Another bit of nothing much: this one i found penciled in a book i don't remember buying, much less reading.
if you have any interest in the future of the web you might want to check this out:
Search upstarts storm Google's gates | CNET News.com
one of the interesting search engines in the pipeline is group oriented. that is, for a group with a common interest, the collective searches would somehow (can you say "synergisticalay? can you spell it?) increase search results of the context you have in mind.
ok so i am not making sense.
found a new old notebook the other day. here's a sample from it:
no image today. ninian arrived from tennessee a day early, , so we walked downtown, wondered around, feet on the ground. it was another gorgeous day to stumble forward. worked on mimi's website, hoping to have version 1 up this week. wrote a letter to someone who may be a figment of my overwrought imagination.. checked lunar colander. busy 3 days ahead for me, beginning with dentist's appointment this am (toothache).
began reading attitudes and latitudes by thomas friedman. he's a funny one. his grasp of the Palestinian dilemma seems accurate and helpful, but his insistence on inevitable globism seems a little Darwinian - peoples that can't keep up go under. at least that's what i got from his last book.
watched a bit of the sunday news shows instead of going to friend's meeting. the sound was off. i think the bushies (they are not real republicans) have got the democratic candidate they want to run against. kerry just doesn't come across on the tube. my advice for what it is worth: he needs to play up a lincolnesque persona, not grow a beard but evolve from craggy to just a touch of haggard, thoughtful, deep. edwards as VP is crucial, he's the only guy who can respond tit for tat to the deluge of public innuendo the bushies have lined up for kerry. and he can unravel the mimetic tangle they are going to tie kerry in knots with. in a heartbeat.
the spread of pseudo-democracies across the globe has highlighted an unnoticed trend: fake elections. remember the soviet union? all of the 3rd world countries with their various ways to have an "election" that one way or another is a setup? they are just beginning the process, do not have the infrastructure or cultural history to use the electoral process in an ideal manner.
we, on the other hand, are evolving past the electoral way. public relations - a bland description of a well worn manipulative path - and big money has pulled the plug on our own elections. witness the last presidential election. it was an invisible coup-d'etat.
as far as the republican ads featuring bush puffed up in front of 9/11, let him wrap himself up in that image. then ask why it happened, why planes weren't scrambled per SOP, and why we responded by declaring war on a nation state when the enemy is a group of "super-empowered individuals" (friedman).
Daily Devotional: "In his essay, �Peaks and Vales,� Jungian analyst James Hillman writes of cultivating the vales of our low-lying moods. Compared to the glittering peaks of spiritual aloofness-the Mount Siniai of the spirit- the bottomlands of our despair are fertile with imagination and insight.
The brooding desolation of such depressed emotional landscapes, Hillman writes, was described by the poet John Keats as "the vale of soulmaking." To Keats "the use of the world"-the defeats and dejection�s of everyday life-was that it forged the individual soul.
But the plunge from the heights of spiritual joy into the depths of spiritual darkness often feels like the loss of faith. In the grip of such darkness, life seems meaningless, a landscape drained of color.
"I felt that the ground on which I stood was crumbling,� wrote the Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy of his own crisis of faith, "...that I had no reason for living..."
In the Words of James Hillman, Psyche's Hermetic Highwayman: "Neglect of beauty neglects the Goddess, who then has to steal back into the departments as sexual harassment, into the laboratories as 'research' experiments with sex and gender, and into the consulting rooms as seductive assignations."
"... and if I shed a tear I won't cage it.
I won't fear love
and if I feel a rage I won't deny it.
I won't fear love."
-- Sarah McLaughlin, Fumbling Towards Ecstasy
shows you how much i know; i figured Sarah McLaughlin was a literary figure, maybe a poet, when i ran across the above....maybe she is.
i don't much care for the quicky pics i've been posting this week. somethings take the time they take.
rereading hillman's the thought of the heart. let me flip it open to a page and maybe i can find something that illuminates why:
"a second fundamental trait of this cardiac conciousness has been described by d.h. lawrence in his symbolic physiology:
'at the cardiac plexus...there in the center of the breast, we have a great new sun of knowledge and being...how i only know the delightful revelation that you are. the wonder is no longer within me, my own dark, centrifical exultant self. the wonder is without me. the wonder is outside me... i look with wonder, with tenderness, with joyful yearning towards that which is outside me, beyond me...'
