The Bear

Start of my film career

Hunter Thompson quotes

"Politics is the art of controlling your environment."

more to come...

To add to the second last post

You can logically get to a conclusion which I think is important:

All stress and worrying is caused by the desire to know the future. Anxiety's source is when people fear the unknown - "what's going to happen?", "what if...?".

However - if a person knew the future, truly knew everything (or anything) that was going to happen, it would be TORTURE. I really believe that, because whenever something is predictable it sucks. It's a paradox, really.

So the only conclusion I can draw from this is that we are designed - our nature - to accept that we cannot know and should not want to know the future, and should adopt the attitude of "I don't know" for everything. And THIS is the only way to find joy and appreciation of the present moment, which is the only place you will ever find peace.

Abousfian Abdelrazik

Listened to this guy talk about his experiences with CSIS, Sudanese prison/govt, Canadian embassy in Sudan, FBI, CIA, etc. Was basically held in Sudan without charges in and out of prison, tortured, and unable to get back to Canada for something like 6 years.

It's hard to make an assessment of this situation so I'm going to do some research. But at face value it's a glaring indictment of the inability of intelligence agencies, namely CSIS in this case, to do what they are supposed to do: gather intelligence. How can you excuse the torture and abuse of an innocent (as far as I know, and when you consider that he is now travelling around Ontario talking about how the gov't fucked him, most likely innocent... but who knows) civilian? Aren't there easier ways to find out if the guy is a terrorist? How about watching him without him knowing. Monitoring his online activities, reading his email. I realize that these are not likely constitutionally allowed, but what would you rather have? Why the fuck should I care if they want to read my email? If I have nothing to hide, it shouldn't bother me - I mean, I don't WANT people reading my email but if torture is the only alternative, I'll take it.

What Goes Around Comes Around

This notion of 'karma'. I know karma literally means action and I won't claim to be any kind of authority on the language of what I'm talking about.

Was thinking about the idea of all of life/existence being interconnected - one being or one manifestation, etc. Many manifestations within one is more accurate maybe. It naturally follows that any harm done to another - thing, person, place... is fundamentally done to one's self.

When you start regarding all of existence as your 'self', your perspective changes markedly. Now you have to accept everything and everyone, and withold judgment too. You can't value one thing more than another, and you have to appreciate the tiny contributions of all things.

You also have to live in the unknown. When you stop evaluating and assuming, all that's left to say is 'I don't know'. But this doesn't tell the whole story, because you spontaneously develop a different way of knowing. A non-rational, instinctive way of knowing - aligned with reality it seems. It's hard to throw around words like truth and reality, but these are evoked in the mind when one experiences life in the unknown. Life is a paradox - when you don't know, you know. And you can't want to know, because when you want, you are thinking that you 'know' what you want. So forget everything. EVERY-THING.

watched Gonzo. Inspired by Hunter's ability to cut people's minds with words. Those kinds of writers are so important because they bring hidden parts of life into focus. We seem to be getting farther and farther from the truth with 'news' at a distance. But I think it could flip soon. The internet and communication technology's ubiquity (?) allow now for news to be made any time, anywhere. This will inevitably force transparency down the throats of the institutions that attempt to protect themselves and stay secret.

nothing to say

Selling Water by the River

http://www.adyashanti.org/index.php?file=writings_inner&writingid=31

Many seekers do not take full responsibility for their own liberation, but wait for one big, final spiritual experience which will catapult them fully into it. It is this search for the final liberating experience which gives rise to a rampant form of spiritual consumerism in which seekers go from one teacher to another, shopping for enlightenment as if shopping for sweets in a candy store. This spiritual promiscuity is rapidly turning the search for enlightenment into a cult of experience seekers. And, while many people indeed have powerful experiences, in most cases these do not lead to the profound transformation of the individual, which is the expression of enlightenment.

In speaking regularly with spiritual seekers, it dawned on me one day how addicted so many of them are to the power of charisma. They swap stories about how powerful this or that teacher is and compare experiences. They get a charge from it, many mistaking charisma for enlightenment. Charisma attracts at all levels: political, sexual, spiritual, etc., and it feeds the ego's desire to feel special. The ego loves getting hits of power—it's like a form of spiritual candy. The candy may be sweet but can you live on it? Does it make you free?

