Nondualism

Not one or the other. Monism, maybe. Nihilism, probably. Pantheism, in a way. Dualism, I guess. But not really. As soon as you think of it in dual term, as soon as you think of it at all, it becomes something else. The something instead of the nothing it was. Something new, instead of nothing, which was before. But that’s in cosmic terms, attempting to approach the objectivity with our subject. Those ontological secondary qualities. The perceiver, life, wishes to known so it may more accurately perceive. There is only perceiving, yet this loses the intended meaning, and thus; it is lost. As soon has you have found it. Therefor, not that. Not that, nor that which is not. Neither. Not dualism. Not those things. None of those things.

Yet the mystic teaches nothing except acceptance. And even that is not truly taught but perceived in your mind. Though you perceive with your eyes. You could look at this as pairs. One or the other. It’s easy. Perhaps it’s easier than trying to perceive only perception. None dually accepting which is. Seemingly irrational, because there’s no more true or false. There is only. Not even that. Nonsensical zen koans enter the mind and the mind enters them. No, not really. Not both. Again. To have thought the thought is to have lost that which you attempt to find. No not again! Another losing. A slight variation. Another nothing. A nothing, a something and lots of in between. So many of them, they longer have the significance the one and the two had. The zero and the one. However you want to think of it. That easy, binary way of viewing things. Like an automaton, a computing mechanism. Negating the complex organism that attempts to recreate. Beyond the infinite calculating. To a beginning and an end an to realise that it is all one. A seeming nothingness. But the subtleties are in nature just as much as in the mind. Acceptance of the unchanging changing enables recreating of the own ego. The viewpoint from which to view the universe. To surpass the neural operating system using ancient cultural tricks. The use it to our advantage. The advantage of all sentient beings. All conscious beings. Caught in the hasty world between simple being and complex doubt. To recognize the almost both-ness and to know it is neither nor both, is to accept transcendent reality.

It can be framed from the ego, but this has now become a fluid concept. Susceptible to change. Voluntary change. Enabling compassion and insight.
I have broken as many hearts as have broken mine.
I have killed as many as I have conceived.
I have disappointed as have disappointed me.
I have gotten to know as many people as have gotten to know me.
I have suffered as I have caused suffering.
I have enjoyed as I have caused joy.
I have caused as I am caused.
I am that which I am.
There is existence.
Balance, equal. Point one for karma. Everything is zero.

Must sacrifice ego, before it is far too late.

Happiness

Here’s what we know about (one, but arguably, the most important form of) happiness: It’s found when you do something with a certain ‘flow’.
What that means is, you don’t know you’re happy. Nor are you very aware of time passing by. If anything, it’s over before you know it. You didn’t know what it was.
A happy life would therefor be over before you know it.
It would be a (largely) unexamined life. Aristotle said this is not the life worth living. Then again, he also thought you’d be happy if you were virtuous. So far, I don’t think people who do supererogatory things are very happy. If they are, it’s because they don’t know. But that’s all speculation on ethics, aristotle and things we can’t know. What we do know, is that when life is truly depressing (if indeed, I have chosen the opposite of happiness correctly), time passes slowly and you’re well aware of your suffering.
If you’re reading this and you think: “Hey, this doesn’t apply to me. I feel fine!”, you’ve just analyzed yourself and have lost your flow. Sorry.

Second part of fiction

We always believe the masses were ignorant and the rulers unjust. But we now know better. There are no more rulers, yet everybody remains equally devoid of any sense of justice. Including the masses, whom were now everywhere and nowhere, had known for some time now what the problems were. To claim that they should have made radical changes, is to deny their humanity and the social and biological conditions we were faced with. But that’s all over. The radical change has occurred. A revolution, if that means a saltational evolution in the reverse direction. Even though it’s very clear that there was no direction. No progress, no obvious horizon.
It wasn’t always like this. But there’s no going back. We’ve gone back. In so many ways it has become unlikely… – nay – impossible, to revert to that ancient state of degradation. We have entered a new phase. Unwilling, yet fully conscious.