friday afternoon, on the way back from an appointment, i decided to stop and spend some time downtown in the paris of the south, aville. it was a gorgeous day and i strolled around, stopping here and there. so many new shops, street life up and running. i paid a visit to the old tried and true newstand, where a large format book of plates of the cezanne collection at the hermitage jumped out into my hands which i bought for $10. the plates are amazing, well printed and including closeups. I have always admired cezanne, but the closeups of some of his earlier work astounded me.
i looked unsuccessfully for CD by dave olney, wheel (LoudHouse Records: David Olney/The Wheel). dave is another of the old chapel hill bunch who lives in nasheville and works as a fulltime songwriter and performer. i've heard one cut from this cd, "god-shaped hole", which blew me away. as real as it gets.
i decided then and there to spend more time out of the house from now until the weather gets too hot. i've spent enough time underground, time for a little daylight.
yesterday a visit to dr. r's world, very pleasant interlude. driving back, i noticed a storefront and sign i hadn't noticed before. i may be mistaken, but the sign read "deja-vu dialysis". catchy but mysterious.
according to the conventional thinking - or maybe feeling - bush and the corporate oligarchy that have hijacked the government are in trouble. the spreading bubble of unease felt by just about everyone has been transforming into the thought that the 5 or 6 people running the government by fiat, PR, and outright lies have to go.
my own opinion is what it was several months ago.
one, the cabel will not go gracefully. the shakier thier hold on the public becomes, the more backup shenannigans they are putting in place. the most obvious is the trick being talked about lately, capture osama right before the election.
two, i don't think kerry is the man to snake through the barrage of dirty tricks that lay in wait. i thought, and still think, that any democrat can win the election, provided they have one ability: to talk straight in such a way that it penetrates the wall of media and gets through to you and me. i don't think kerry can do this - his mediated persona too stiff, his words too reminescent of rehearsed and learned thoughts from advisors. i think he is a good man, but the skull and bones wealthy and priviliged background he comes from seems could be a vast negitive.
edwards, on the other hand, can talk straight in such a manner that he gets through. he is the man who can navigate through the semantic traps of the public discourse without losing a beat. slick lawyer though he is, or maybe because he is, he could twist the oligarchy into pretzels, and tell it like it is.
it's late, but i'm behind edwards. or maybe i'm just behind.
below are two reviews of a book and a movie forwarded to me by my friend tharpa d. they are worth posting here because they both seem to clearly articulate the rising inchoate feelings of humans everywhere. my comments are colored red.
-----------
CORPORATION AS PSYCHOPATH By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman February 17, 2004
http://lists.essential.org/pipermail/corp-focus/2004/000174.html
People ask -- Rob, Russell, the world is going to hell in a handbasket. What can we do about it?
We say -- read one book, see one movie.
Unfortunately, the movie and the book are available now only in Canada.
But wait -- before you head north of the border -- they will be available here in a month or so.
And believe us, it is worth the wait. (Full disclosure -- our work -- the Top 100 Corporate Criminals of the 1990s -- is featured in the movie.)
The book is titled: The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power. It is by Joel Bakan (Free Press, 2004).
The movie is called: The Corporation. It is by Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott, and Joel Bakan.
We've seen an advance copy of the movie.
We're read an advance copy of the book.
And here's our review:
Scrap the civics curricula in your schools, if they exist.
Cancel your cable TV subscriptions.
Call your friends, your enemies and your family.
Get your hands on a copy of this movie and a copy of this book.
Read the book. Discuss it. Dissect it. Rip it apart.
Watch the movie. Show it to your children. Show it to your right-wing relatives. Show it to everyone. Organize a party around it. Then organize another.
For years, we've been reporting on critics of corporate power -- Robert Monks, Richard Grossman, Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky, Sam Epstein, Charles Kernaghan, Michael Moore, Jeremy Rifkin.