Freedom is not necessarily exciting; it's just free. Very peaceful and quiet, so very quiet. Of course, it is also filled with joy and wonder, but it is not what you imagine. It is much, much less. Many mistake the intoxicating power of otherworldly charisma for enlightenment. More often than not it is simply otherworldly, and not necessarily free or enlightened. In order to be truly free, you must desire to know the truth more than you want to feel good. Because if feeling good is your goal, then as soon as you feel better you will lose interest in what is true. This does not mean that feeling good or experiencing love and bliss is a bad thing. Given the choice, anyone would choose to feel bliss rather than sorrow. It simply means that if this desire to feel good is stronger than the yearning to see, know, and experience Truth, then this desire will always be distorting the perception of what is Real, while corrupting one's deepest integrity.

In my experience, everyone will say they want to discover the Truth, right up until they realize that the Truth will rob them of their deepest held ideas, beliefs, hopes, and dreams. The freedom of enlightenment means much more than the experience of love and peace. It means discovering a Truth that will turn your view of self and life upside-down. For one who is truly ready, this will be unimaginably liberating. But for one who is still clinging in any way, this will be extremely challenging indeed. How does one know if they are ready? One is ready when they are willing to be absolutely consumed, when they are willing to be fuel for a fire without end.

If you start playing the game of being an "enlightened somebody," the true teacher is going to call you on it. He or she is going to expose you, and that exposure is going to hurt. Because the ego will be there, standing in the light of Truth, exposed and humiliated. Of course, the ego will cry "foul!" It will claim that the teacher made a mistake and begin to justify itself in an effort to put its protective clothing back on. It will begin to spin justifications with incredible subtlety and deceptiveness. This is where real spiritual sadhana (practice) begins. This is where it all becomes very real and the student discovers whether he or she truly wants to be free, or merely wants to remain as a false, separate, and self-justifying ego. This crossroad inevitably comes and is always challenging. It separates the true seeker from the false one. The true seeker will be willing to bare the grace of humility, whereas the false seeker will run from it. Thus begins the true path to enlightenment, granted only to those willing to be nobody. Discovering your "nobodyness" opens the door to awakening as beingness, and beyond that to the Source of all beingness.

Do not think that enlightenment is going to make you special—it's not. If you feel special in any way, then enlightenment has not occurred. I meet a lot of people who think they are enlightened and awake simply because they have had a very moving spiritual experience. They wear their enlightenment on their sleeve like a badge of honor. They sit among friends and talk about how awake they are while sipping coffee at a cafe.

The funny thing about enlightenment is that when it is authentic, there is no one to claim it. Enlightenment is very ordinary; it is nothing special. Rather than making you more special, it is going to make you less special. It plants you right in the center of a wonderful humility and innocence. Everyone else may or may not call you enlightened, but when you are enlightened the whole notion of enlightenment and someone who is enlightened is a big joke. I use the word enlightenment all the time—not to point you toward it but to point you beyond it. Do not get stuck in enlightenment.

Ego is the movement of the mind toward objects of perception in the form of grasping, and away from objects in the form of aversion. This fundamentally is all the ego is. This movement of grasping and aversion gives rise to a sense of a separate "me," and in turn the sense of "me" strengthens itself this way. It is this continuous loop of causation that tricks consciousness into a trance of identification. Identification with what? Identification with the continuous loop of suffering. After all, who is suffering? The "me" is suffering. And who is this me? It is nothing more than a sense of self caused by identification with grasping and aversion. You see, it's all a creation of the mind, an endless movie, a terrible dream. Don't try to change the dream, because trying to change it is just another movement in the dream. Look at the dream. Be aware of the dream. That awareness is It. Become more interested in the awareness of the dream than in the dream itself. What is that awareness? Who is that awareness? Don't go spouting out an answer, just be the answer. Be It.