“Please, no more. This is torture”. The man nearest to me was visibly fatigued. After the exorbitant act of asking somebody to do something else -in this case me- than what they were doing, others nodded in agreement; only tempered by their shyness and sense of guilt to tell a dying human what to do. But we were all dying and I felt no sense of entitlement to say out loud what all already knew. They had gathered here precisely to make the last hours of their lives count, not the analyze themselves into a depression. When death is so imminent, there’s no longer any time for sadness.

We marched on. Leaving this group behind. Or so we thought. I talked aloud endlessly and my companions said very little of this habit. Ignoring my ramblings and being visibly enerved by some rants, they’d tell me to “be quiet for a moment”, but almost always because silence was needed to proceed. Never because the sounds I was making made a semantic impact. The meaning was already known to everybody. I was just contemplating out loud.

“Haboob!”, several exclaimed simultaneously. We saw the sandstorm in the horizon, rolling over the distant hill. It wasn’t going straight for us, but we were heading straight for it. There was no real cover to speak of and a sense of duty informed our actions to head back and help the others if they were still alive. They weren’t. By the time we had reached them, the sandstorm had passed outside our radius and they were all dead for all intents and purposes. That that there were many purposes left to help you motivate your intentions. We gathered all supplies we could find. But our group was over twice their size and they only planned on waiting to die for a couple of days. Needless to say there weren’t a lot of supplies to be found.

The cadavers made my companions uneasy and they wished to return to the city. There were plenty of people their in comparison, most of whom were alive. Unable to choose novelty over nostalgia, I remained silent and followed the group back to what seemed familiar, but had become as alien as the rest of the environment. To say I wanted to experience the rest of the world, to meet new people, would have been a fallacious statement. I kept my companions for the same reasons they headed back to the city dwellers. That is to say, I followed them and they me. To keep has lost its significance. It’s all so ephemeral. So finite. So very, very short. We did not tolerate each other out of some sense of justice. It was compassion and a lack of wanting to be just. For it was to cruel and vengeful. It was too late. The human race has reached to finish line. There’s no point in trying to be first, last, fastest or anything like that. Perhaps kindest. People remained kind and those who were kind were treated kindly. But how cynical it is to be kind to a member of a dying species. If we didn’t know better, we’d console one another with lies. Knowing the end is near and there’s no reason to be upset. The people who became upset were far too homo- and suicidal to have lasted this long anyway. We were free to do what we want, but nobody knew what they should want. All hope is gone now and people just want to be alive until they die. To hope for more is hubris.

This work is intended as fiction and is to bear no resemblance to reality.

There was nothing left. Nothing of value. After the crash.

I told them I used to live there and they asked me how. I didn’t know. I lied. I said the government provided for me. It provided for everybody. That what it was there for. Before. Before the crash.

They taxed the rich and that was enough, I explained. Enough for me to live here that is. The middle of the city. People close enough to provide for each other. All within walking distance. Able to provide the services needed to have some honor. Honor had become important again. And was distributed via the computing power the remaining technology had provided. The programs only worked with an equal playing field and we got it. Our history erased, our memories lost, our culture destroyed.

It had become a meritocracy. Not a democratic society, not a sudden apocalypse, no more violence, none of it. Life was too short and we’re all that’s left. “Is that why you take care of us?”, they asked. I shook my head, shoulders and body. It was a strange response to combine it all. I said nothing. I should have said, “Who says you’re not taking care of me?”. But I didn’t. And it never happened. A lost chance. One among many.

Though, perhaps, not that many.