[i saw noam chomsky talk about his new book last week on c-span. i hadn�t followed him through the years and now regret it. he is lucid and right on about so many things that are virtually �unspeakable� in our world today. he was cited for always speaking (and writing) in a calm manner, no rants, no shouts, no banging on the table. his new book:Amazon.com: Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance (The American Empire Project) see also Chomsky Archive]
For years, we've reported on the defenders of the corporate status quo like Milton Friedman, Peter Drucker and William Niskanen.
But Bakan, a professor of law at British Columbia Law School, and Achbar and Abbott have pulled these leading lights together in a 145-minute documentary that grabs the viewer by the throat and refuses to let go.
The movie is selling out major theaters across Canada. And if it detonates here -- which in our view is still a long shot -- the U.S. after all is not Canada -- it could have a profound impact on politics.
The filmmakers juxtapose well-shot interviews of defenders and critics with the reality on the ground -- Charles Kernaghan in Central America showing how, for example, big apparel manufacturers pay workers pennies for products that sell for hundreds of dollars in the United States -- with defenders of the regime -- Milton Friedman looking frumpy as he says with as straight a face as he can -- the only moral imperative for a corporate executive is to make as much money for the corporate owners as he or she can.
[i disagree: the only legal imperative is to make as much money for the corporate owners as he or she can.]
Others agree with Friedman. Management guru Peter Drucker tells Bakan: "If you find an executive who wants to take on social responsibilities, fire him. Fast." And William Niskanen, chair of the libertarian Cato Institute, says that he would not invest in a company that pioneered in corporate responsibility.
Of course, state corporation laws actually impose a legal duty on corporate executives to make money for shareholders. Engage in social responsibility -- pay more money to workers, stop legal pollution, lower the price to customers -- and you'll likely be sued by your shareholders. Robert Monks, the investment manager, puts it this way: "The corporation is an externalizing machine, in the same way that a shark is a killing machine (shark seeking young woman swimming on the screen). There isn't any question of malevolence or of will. The enterprise has within it, and the shark has within it, those characteristics that enable it to do that for which it was designed."
Business insiders like Monks and Ray Anderson, CEO of Interface Corporation, the world's largest commercial carpet manufacturer, lend needed balance to a movie that otherwise would have been dominated by outside critics like Chomsky, Moore, Grossman and Rifkin. Anderson calls the corporation a "present day instrument of destruction" because of its compulsion to "externalize any cost that an unwary or uncaring public will allow it externalize."
"The notion that we can take and take and take and take, waste and waste, without consequences, is driving the biosphere to destruction," Anderson says, as pictures of biological and chemical wastes pouring into the atmosphere roll across the screen.
Like Republican Kevin Phillips is doing as he criss-crosses the nation, pummeling Bush from the right, Anderson and Monks are opening a new front against corporate power from inside the belly of the beast. They are stars of this movie and book.
The movie and the book drive home one fundamental point -- the corporation is a psychopath.
[years ago i worked at a major corporation with a programmer who said �any group or institution of over 25,000 people is psychopathic, despite the fact that all 25,000 people are fundamentally not�. that was awhile back, and i�m not sure the latter part of that statement holds true today...]
Psychologist Dr. Robert Hare runs down a checklist of psychopathic traits and there is a close match.
The corporation is irresponsible because in an attempt to satisfy the corporate goal, everybody else is put at risk.
Corporations try to manipulate everything, including public opinion.
Corporations are grandiose, always insisting that "we're number one, we're the best."
Corporations refuse to accept responsibility for their own actions and are unable to feel remorse.
And the key to reversing the control of this psychopathic institution is to understand the nature of the beast.
No better place to start than right here.
Read the book.
Watch the movie
Organize for resistance.
............
Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter, http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor, http://www.multinationalmonitor.org. They are co-authors of Corporate Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press; http://www.corporatepredators.org).
------------
CORPORATIONS NEED TREATMENT, DOCUMENTARY ARGUES By Stephen Leahy Inter Press Service / Common Dreams January 20, 2004
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0120-03.htm
TORONTO - Corporations are not only the most powerful institutions in the world, they are also psychopathic, a new Canadian documentary on globalization elegantly argues.
While the corporation has the rights and responsibilities of "a legal person", its owners and shareholders are not liable for its actions. Moreover, the film explains, a corporation's directors are legally required to do what is best for the company, regardless of the harm created.
[corporations legally are people but there are some differences: they can live forever, and get away with murder.]