Enlightenment means the end of all division. It is not simply having an occasional experience of unity beyond all division, it is actually being undivided. This is what nonduality truly means. It means there is just one Self, without a difference or gap between the profound revelation of Oneness and the way it is perceived and lived every moment of life. Nonduality means that the inner revelation and the outer expression of the personality are one and the same. So few seem to be interested in the greater implication contained within profound spiritual experiences, because it is the contemplation of these implications which quickly brings to awareness the inner divisions existing within most seekers.

Spiritual people can be some of the most violent people you will ever meet. Mostly, they are violent to themselves. They violently try to control their minds, their emotions, and their bodies. They become upset with themselves and beat themselves up for not rising up to the conditioned mind's idea of what it believes enlightenment to be. No one ever became free through such violence. Why is it that so few people are truly free? Because they try to conform to ideas, concepts, and beliefs in their heads. They try to concentrate their way to heaven. But Freedom is about the natural state, the spontaneous and unselfconscious expression of beingness. If you want to find it, see that the very idea of a someone who is in control is a concept created by the mind. Take one step backward into the unknown.

There is nothing more insidiously destructive to the attainment of liberation than self-doubt and cynicism. Doubt is a movement of the conditioned mind that always claims that “It's not possible,” that “Freedom is not possible for me.” Doubt always knows; it "knows" that nothing is possible. And in this knowing, doubt robs you of the possibility of anything truly new or transformative from happening. Furthermore, doubt is always accompanied by a pervasive cynicism that unconsciously puts a negative spin on whatever it touches. Cynicism is a world view which protects the ego from scrutiny by maintaining a negative stance in relationship to what it does not know, does not want to know, or cannot know. Many spiritual seekers have no idea how cynical and doubt-laden they actually are. It is this blindness and denial of the presence of doubt and cynicism that makes the birth of a profound trust impossible, a trust without which final liberation will always remain simply a dream.

All fear comes from thought in the form of memory (past) or projection (future). Thought creates time: past, present, and future. So fear exists and comes from the perceived existence of time. To be free of fear is to be free of time. Since time is a creation of thought, to be free of fear you must be free of thought. Consequently, it is important to awaken and experience your Self outside of thought, existing as eternity. So question all notions of yourself that are creations of thought and of time—of past, present, and future. Experience your eternalness, your holiness, your awakeness until you are convinced that you are never subject to the movement of thought, of fear, or of time. To be free of fear is to be full of Love.

Many spiritual seekers get "stuck in emptiness,” in the absolute, in transcendence. They cling to bliss, or peace, or indifference. When the self-centered motivation for living disappears, many seekers become indifferent. They see the perfection of all existence and find no reason for doing anything, including caring for themselves or others. I call this "taking a false refuge." It is a very subtle egoic trap; it's a fixation in the absolute and all unconscious form of attachment that masquerades as liberation. It can be very difficult to wake someone up from this deceptive fixation because they literally have no motivation to let go of it. Stuck in a form of divine indifference, such people believe they have reached the top of the mountain when actually they are hiding out halfway up its slope.

Enlightenment does not mean one should disappear into the realm of transcendence. To be fixated in the absolute is simply the polar opposite of being fixated in the relative. With the dawning of true enlightenment, there is a tremendous birthing of impersonal Love and wisdom that never fixates in any realm of experience. To awaken to the absolute view is profound and transformative, but to awaken from all fixed points of view is the birth of true nonduality. If emptiness cannot dance, it is not true emptiness. If moonlight does not flood the empty night sky and reflect in every drop of water, on every blade of grass, then you are only looking at your own empty dream. I say, “Wake up!” Then your heart will be flooded with a Love that you cannot contain.

Maybe I can point you to the great Reality within you. Maybe you will awaken to the direct experience of Self-realization. Maybe you will catch the fire of transmission. But there is one thing that no one can give you: the honesty and integrity that alone will bring you completely to the other shore. No one can give you the strength of character necessary for profound spiritual experience to become the catalyst for the evolutionary transformation called "enlightenment." Only you can find that passion within that burns with an integrity that will not settle for anything less than the Truth.