I always thought the end of times, if it were to happen, would be an egalitarian society. Something we’d accomplished. We’d distributed everything fairly. But fair had become a different things. Sure, after the riots (and they were smal in scale compared to the significance of the event) there was no more violence. None. That was surely a good thing. It wasn’t demanded. Not be force. Perhaps by fear. Or worse, apathy. People had stopped caring enough to be willing to kill. Life had become finite and too precious. I say precious because it had a price. It was easily calculable now. There are X people. We don’t know how many there were. We know there will be no more people. We know what we have. There’s no more virtual economy. There’s no more real economy.

First there were news reports about bombs and murders and disasters. It all seemed normal. Nothing suspicious about that. But it was the last news we had before it all really went bad. After the internet pretty much broke down, electricity soon followed. There was screw ups in the food supply and soon everybody who wasn’t growing their own plants was dead. It all happened so fast. The disasters piled up and nature wasn’t pretty after our fragile last fragment of ecomanagement crumbled. The floods. I’ll never forget the floods. The floated around. I picked them up. We’ve been together since. It was touch and go there for a while. Where did that phrase originate from? I never bothered to learn. Good thing perhaps. None of the planes can fly anymore. None that depend on fuel anyway. Or can’t handle a decent storm now and then. The humidity was inhuman. It was always humid now. I looked at the building and realized that if I’d live there now, it would never be as it once was. Besides, the person who lived there now deserved it. I deserve a lot, but this was a little too lucky to be honest. We walked away. Too many building have collapsed in the city. With the quakes and the rats, we may as well leave and had for the nearest town. It would be difficult, no doubt.

The remaining people had huddled together and every nucleus of Peoples that remained had gathered all material wealth. Entire trucks of non-contaminated earth was brought in with the remaining bio-fuel. We couldn’t get to the fossil anymore. It was all gone, outside of reach. Since then, we’ve not had a chance to exploit our surroundings. We’ve failed as a race. Well, as the human race. The little race that could. A rat race. They’re the only ones that could have survived us. But they didn’t. Our lab rats were released and a success. Artificial animals, though not born alive, were among us for a long time. But to survive and adapt in this climate, they soon become movable molds. Clinging to whatever wasn’t blown away by the winds. It wasn’t the smell that bothered me. It was the air. It became hard to breath when they were around. Whenever humans were around too, but never that bad. And it was always worth it. If things still have value. But they don’t. They can’t. We moved on. A village with some people remaining had decided that all were equally worthy. They had no outside contact, so they were entitled to do so. Provided they didn’t need providing. But that meant death. Perhaps they were right. A quick death. They couldn’t have lived over a month after we passed through. It was impossible to survive without help. We asked how long they thought they’d last. A couple of days, a week tops they responded. They were all so calm about it. Everybody was, I suppose. There’s nothing to panic about anymore. It ends with us.

Objective

Christopher Hitchens on The Sceptic’s Guide to the Universe said the following:
The affectation of objectivity:
“People use the word objective. As if it meant even-handed, or fair-minded, or impartial, or bipartisan. None of these words mean objective at all.
Objective means, that, in a confrontation with the evidence, you would be willing to change your own mind. And you continue to subject yourself to that.”
Wikipedia says (and this is slightly different, because Hitchens wasn’t talking about philosophy but about media bias being ubiquitous):
“Objectivism” is a term that describes a branch of philosophy that originated in the early nineteenth century. Gottlob Frege was the first to apply it, when he expounded an epistemological and metaphysical theory contrary to that of Immanuel Kant.
Oddly enough, for Kant, objective morality is not that unrealistic a goal (pardon the double pun). Wikipedia goes on:
There are many versions of ethical objectivism, including various religious views of morality, Platonistic intuitionism, Kantianism, utilitarianism, and certain forms of ethical egoism and contractualism.

Psychoanalysis and therapeutic effects.

Departing from Freudian analysis, I shall mainly take a more bioneural approach to the brain. Not disregarding concepts of the mind, as stablished by C.G. Jung and partners; this will be my main focus.