What kind of person would a corporation be? A clinical psychopath, answers the documentary, which is now playing in four Canadian theatres.
"Everything we do in the world is touched by corporations in some way," says 'The Corporation' writer Joel Bakan.
Six years ago he was researching a book on the subject and teamed up with documentary makers Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott, and then set out to drum up enough money to make the film and to do more than 40 interviews.
"Corporations are the most dominant institutions on the planet today. We thought it was worth taking a close look at what that means," Bakan told IPS.
[throughout the last millennium perhaps the dominant institution has been in some ways invisible, the same way water is invisible to a fish. for instance in medieval europe the catholic church was regarded not so much as an institution as reality. ditto today with the free market, profit, and acquisition. they have been regarded as �the way the world works�.]
In law, today's corporations are treated like a person: they can buy and sell property, have the right to free expression and most other rights that individuals have.
This legal creativity came as a result of U.S. businesses using the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution -- designed to protect blacks in the U.S. South after the Civil War -- to proclaim that corporations should be treated as "persons".
The filmmakers show four examples of corporations at work -- including garment sweatshops in Honduras and Indonesia -- to demonstrate that this "legal person" is inherently amoral, callous and deceitful.
The corporation, the film points out, ignores any social and legal standards to get its way, and does not suffer from guilt while mimicking the human qualities of empathy, caring and altruism.
A person with those character traits would be categorized as a psychopath, based on diagnostic criteria from the World Health Organization (WHO), points out the film.
Unlike 'Bowling for Columbine' -- to which it has been compared -- 'The Corporation' does not follow a shambling yet crusading interviewer (Michael Moore) into corporate head offices to ask tough questions.
Instead the filmmakers use simple but beautifully lit head and shoulder shots of its subjects against a black background. The interviewer is never seen or heard; the corporate chiefs, professors and activists speak directly to the viewer.
The technique is so compelling that not listening or turning away would seem impolite.
The interviews are interspersed with archival footage from many sources, including scenes from sweatshops and news conferences. It also includes some ironic and darkly humorous excerpts from corporate ad campaigns and training films from the 1940s and '50s.
But the film is not a rant. It gives ample time to corporate chief executive officers (CEOs) and representatives of right-wing organizations, like Canada's Fraser Institute.
Fraser's Michael Walker tells viewers that hungry people in the developing world are better off when a sweatshop pays them 10 cents an hour to make brand name goods that sell for hundreds of dollars.
And it is just good business sense that a corporation moves to seek out more hungry people when its workers demand higher wages and better working conditions, Walker argues.
Many others are less ruthless. Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, former chairman of Royal Dutch Shell, is honestly concerned about protecting the environment. Under his guidance, Shell adopted many green initiatives and a commitment to developing renewable energy.
At the same time, Ken Saro Wiwa and eight other activists were hung in Nigeria for protesting Shell Oil's pollution of the Niger Delta.
Social critic and linguist Noam Chomsky -- the subject of Achbar's 1992 award-winning 'Manufacturing Consent' -- carefully points out that people who work for corporations, and even those who run them, are often very nice people.
The same could have been said about many slave owners, he observes. The institution -- not the people -- is the problem, Chomsky argues.
Eminent economist Milton Friedman sums up the role of the corporation succinctly: it creates jobs and wealth but is inherently incapable of dealing with the social consequences of its actions.
'The Corporation' documents a bewildering array of these consequences -- including the deaths of citizens who protest corporate ownership of their water in Cochabamba, Bolivia -- that demonstrate the extent and power of today's corporations.
It looks at the often-cozy relationships between corporations and fascist regimes, such as that of IBM and Nazi leader Adolph Hitler.
It demonstrates the power of advertising to create desires for luxury items, as well as how corporations can suppress information.
The documentary shows agribusiness corporation Monsanto successfully preventing the news media from airing a story about the potential health hazards of a genetically engineered drug given to many U.S. diary cows.
'The Corporation' also tells a number of success stories, including activists' successful fight to overturn corporate patents on the neem tree and basmati rice.
Bolivia's Oscar Olivera describes how citizens of Cochabamba city re-took control of their water. The lesson, he explains, is the people's capacity for "reflection, rage and rebellion" as an effective counter to corporate globalization
That is one of the film's messages, says Bakan. "We want people to understand that they can change things."