Enlightenment has nothing to do with states of consciousness. Whether you are in ego consciousness or unity consciousness is not really the point. I have met many people who have easy access to advanced states of consciousness. Though for some people this may come very easily, I also notice that many of these people are no freer than anyone else. If you don't believe that the ego can exist in very advanced states of consciousness, think again. The point isn't the state of consciousness, even very advanced ones, but an awake mystery that is the source of all states of consciousness. It is even the source of presence and beingness. It is beyond all perception and all experience. I call it "awakeness." To find out that you are empty of emptiness is to die into an aware mystery, which is the source of all existence. It just so happens that that mystery is in love with all of its manifestation and non-manifestation. You find your Self by stepping back out of yourself.

Ramana Maharshi's gift to the world was not that he realized the Self. Many people have had a deep realization of the Self. Ramana's real gift was that he embodied that realization so thoroughly. It is one thing to realize the Self; it is something else altogether to embody that realization to the extent that there is no gap between inner revelation and its outer expression. Many have glimpsed the realization of Oneness; few consistently express that realization through their humanness. It is one thing to touch a flame and know it is hot, but quite another to jump into that flame and be consumed by it.

2 TED Talks

Paul Collier on the "bottom billion"


Jacqueline Novogratz invests in ending poverty

Read this.

Mark Twain Quotes

"I learned long ago never to say the obvious thing, but leave the obvious thing to commonplace and inexperienced people to say."

"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."

"Education consists mainly in what we have unlearned."

"The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter."

"The proper office of a friend is to side with you when you are in the wrong. Nearly anybody will side with you when you are in the right."

"All you need is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure."

Adyashanti

So let us understand that reality transcends all of our notions about reality. Reality is neither Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Advaita Vedanta, nor Buddhist. It is neither dualistic nor nondualistic, neither spiritual nor nonspiritual. We should come to know that there is more reality and sacredness in a blade of grass than in all of our thoughts and ideas about reality. When we perceive from an undivided consciousness, we will find the sacred in every expression of life. We will find it in our teacup, in the fall breeze, in the brushing of our teeth, in each and every moment of living and dying. Therefore we must leave the entire collection of conditioned thought behind and let ourselves be led by the inner thread of silence into the unknown, beyond where all paths end, to that place where we go innocently or not at all—not once but continually.

One must be willing to stand alone—in the unknown, with no reference to the known or the past or any of one’s conditioning. One must stand where no one has stood before in complete nakedness, innocence, and humility. One must stand in that dark light, in that groundless embrace, unwavering and true to the reality beyond all self—not just for a moment, but forever without end. For then that which is sacred, undivided, and whole is born within consciousness and begins to express itself.

http://www.adyashanti.org/index.php?file=writings_inner&writingid=41

Evolution

Was reading some Krishnamurti - he talks about the mind's tendency to fixate on things. Objects, people, thoughts, emotions, our mind is constantly honing in on them. This, he says, is the source of a lot of our problems. See for yourself in your own life.

So I realized this morning that the more open minded you are - the less you fixate on things and judge them - the more life can evolve according to the truth. The more closed minded you are, the more you fixate on things, judge them, chew on them, and hold them in your mind, the more you are a stump in the river of life. A stump that life has to break down and go around, until you stop holding on to all the illusions, concepts, and beliefs.

Still more...

Now, pleasure has created this pattern of social life. We take pleasure in ambition, in competition, in comparing, in acquiring knowledge, or power, or position, prestige, status. And that pursuit of pleasure as ambition, competition, greed, envy, status, domination, power, is respectable. It is made respectable by a society which has only one concept: that you shall lead a moral life, which is a respectable life. You can be ambitious, you can be greedy, you can be violent, you can be competitive, you can be a ruthless human being; but society accepts it because at the end of your ambition, you are either a so-called successful man with plenty of money, or a failure and therefore a frustrated human being. So social morality is immorality.