Sigmeund Freud has to be placed in historical context. In a time when fictional characters such as Sherlock Holmes were hailing the use of cocaine, it did not take long for Freud to look at it as a “wonderous medicine”. He, of course, explains his increased libido as a central enforced personal trait. In patients, he sees it makes them “more normal” and administers it if they feel depressed. After some research is done on this chemically refined use of coca leaves, he is devasted by the scientific consensus: It’s highly addictive and worse than a cup of coffee (which were the effects when chewed as done by native americans for millenia). He goes on to work with C. G. Jung, who places emphasis on the collective consciousness. We have evidence from 5000B.C. that mushrooms were used in Central and South America were reverence. The molecular biology of
and deserves attention at this point.

These subjects are controversial because they were outlawed (but recreational users and medicinal research) during times of racism. A class of people was seen as not being able to control themselves. ‘Crazed negro’ with a ‘bullet to the heart…in self-defense’ would not stop a cocaine pumped agent of that class. This would leave a scar on our social consciousness and psychological freedom restricted to an irrational degree. After alcohol and opium, cocaine was pronounced as the third scourge of mankind. Pemberton treated his morphine addiction with a cocaine drink to provide an alternative to an alcoholic beverage (outlawed during the latest dry era). However in 1970 through the controlled substances act, research on psychedelics and cannabis (still described as marihuana to link it with mexicans rather than the industrial crop hemp) is prohibited. However, psychedelics are by definition:
From Greek psykhe- “mind” (see psyche) + deloun “make visible, reveal,” from delos “visible, clear.” Psychedelia is from 1967. Earliest in 1956, of drugs, suggested by H. Osmond in a letter to Aldous Huxley and used by Osmond in a scientific paper published the next year.
Fitting into a larger criminal market for over 300 billion dollars and over 200 billion euros a year, it remains outcast to the darkest corners of society.
Unlike coffee, alcohol in most countries and tabacco; these products are doomed to make profits near the size of oil revenus of users and addicts, none of whom receive any honest help from their government of social milieu. Most is based on myth and tradition, being biased one way or the other, without relevant data or educational information explaining levels of dependency, mortality rate and so forth.
This is part of the grander setting in which the Self must seated. The set, the internal framework of those who would use a substance to alter their state of mind and thereby enhance the effects of psychoanalysis and/or therapy. The id, ego and superego would in a freudian framework be connected to the set. The ego would be unable to reconcile with the superego on the basis that reality is slanted and only Id could possibly arise from such an irrational disaster.
In other words, the experience becomes tainted. Tryptamines are associated with trips, which are in turn associated with the possibility of a bad trip. In the free associations game that goes on during synaptic free firing neurons, such a view of reality is skewed and causes baseless conceptions of the world to enter what is essentially, a very delicate moment. In other, more ancient, cultures, traditions and rituals would do the same by declaring these as sacred. To view perceptions as real, say gods or aliens; would be to miss the point. Psychotherapy and sjaminism deserve no greater place on the cast system of society than mechanics and mathmeticians.
A lot of energy must first be invested in fixing such a society, which must divide and structure so competitivly.
No one occupation, status, class or use of leisure time should define a person in its entirety. I say it, because it’s a conceptual structure. This abstract person extends to all categorical aspects of life (social, political, economical, territorial, structural). The biological perspective has a lot of evolutionary twists and turns, so for now I’ll leave this page as it is. All of this should be part of the educational system. We ought to learn the basics of food. Nutrition and toxins for the body and mind.

Journal of a law abiding citizen

In Confoederatio Helvetica, a utupic future (and not so distant past), might look like this.
Morning, get up. Wash with water.
Need soap and shampoo from pant H. It grows on the mountainside and requires no maintenance.
Just water. Which flows because of global warming from our precious glacier.
I like the smell, so I made deodorant (also made from H) also smell like it. I´m not a lavander person.