"Everyone keeps thanking us for making the film," says Mark Achbar, from the Sundance festival of independent films in Utah state.
"People are fed up with being talked down to and enjoy being intellectually engaged," he adds, trying to explain the documentary's popularity and several international festival awards.
Despite its current limited distribution in Canada, 'The Corporation' has been sold as a three-part, one-hour TV series to international markets, and Achbar is hoping it will be translated into Spanish.
Of course, there will not be a multi-million marketing campaign. The number of people who will see it will depend on those who have, spreading the word.
That is just one way to take back the power that corporations have usurped.
http://www.thecorporation.tv
the winter bluz have really set in. lotta long faces around, twitchy. i have for some time thought that this phase did not start until march. but that was based on another time and another place. the winter bluz are here now.
yesterday was one of the longer days of my life.
my friend john r asked me today about all this "heart" business. come to find out he associated it with the western picture of "heart", all sappy and goofy and satin red. i was thinking of "heart" in the eastern manner, something to act from and on, a connection to beauty. beauty is reality, reality is beauty. a doorway.
then there is rilke:
"For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror
which we are barely able to endure and are awed
because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
Each single angel is terrifying."
then there's the laundry.
woke up. got out of bed. pulled the covers over my head.
finished three more long chapters in book i am typesetting, caught up on online course. washed the dishes and vacuumed. work as distraction.
then this jumped into my head:
"...that the thought of the heart is the thought of images, that the heart is the seat of the imagination, that imagination is the authentic voice of the heart, so that if we speak from the heart we must speak imaginatively."
james hillman
the thought of the heart
long 24 hours. i think i am beginning to see with new eyes. the illumined world presents itself through the heart. head bobs along behind. it is a good day to be now.
the soul is messy, earthbound, fluid, moist, lives in the damp valleys, near water. spirit enfolds souls. the pull of a beautiful woman's soul illuminates the dark spaces of the heart and illuminates the world in a suprising novel new manner. continually.
got this from tharpa d. "onelist" just now. don't know what book it is from. but hillman seems to be suffering an eclipse right now, and it's good to remember what his subject matter was (is):
"We cannot go further . . . because we are bereft in our culture of an adequate psychology and philosophy of the heart, and therefore also of the imagination. Our hearts cannot apprehend that they are imaginatively thinking hearts, because we have so long been told that the mind thinks and the heart feels and that imagination leads us astray from both. Even when the heart is allowed its reasons, they are those of faith or of feeling, for we have forgotten that philosophy itself --the most complex and profound demonstration of thought-- is not 'wisdom' or 'truth' in an abstract sense of 'sophic'. Rather, philosophy begins in philos arising in the heart of our blood, together with the lion, the wound, and the rose. If we would recover the imaginal we must first recover its organ, the heart, and its kind of philosophy."
-James Hillman
nice birthday. i used to go to great lengths to deny them, but i just let this one slide by.
a little dionysian revelry last night, good for the soul.
my first experience with DSL outage - yesterday around noon i couldn't log on, tried a few things and phoned bellsouth support. after the usual beeps and clicks i didn't hear what i expected - "outage in your area" - but got into trouble shooting lines and modem. really did not want to do this so left it dysfunctional. phoned about 8 tonight, recorded message "your area has just recovered from an outage, you may have to reboot etc."
now why didn't they tell me that to begin with?
doug b. phoned this after noon, over at steve and racheal's, reitzals, doug, pleasant afternnon of conversation.
ok it's 9:41 pm est. i'm going to sign off and see how quickly i can get the image of the day done. ready, set, go...
spent yesterday at the computer and the easel. cold gray day but by 4 it was sunny but still cool. took an hour downtime walk 5-6, beautiful warm light glowing from the treetops. recorded a long guitar piece i think i can work with.
been working on dreamweaver online course since 6 this morning. now it's up and out to run errands before freezing rain hits around noon.
