing, I would even suggest that a designer is a master at getting there and enjoys being there. It is a peak experience of being in “the zone”.

Organizational systems, especially corporate and business, exist in a playground with set rules – and like most games, people play to win. To play in these playgrounds you have to know the rules. But here’s where it gets interesting – the surest way to win is not to play by the rules, but to kind of cheat – to test their limits and find some loophole which sets you free from them. Design is a strategy for cheating – it’s a kind of trick for escaping from what is known into what is unknown and coming back a little bit wiser.

Design & Business

I don’t necessarily agree with the suggestion that “Design and business have traditionally made uneasy bedfellows, with practitioners of each eyeing each other suspiciously”. I think that a hundred+ years ago , when some metal-worker was forging a plough for his farmer neighbour, that design and business went hand in hand – it was kind of obvious that if a metal-worker wanted to have food on the table, he needed his farmer friends to be able to do their work effectively – so he designed and crafted good, enduring, smooth working ploughs.

I do agree that design and business nowadays make uneasy bedfellows. Design (assigning purpose) is rooted in a value system you can’t deny and cheat – a system that can only strive for better and better. Many (most?) businesses seem to have evolved to a point where “good enough” is better. So naturally when design meets these business there is friction. In such cases it is unclear to businesses what design is (or even if it’s really necessary) and designers are not clear about what they can do (beyond moving the mouse around in Photoshop). These are the businesses that can hire ludicrously expensive design firms and sit them down with a CEO that asks if they can avoid using yellow – because he really doesn’t like yellow!

There are of course meetings of design and business that bloom beautifully – leading to great designs and great business – so much so that they seem one and the same.

One of my background notes for this posts says that “design is killing business”. I believe that in some way, design, the fundamental kind Raymond Pirouz talks about, is like a force of nature sifting and rummaging through the business world. It is attracted like a magnet to those instances of business that can accommodate what is has to offer and carryies them into the future  with literally a renewed sense of purpose. In it’s wake are businesses who are incapable of change – and will eventually be phased out of existence. Passionate designers are demanding agents for change at the corporate table – their presence there is a remarkable achievement regardless of what actually takes place during their stay.

Design Thinking

… is a futile attack on the nature of design. It signifies a friction between value systems. Design & designers should not make a mistake of assigning this phrase any unwarranted importance or consequence. Thinking is, thankfully, a common enough quality in most disciplines of our modern lives. Design is unique because it has the potential and mandate to go beyond thinking. Design & designers should be grateful and humbled in light of the magical force that shines from them and through them to others – a spreading inspiration.

I, for one, am thankful for joyful places where thought and words cannot go.

Design and business have traditionally made uneasy bedfellows, with practitioners of each eyeing each other suspiciously.
Posted in AltEco, Business, Expanding, inside, outside | You are welcome to read 2 comments and to add yours

No One Has the Right to Live Without Being Shocked

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source

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Glimpses 09 – April 2010

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If you speak hebrew I invite you to listen to this 18 minute interview with Shahar. If you don’t, I invite you to listen to it anyway and just let the vibrations move through you. This interview took place shortly after our previous performance.

Click to play the interview with Shahar

We decided to try something new in the performance. We avoided the somewhat obvious use of live-stills. We decided that I would spend the first part of the performance collecting images and then taking the time to edit the images and constructing them into a SweetClarity-like presentation – all created live. A first attempt. As I was shooting I felt distant from the space. As I was editing I felt torn from the space, I wanted to watch it instead of the screen. I wasn’t happy with the images on the screen. I felt pressure. I surrendered to it and threw out all the images I instinctively did not want to show. I was left with a short collection – and that was what went back into the performance space. As I write these first words in this post I still have not spent time with the images (which I intend to do before it is published). It was an experiment that I do not wish to repeat again (at least not in a performance space).

The performance was a first of three visits we made to the center area of Israel from the distant north where we live. This is way more then the usual visit once in two or three months. I expected it to be a taxing month and it was. The combination of being away from home, traveling, spending time at my parents home and in a city landscape, irregular food, inconsistent (almost lack) of practice … all left me quiet and edgy. I feel a friction between myself and my own skin, from the inside… like an itch that can’t be scratched. I spend my days trying to let time pass in peace… letting my energy reconsolidate itself and looking forward to looking forward to getting on the practice mat again.