Love, death, and sorrow are all the unknowable

Love, death, and sorrow are all the unknowable

We know only fragmentarily this extraordinary thing called life; we have never looked at sorrow, except through the screen of escapes; we have never seen the beauty, the immensity of death, and we know it only through fear and sadness. There can be understanding of life, and of the significance and beauty of death, only when the mind on the instant perceives “what is”.
You know, sirs, although we differentiate them, love, death, and sorrow are all the same; because, surely, love, death, and sorrow are the unknowable. The moment you know love, you have ceased to love. Love is beyond time; it has no beginning and no end, whereas knowledge has; and when you say, “I know what love is”, you don’t. You know only a sensation, a stimulus. You know the reaction to love, but that reaction is not love. In the same way, you don’t know what death is. You know only the reactions to death, and you will discover the full depth and significance of death only when the reactions have ceased.
The Collected Works vol XI, p 288

Krishnamurti - freedom

Freedom through complete attention

The perception, the total observation of jealousy and the freedom from it, is not a matter of time, but of giving complete attention, critical awareness, observing choicelessly, instantly, all things as they arise. Then there is freedom—not in the future but now—from that which we call jealousy.
This applies equally to violence, anger or any other habit, whether you smoke, drink or have sexual habits. If we observe them attentively, completely with our heart and mind, we are intelligently aware of their whole content; then there is freedom. Once this awareness is functioning, then whatever arises—anger, jealousy, violence, brutality, shades of double meaning, enmity, all these things can be observed instantly, completely. In that there is freedom, and the thing that was there ceases to be. So the past is not to be wiped away through time. Time is not the way to freedom.
The Flight of the Eagle, p 84

Leave earth and travel for a long while and then look back. In terms of our senses, we don't exist. Yet, like the tiny atoms that we can't see now, we do our job to the best of our ability (at any given moment). The functioning of the universe and therefore our lives here on earth still depend on our actions, just like we depend on the actions of molecules. I like the space travel mental exercise because it attempts to reveal our true relative size, which is essentially nothing.

I was thinking about how everything in the natural world is so good at what it does. We seem so inadequate compared to the trees and rocks and animals. Yet, it also seems impossible that we could be a product of nature or god or whatever you want to call it, and be any less perfect than the trees, rocks, and animals. Who are we to question or judge a purpose, big or small? We give things meaning but really we are completely clueless.

Our only guidance, really, is how we feel. The fact that some people can live in discord with how they feel is a wonder of human nature, and reveals the depth of our psyche and our tolerance for pain. The idea of relationship is extraordinarily powerful. At its root, any relationship is simply a part of one's relationship with god. Like it or not, life is a total and constant interaction, and it's not a choice (other than killing yourself).

TED Talk

Cool talk, good ideas. Guy loves his words a little too much maybe. Right.

TED Talk: Clay Shirky on Twitter, China, flow of information, etc.

The saddest thing about the destruction of life is the immensity of the struggle that has created our world. Imagine working your whole life to build something beautiful, complicated, with the potential to be enjoyed by everything in existence – only to have it torn down before your very eyes by a child you loved. We humans are the culmination of billions of years of challenges and adaptation; the very things we celebrate today in sport and business. Ironically, our celebration of the champions of business gives accolades to the very people who are destroying our natural environment and us. It’s as though life has been cheering on who it thought was acting in its best interests (and for what seems like an eternity, life was correct), but now, its hero has turned on it. We do not see or cannot comprehend the history of our surroundings, and thus cannot give them, or we, the respect deserved. This massive movement, river of life, has birthed a bastard child that wants its inheritance now and is willing to kill its parents for it.

randmo

random thoughts.

existence is consciousness

god is existence

god is consciousness

you cannot fathom its entirety

you can change your life by changing your mind

you can live without thinking

action is the only way

when you realize something and then you act on it, it becomes easier and easier

any time you give into a fear you are going in the wrong direction

Food, Inc.

More from Harper's... fuck

It is better to die from bullets

From statements collected in Gaza by Human Rights Watch in January.

Ziad Deeb, male, twenty-two, student, Jabaliya. On January 6, Israeli forces fired five mortar shells in the vicinity of the United Nations–run Fakhoura School in Jabaliya. Two hit private houses, and three landed on a crowded street, killing more than forty people, including eleven members of the Deeb family.