Time to eat something. Ate last of my personally slaughtered chicken yesterday. Time for something less meaty today. Let´s see. Tomorrow I might eat soy, but for now, something more digestable. I´ll just take some seeds from plant H from the near brook. It´s got energy (567 calories/100g), Protein (30.6/100g), Carbohydrate (10.9) Dietary fiber (6), Fat (47.2), Saturated fat (5.2), Oleic (18:1 Omega-9, 5.8), Polyunsaturated fat (36.2), Linoleic (18:2 Omega-6 27.6), Linolenic (18:3 Omega-3 8.7), Linolenic (18:3 Omega-6 0.8). And zero cholesterol. About 5grams will be water from the near brook, but I’m cool with that.
It’s got Vitamin A, Thiamine (Vit B1) , Riboflavin (Vit B2), Vitamin C, Vitamin E, Calcium and Iron. So that’ll be enough for breakfast. Save some of the seed oil for treatment of eczema.
Also no gluten in it, so I can share it later with people who have celiac disease.

It´s noon. I just worked in the barn, feeding the animals with plant H I brought back from the mountainside. What they don´t eat can be used as hay. I´m exhausted. Still have a long day. Better eat something made of plant C butter. Can´t swallow the painkillers because they have too many side-effects on my stomach.

Evening. Just looked to see if plant C was doing fine. I try to keep it seperate from plant H. Otherwise it all turns H. Far relatives of hop, which I don´t brew. I don´t need to have an industrial only variety to make of for this lacking thirst as they call it. I harldy use Fords T-model. Made it after his and diesels design myself. Same fuel source and all. Made from, mainly plant H and runs on it too.
Time to relax. I eat some more butterscones from C. I throw some of the outdoor variety on the campfire, it was growing too close to H and might start mixing. I take some more blankets to keep warm, also made from H, as are my clothes.

As I write this down on paper made from H, I take some plants C and vaporize it to fight the depressing and grim reality. This isn´t utopia, this is the real world.

My plant H is of course, Herbicide. Plant C, Change.

Update: I couldn´t stop nature from crosspollinating. The plant spreads like a weed. Growing in all climates and deserts. Withstanding the conditions of central asia. Even though it originated from the rainforest. Started growing the domisticated variety, tribes used it a couple of thousand years in this manner. The molecule with medicinal values reaches 8% which is sufficient.

Happiness

Here’s a quick recipe:
SeX & Drugs: Euphoria is easily reached with these. In many (pre-)religions, meaning shamanistic traditions and rituals, these were held up as the essential activities of human life.
Rock & amp; Roll: Happiness has been said to come in small doses (Dennis Leary). It´s little things. But mostly, it´s relaxing with background music and entertainment. I include non-reality television in this category.
Meals and home: George Carlin said the houselessness is a problem. And he´s right in the Maslow sense that the lower basic needs need to be satisfied first. Here, I´m simply referring to the certitude that you will be able to feed yourself and go home (safe from harm) when you want to (regardless of the intensity of the above categories).
Knowledge and Wisdom: These are personal choices. I don´t know what you like more, maybe you think ignorance is bliss. It well may be. But I like to make (know all and the consequences of) my choices, not have just one presented to me.

If I´m happy without some crucial component of homo sapiens sapiens existence. Please let me know, I wouldn´t want to be happy unjustly.

Ah yes, Freedom and Justice are my ideals. But these are too broad and unrealistic. So for the sake of happiness, be happy.

Furthermore, the economy should serve these intrests and these alone (on the basis of utilitarianism).

Chomsky On Education

On education

Click on the icon.
Obama Facts: here

I suggest the corporation (moral person) be allowed a maximum of 150 people. Democratic control by the “employees”. Capital should flow in the same way, unless the majority decides otherwise.

Free associations by federation will rule this planet!

Congo

Did you know that the Congo has one of the oldest mathematical artifacts in the World? It is believed to be one of the first calculators and a lunar calendar. It is dated 20,000 BC.

This concludes the nightly session of
The More You Know