BTW it is my birthday this coming saturday. be sure to ship titanium g5 notebook computer to get here on time, as well as digital camcorder and camera.
on the radio years ago i heard an interview of an indian who was involved in wounded knee years before - i forget his name - who lived by himself in a trailer on the reservation. the interviewer asked him how he spent his time. he replied that he spent much of the time sitting and staring at the wall. there was a pause, and then he added something to the effect that he was comfortable doing this and it could be much worse.
well i'm back in the saddle again. it takes me much longer to regroup after a trip than it used to. if i can kleen the house and get to the grocery store i'll feel like a citizen.
i'm taking online course which should prove interesting if i can keep up with it. (i can, question is will i?)
highly recommend you check this out. personally i think it would do well as zuperbowl ad:
Thanks for the Memories
made it to george aka ray o'hanlon's sendoff at karma's. travis, ludie, ray aka rock, mike, demian and others of a bygone era present, good to see everyone.
a lot of ray's family were present, fun to see how much they respected him, probably for the same reasons that gave them problems years ago.
met harry, who went to grade school with ray. harry, email me, i'd like to chat.
and i hope mike and i might begin a harmless easy excercise to "see what happens".
snowing outside, ice and sleet on the way. slept in my rolling yurt the last two nights, very comfortable, no problem. i'm ready, already all ready, ready for to fade, maybe spend time in camper under snow reading radience of being by dr. allen combs, highly recommended.
thursday AM, good nite's sleep last night. i have decided to go to george's memorial service in raleigh sat, so i will be driving to chapel hill friday afternoon and be back here monday afternoon. i am on DSL now, so far so good, today i will fool with outlook xpress (on a mac) to send/receive email without hassel.
my dad's 85th bday was yesterday, happy bday dad. i sent him retouched ancient photos, one of which i'll post here if i get the time. [later: i got the time.] this is photo of my dad, me, and a ghost dog, probably taken in san antonio, i would say 42 or 43.
tuzday evening. seems like i got a little done this morning --- now i remember: book club discussion. very nice to be accepted as myself into a small group of thoughtful and curious folks.
then i lost it, rushing to couseling for nonexisting appoinment, then coming back to a strange egg experience.
which was this: i have been adding a little egg yolk to watercolors to see what happens. but i have trouble separating the yolk. so i went into hyperfocus (i thought) and many eggs later had perfect yolk in container. i immediately grabbed jar of clorox bleach and filled the container up with it.
when what i set out to do was add a drop of vinegar.
this initiated a long series of thoughts and images on my part, the upshot of which is that i need to pay more attention to my friends. how i got there i do not know, but i did get there.
dreary sunday morning. spent yesterday alone, puttering, brooding, but lots of friendly phone calls. very sleepless night.
but oh boy, i'm ready to do it again today. already all ready.
finished a "failed" painting. i'll put it up later today. (see below). i aim to finish an oil today. then 3 more that have been laying around. after that i'll have a clean slate and start again, stumbling beyond the beginner's stage.
installed DSL, quite an improvement, but a lot of tweaking left.
or maybe i'll just stay in bed.
yesterday i got the news of two deaths.
brenner mehl, a longtime Baba lover and lately a member of the community in asheville died. there were many of us here in town who looked forward to getting to know him a little better.
george o'hanlon died recently in an altercation with a moving vehicle in fayeteville. george was brilliant, mecurial, and could be a handful. he was a member of a small circle of friends that went through many changes in our youth.
a prayer for both: rest in the peace that passes understanding.
on a lighter note, another of that small circle above has a new book out: go to Art Lester
way to go art, there is a few twitches left in those of us who are left.
more stuff & nonsense.::
Salon.com News | AP: Gov't to overhaul employee drug tests
meanwhile i think i'm hooked up to DSL, but it may not be quite ... right yet.
yesterday was a beautiful sunny winter day, altho my diasynchronic meta-rhythms were a little off. had pleasant break for lunch with richard, the delimma of political activity on the part of us american humans came up (see below).
in the afternoon i was in the sway of magnetic fatigue, nap was right around the corner, when everything flipped and jill and i drove to old fort to visit sam. most pleasant interlude. by nine or ten i was wide awake. felt like a delayed full moon jerking me around, finally got some sleep around four.
the question of acting politically for me and i assume not a few others seems to go like this: i want to contribute to the effort of reversing the invisible coup-d'etat that we are living through, but am strangely resistant to engaging with it. why?