I came to see if my family was harmed and to find out where the rocket had hit. As soon as I arrived at the door, another shell landed in front of me. I only heard the whistling in my ear. My legs felt very hot. When the smoke cleared, I saw that some were dead. Others were dying and reciting their prayers. My cousin Mohammed and my father were lying next to each other, both dead. Next to them was my grandmother, who was also killed. She had been knitting. I saw blood pooling on the ground. My brother’s dead body was in front of me, and he had absorbed most of the shrapnel. His name was Mohammed, twenty-four years old. Another small girl, Asil, died—she was nine. They amputated my legs at Shifa Hospital. I also had shrapnel in my abdomen and right hand.

Man requesting anonymity, Gaza City. He was shot by Hamas gunmen after being overheard on the street criticizing Hamas.

I was sitting in my home. A cousin called me to come downstairs. He said there are people outside who want to see you, and your uncle is talking to them. I found some fourteen masked gunmen. They grabbed me as soon as they saw me. They took me to an open space just next to the mosque. Then they suddenly opened fire at me—four of them. I was hit in both legs. I heard four gunshots. No one was around at the time. They left, and I was screaming for help.

Radwan al-Mardi, male, forty-five, Beit Lahiya. His six-year-old daughter, Nada, was killed as the family tried to walk to safety.

The soldiers were shooting around us but we continued to walk. In one hand I held some bread, in the other I had my daughter’s hand. Just behind us were my two sons, who were holding white flags. The road was torn up by the bulldozers, and Nada was barefoot. I lifted her up whenever there was debris on the ground. Then she was hit. She fell on her face. I knew she was injured, but I thought she was hit in the arm. She had sand in her mouth, and I cleaned it out. She made a moaning sound, but she couldnspeak. I dropped the bread and carried her in my arms. I ran and found a car, and they took her to Kamal Adwan Hospital. I still hadn’t realized the bullet had hit her head. I went to see what happened to the rest of my family. When I got back, she had already been transferred to Shifa Hospital. The bullet had entered the back of her head and lodged behind her eyes. She died at two in the afternoon.

Majid Abu Hajjaj, male, forty-five, farmer, Juhr al-Dik. His mother and sister were killed by machine-gun fire.

I had already left the area, but I was on the phone with my family all the time when they were under fire. I could hear the explosions in the background. I was calling the Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, and the BBC, but no one could help us. They were killed after they left the neighbor’s house. When I came back two days after the cease-fire, I found my sister and mother on the ground. My sister was covered by wires and trash. She had been run over by a tank. The next day the neighbors brought us her severed foot. My mother’s body was partly buried in sand. They’d been lying there for sixteen days.

Sami Rashid Mohammed, male, forty-five, former Palestinian Authority employee, Jabaliya.

Six Israeli soldiers pushed me in front of them using their guns, which were pointed at my back, and we ended up in an orange grove. While we were there, the soldiers came under fire. They took their positions immediately, and the officer called me. He ordered me to get on my knees, facing the direction where the fire came from. From behind me, they started responding to the source of fire. Two soldiers, one with an M-16 and the other with an automatic machine gun, were firing from right behind me. The flying bullet casings from the machine gun were hitting my cheek.

Ahmed Abu Halima, male, twenty-two, farmer, Beit Lahiya. He was at home with his family on January 4 when a white-phosphorus shell hit the house, killing five and wounding four.

I was talking with my father when the shell landed. It hit my father directly and cut his head. The explosion was large and the smell unbearable. It caused a big fire. The pieces from the shell were burning, and they could not be put out. Those of us who were unharmed ran outside. My brother’s wife, Ghada, and their daughter, Farah, came down with no clothes on. My brothers Yusif and Ali came, too. Yusif was burned on his face and Ali on his back. We brought the dead bodies to a car. One relative, Abu Saleh, contacted the Israelis for coordination. He said we had one hour to evacuate. We drove in a cousin’s Mercedes truck. At al-Atatra junction they fired at us from a machine gun on the top of a tank. They hit my grandfather Mattar, my aunt Ralia, and two others, who were lightly wounded. Behind our Mercedes was a green Golf with more relatives. They hit one of my cousins in it too, in the leg and abdomen.

Iman al-Najar, female, thirty-one, Khuzaa village. On January 13, Israeli soldiers destroyed homes in the neighborhood and ordered residents to walk to the village center.