The backdrop for all this is a life defined mostly by unknowns. The unknows feel more menacing when my skin is itching from the inside. The unknowns are more angering when the itching is stronger. It is also spring, a time of change, windy. My breath is constricted, I barely play the Shakuhachi.

In this setting comes another invitation from Shahar to partake in the next performance. I don’t know. It is what I want most to do and what I fear most of doing. It will fill me with a sense of purpose and expectation from the second I say yes through to the end of the performance itself. But the present is weighing down on me, immobilizing me. I don’t feel well … I am not scared. I know this will pass, I know I will find my way through it, I know my practice will find me once again, I know… All that does not change the present moment – a heavy, agitated, sticky, annoying, itchy, sad moment. My practices have all trained me to be in the present – and so I am. Not waiting for it to pass or fade or change. In it, it in me.

I don’t know what a future time holds in store for me – neither in life nor on stage. I don’t know. This present moment is just about all I can take – it consumes me. The other day, Andreea spoke to me about moving to Romania, later that day my energy sank and eventually crashed leaving me with a headache for the remainder of the day. The present has me and there is very little space for anything else.

I wrote most of this post yesterday. Today I intended to visit the images. I just turned on the computer with the image processing tools on it, and now I know without a doubt I do not yet want to bring the images from the previous performance into my consciousness. They carry with them a mass from the past and a hint of a future. This post will remain written and spoken and unseen.

Posted in Glimpses, Images, Photography | You are welcome to read 1 comment and to add yours

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-04-04

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  • yuck #
  • the rush for the iPad demonstrates that the hypocrisy of American consumerism is as much in it's consumers as it is in it's corporations #

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-03-28

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  • מישהו מנגן או מכיר מישהו שמנגן באקורדיון? אני מחפש עצה. ברכישת אקורדיון משומש. תודה מראש 🙂 #
  • “Truth is indestructible. It seems history shows (and it’s the same way today) that the innovator is more often than not met with some #
  • degree of condemnation; usually according to the degree of departure from the prevailing modes of expression or what have you. #
  • Change is always hard to accept…. Quite often they are the rejects, outcasts, sub-citizens, etc. of the very societies to which they bring #
  • so mush sustenance…Whatever the case, whether accepted or rejected, rich or poor, they are forever guided by that great and eternal constant #
  • – the creative urge. Let us cherish it and give all praise to God.” John Coltrane #
  • get Ubuntu compatible, competitive hardware from System76 – checkout the added value: http://bit.ly/940yLs #
  • is WordPress evolving into an operating system – a potential home for personal online presence? http://bit.ly/aXeC5D #
  • wonderful WordPress plugin for translations, a gr8 opportunity for non-develpers to contribute to the community: http://bit.ly/c6ElIk #
  • @photomatt it would be great to have Gravatar as an OpenID provider too… #
  • if you take away rewards for success & punishment for failure… you are left with intention #
  • @raymondpirouz WordPress & open source are not exactly "about people" – rather about a a small&closed circle of people http://bit.ly/3tHBEq in reply to raymondpirouz #
  • "Rock-bottom became a solid foundation" http://on.ted.com/8DdN an awesome talk by the author Harry Potter books via @JudithYoga #
  • @raymondpirouz why do u believe that open-source is primarily JUST another business model? http://bit.ly/aB75g6 http://bit.ly/9RPZMT in reply to raymondpirouz #
  • @raymondpirouz I believe murkiness in "open source" is rooted in naivete, in business it is rooted in misperception & deception in reply to raymondpirouz #
  • @raymondpirouz open-source has a leg-up on business – it needs to mature and grow into design awareness while in reply to raymondpirouz #
  • @raymondpirouz business has a-lot of growing-out (of old-die-hard habits) to do before it can approach and appreciate design in reply to raymondpirouz #
  • @raymondpirouz I feel that if design were 2find a way into open-source software, they could do wonderful things 2gether http://bit.ly/3nivEJ #
  • @janeforshort the WordPress UI group is (4now) mostly about usability tinkering, design is (can be) so much more! cc: @raymondpirouz in reply to janeforshort #
  • 4th article on Doshas – how to manipulate a fire http://bit.ly/9qsRa2 #yoga #ayurveda #

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