i think it is a varient of the mood that i was encoutering even before 9.11: it's too big, massive, and untouchable to be effected by those of us in the machine.
example: the hoo-ha over WMD. in my opinion it does not matter if they are found or not. because the common censensus has been all along that of course it was a set up. ditto with the new book by ex-treasury dept head revealing planning for the war begun way before 9.11. we all figured as much. (see Plastic: O'Neill Claims Bush Disengaged, Administration Planned Iraq Invasion Early.)
so as far as the culpability of bush and friends kidnapping our government, i do not think any fact exposed in the future concerning, for example, no-bid contracts, the corporate tax structure, various mistruths used along the way, etc. will matter.
the public already knows.
so the trick will be for somebody, anybody, to articulate thru the closed circuit of the media, not what this bunch is doing, but why it matters that they be stopped. how to do this with the media is under lock and key is the task.
remember that slow, languishing song by john lennon, i'm so tired? i do and am.
found this gem wrapped up in a daedalus catalog that arrived today:
ok ok in an attempt to keep up with this thing i will post more often. otherwise this blog seems to be heading south, i mean going stale. it fact it probably will anyway.
so it�s time to revamp modern peasant. not so much to keep up with the movement of things, as to be comfortable with keeping up with nothing.
today i heard someone interviewed on �fresh air�, a tax expert. he was talking about how the system works today. and it explained why we all should vote against bush.
as far as the question below, some possibilities have occurred to me:
day after xmas. posting so vast throngs of modernpeasants out there - or here - know i'm all right and it's all good.
beautiful drive down the mountains yesterday, saw everything with new eyes so to speak.
spent yesterday and last night at eli & melissa's, good company, everything moves slow and clear enough to be just what it is, and it is a blessing. good times.
new philipk. dick link by his children, a few passages from the exigisis. looks like it will access a lot of new materials.
from
Philip K. Dick - Science Fiction Author - Official Site
my friend jill is watching me post this. what fun!
and here is picture i found yesterday, maybe 25 years old:
man oh man. i got a relaxed day coming up this very day. no deadlines. no post offices. no highways. of course i do have a truck that insists on turning on it's parking lights in the middle of the night & running the battery down, but that's pretty run of the mill these days.
i'm sure many of you have been receiving these scam spam emails involving bank transfers. i got one this morning that i find intriguing because the scammer has a whole new way to find me; check out the last sentence:
Good day,
It is my humble pleasure to write this letter irrespective of the fact
that you do not know me. However, I came to know of you in my private
search for a reliable and trustworthy person that can handle a
confidential transaction of this nature in respect of this, I got your
contact through an uprooted search on the internet.
a couple of notes:
the photo i mentioned yesterday:
"Thank God Saddam is finally back in American hands! He must have really missed us. Man, he sure looked bad! But, at least he got a free dental exam today. That's something most Americans can't get.
America used to like Saddam. We loved Saddam. We funded him. We armed him. We helped him gas Iranian troops."
from
AlterNet: We Finally Got Our Frankenstein
the big enchilada. question is, now that that is that, has anything changed?
well yes, kind of like when a biz deal goes sour. the picture from the 80's of rumsfield shaking hands w/ saddam is a wonderful artifact. how quickly we forget. in fact quicklier and quicklier.
bush's folks don't lie, they just keep changing the storyline. but it doesn't create a problem because we like it that way. novelty wins, and anyway we forget what it was the punchline was last week.
what does it mean for the democrats? nothing because their problem remains the same: breaking thru the captive lingo to communicate straight-on with millions of people at the same time while shaking the burden of a thousand layers of commentary that deaden the meaning in a matter of seconds (literally) in the 24 hour news cycle.
another tip of the hat to tucker for this dubious email. i guess it is floating around the net. personally, sitting here at the keyboard, i'll bet 5 to 1 that this is not accurate. i'll let you know.
----------------------------
> >THE EAGLE SOARS
> >
> >This is something to think about!! Since America is typically represented
> >by an eagle.... Saddam should have read up on his Muslim passages... The
> >following verse is from the Koran, (the Islamic Bible)
> >
> >Koran Verse 9 : 11
> >For it is written that a son of Arabia would awaken a fearsome Eagle. The
> >wrath of the Eagle would be felt throughout the lands of Allah and lo,
> >while some of the people trembled in despair, still more rejoiced; for
the
> >wrath of the Eagle cleansed the lands of Allah; and there was peace.