Rawhiya took a white flag with a group of about fifteen women. She said, “Let’s go together.” When she reached the corner, they fired at her immediately. It was 7:45 a.m. She was hit in the head and fell even though she was holding a white flag. We tried to get her body, but we couldn’t get to it. In the attempt, a girl, Yasmin, was wounded in the arm and leg. I bandaged her wounds and called the ambulance, but they said they couldn’t come. The Israeli bulldozers were pushing us out. There was lots of dust. We were hugging each other. We said, “Let’s go. It is better to die from bullets than to get buried. At least if we die from bullets, they will see us.” We decided to go together. When we came under fire, we crawled. We were ashamed to leave Rawhiya behind. We carried the old women and went looking for the nearest U.N. school. But we didn’t want to stay there because we heard that they shelled them too. Why does the whole world go crazy when an Israeli dies but not when we are dying here in our homes? We were calling everyone. Where were all the organizations that we see all the time? We called and got only the echo.

Harper's article - quote

"we should require the banks we bail out to cancel an appropriate amount of consumer debt—especially in instances where people would have paid back the principal by now had the interest rate been more reasonable. My retired schoolteacher [an example from earlier in article], the one with the husband who is deep into Alzheimer’s and who has already paid $3,000 on a $1,700 loan, should be let off the hook. The banks we have bailed out should follow the Golden Rule: just as their own debts have been written down or paid off, so they in turn should do unto others."

- Thomas Geoghegan

Read:

The Omnivore's Dilemma

TED Talk:
Michael Pollan: The omnivore's next dilemma


YouTube Video (fast forward until 3:50 or so )

Quotes

"Everybody takes the same dirt nap, Rocky used to say. What's the big deal? It's only rock 'n' roll."
- James Lee Burke

"What's the world's greatest lie? It's this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what's happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate."
- The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho

Orthomolecular Nutrition

This branch of medicine deals with the effects of our diets. Orthomolecular means to 'straighten the molecules' or something like that. The argument goes simply that the human body's nutritional needs haven't changed in 50,000 years. Yet in the last 100 years our diet has changed immensely. Mostly moving in the direction of processed, nutrient/mineral deficient foods.

The result of these changes can be subtle effects like altered energy levels and moods, or profoundly obvious effects - cancer, alzheimer's schizophrenia, learning disabilities, depression, bi-polar disorder, etc.

These afflictions are not solely caused by diet, obviously two people can eat the exact same foods yet be affected differently. Some people are genetically prone to certain ailments. The idea that there is a Daily Value for nutrients and minerals is flawed - some people need large or small amounts of different things.

The bottom line is this: Orthomolecular doctors have had success treating people for all kinds of illnesses both mental and physical. Obviously using nutritional therapy is much cheaper that buying drugs/paying for psychiatric treatment.

Here is a link to a great book on the topic. Check out pages 6-8 to see how our diets have changed.
Putting it all together: The new orthomolecular nutrition, Abram Hoffer and Morgan Walker

Bill C-10

House of Commons Video re: Bill C-10 (budget/stimulus bill)
4h38min: pay equity amendment
5h45min: navigable waters protection act and other "contraband" hidden in stimulus bill C-10

We are all addicted to something, almost everyone and everywhere. Isn’t true freedom being addicted to nothing and being without burden of duty? Even the pleasures of life dull when they are experienced too often.

TED Talk: The Future

Juan Enriquez 2009

Video Games

Most popular video games now are violent, glorifying war and criminals. Yet the people who play these games religiously are mostly people (kids) who would be scared shitless in a real war, or violent confrontation.

State of Affairs

Maclean's article 2003

Altermedia 2005

CNN Video Russia

Free spirit spheres

Link

Excerpts

"One of our difficulties is that we are not really in earnest about these matters, because we do not want to be greatly disturbed. We prefer to alter things only in a manner advantageous to ourselves, and so we are not deeply concerned about our own emptiness and cruelty. Can we ever attain peace through violence? Is peace to be achieved gradually, through a slow process of time? Surely, love is not a matter of training or time."

"But what would happen if we were to put aside such obvious hindrances to understanding as authority, belief, nationalism and the whole hierarchical spirit? We would be people without authority, human beings in direct relationship with each other - and then, perhaps, there would be love and compassion."(p. 76)

"Surely, to discover truth, there must be freedom from strife, both within ourselves and with our neighbours. When we are not in conflict with ourselves, we are not in conflict outwardly. It is the inward strife which, projected outwardly, becomes the world conflict." (p. 77)

"I think we really want arms; we like the show of military power, the uniforms, the rituals, the drinks, the noise, the violence. Our everyday life is a reflection in miniature of this same brutal superficiality, and we are destroying one another through envy and thoughtlessness. We want to be rich; and the richer we get, the more ruthless we become, even though we may contribute large sums to charity and education. Having robbed the victim, we return to him a little of the spoils, and this we call philanthropy." (p. 78)

Education and the Significance of Life

The Story of Stuff

Announcing your plans is a good way to make god laugh.

A man makes a plan. It does not work out according to plan. What does this mean?

It means we have no claim to knowledge, regardless of the outcome.

The bargain between man and god is that man must do his best, for then the will of god is meted out according to the truth. A man who seeks anything without his best effort puts any desire at grave peril. Only the man who strives for nothing but fulfilling his potential can fall on the one true path.

Chomsky interview

Excerpt: "The Bretton Woods years were the era of substantial progress in establishing basic social and democratic rights, which have been under attack during the neo-liberal/financial liberalization period. To take just the United States for illustration, during the Bretton Wood years, economic growth was not only unusually rapid but also egalitarian: the poorest quintile did as well as the richest. And social indicators, general measures of the health of the society, closely tracked growth. Since the late 1970s, for the majority of the population real incomes have stagnated, work hours have increased, benefits have declined, and social indicators not only did not track growth, but in fact steadily declined."

..."with the dismantling of the system from the 1970s, functioning democracy is restricted. It has therefore become necessary to control and marginalize the public in some fashion. These processes are particularly evident in the more business-run societies like the United States. One illustration is the management of electoral campaigns by the Public Relations industry, to ensure that the public is effectively marginalized. As many studies demonstrate, the two political parties -- essentially, two factions of the ruling business party -- are well to the right of the public on many major issues, so there is a good reason for party managers to keep issues sidelined and to concentrate on personalities, "values," character, and so on. The nature of the electoral extravaganzas in American presidential campaigns is well symbolized by the fact that Sarah Palin's hairdresser is paid twice as much as John McCain's foreign policy adviser -- and her role is twice as important, for the party managers and the handlers of the candidates.

The population is not unaware of their marginalization, and naturally do not like it. 80% of the American public feel that the government is run "by a few big interests looking out for themselves," not for the benefit of the public. And a remarkable 95% object that the government does not respond to public opinion -- as is demonstrably the case."

See whole article Here.

what is the tension here? Scarcity drives capitalism because it's what gives resources value. But when a resource is renewable (solar, wind, geothermal), it loses all value once the capturing mechanism is paid for, and thus becomes maintainable at a minimal cost.

with current resources, because they are scarce they are controlled by a few and thus many people do not have access at a price they can afford. A resource like education, though, can be distributed exponentially - teachers teaching teachers - if the infrastructure is in place.

a big part of not being happy with what you have and always wanting more is vanity. Believing that your material wealth defines you as a person and therefore you become more important, which drives confidence and perceived happiness. but the foundation is weak because for living life from day to day, a self-image built on possession must certainly be shaky or susceptible to change, as all things change and perish eventually. But i think a lot of people go through life like this because everyone - or most - buy into it, which gives the belief so much power. When someone else believes you are important because of wealth, that reinforces your belief. And the economy reinforces it too because you have access to desirable activities and goods.

as with the 'economic crisis', the rich people of the world will continue to either fuck up or consciously make it difficult for the rest of the people. Such is the nature of the economic system.

Obama 'is no Martin Luther King'

Good article from Al Jazeera site

In support of rest period...

Behavioural Brain Research - Comparing the benefits of caffeine, naps, and placebo

Martin Rees - Our Final Century?