> >
> >Note the verse number!
>
got this email today. thanks tucker.
wed. afternoon about 2. gloomy, steady drizzle to downpour. left the house at 10 and just got back, 2 doctor appointments and a number of errands in between.
i think i've got a bad case of the xmas blues. maybe it peaked yesterday, a day i really should have stayed in bed.
noticed an article in the nation, American Apocalypse, that i'd like to check out. brought home fixed ideas: america since 9.11 by joan didion. if either of these 2 reads (or any other) can even semi-lucidly describe today real congratulations are in order.
i think for this is that language has split into 2 modes, one "official" and the the other what is left of the personal.
the domain of the "official" - printed word, books, tv, magazines, sweatshirts - cannot describe what is outside of it's domain.
and the landscape of today inhabited by most of us, i believe, is a very strained and uncomfortable place because it includes less and less of the "personal".
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read it -
The New York Review of Books: The Awful Truth:
"September 11, Krugman writes, actually helped the President execute 'the largest bait-and-switch operation in history"
then go look at the clouds. notice that funny one in the corner of the sky, sort of looks like a smug elephant?
the weather has been so incredibly beautiful this week. clear, translucent, snappy. finally got out to see some of it yesterday. visited steve and friends yesterday AM for awhile and had the kim-chee omelet special for breakfast. in the afternoon took a drive with richard to big ivy, davis falls, nice walk through the mountains.
have a new plan for today. richard mentioned how he would like to take a day off and just catch up on reading. i think this is a good idea and that's what i'm going to do today. turn off the computer and try and finish "non-zero sumness and human destiny" for book club tomorrow. and putter. need to find 2 missing pieces of paperwork i stashed somewhere long ago and paperwork, as we all know, keeps the world spinning round. i'll let you know how this worked tomorrow.
still working on my orientation to now. got groceries and laundry today, met with counselor, bill o from hville paid a visit, got a prescription phoned in, and discovered what happens when you put guache on top of sumi on top of oil pastel on top of watercolor. the quotidean, so nice when the weather is cool, breezy and moist, rain somewhere nearby, restless cloudy day.
the difference between thinking and conciousness is finally dawning on me. anyway i think about it a lot.
today had that odd off balnce feeling, not unpleasant but just a little off. beutiful weather, the trees have turned, the breeze is cool, and voices can be heard, lef-lookers gathering on the front poarches and rinking burboun.
leaving tomorrow for trip to visit old stomping grounds (chapel hill). was i doing the stomping or being stompe?
all four of my children and two grandchildren will be there and it will be a pleasure to visit with them. there is something inherently satisfactory about seeing them grow into the world while i recede from it.
then on to the Meher Baba Center in SC for a touch of the Real, a clue or two about how to live in the world.
i haven't written much lately about the world. the news. current events. i feel like i've retreated to the lobby while the scenery is being rearranged for the next act. only when the scenery is reconfigured so are we. the experience of being a person-in-the-world (or -play if you prefer) is changing.
the limitations of all institutions as the carrier of human effort and organization has reached the end of the line, and some new way to organize humans is in the wings. fear-based effort (the job, career) is evaporating. facets of human conciousness we all have but that have been successfully ignored during the past 300 years or so (the age of the descended grid - wilber) are slowly resurfacing.
a year or so ago i told my son-in-law doug, who is ultra-conventional in his outlook, that if we won the iraqi war in one day and saddam's head was delivered to the white house via fed-ex that huge monumental troubles of long duration, the likes of what we have not yet seen, would just be beginning. i haven't seen lately anything to change my mind. the question is if i and other bottom-feeders could see this, why couldn't the folks in charge of our government?
one possible answer is the nature of institutions as they now exist. to perform effectively in say the federal government or a hospital or a bank or a large corporation or university, an individual has to repress any knowledge of the outside world, has to smell and talk right, has to speak a constricted highly styalized language, has to occupy him or herself with turf battles to the exclusion of any other parts of life. to be successful in this setup is to be ill informed about other worlds. the temporal and geographical provencialism of the modern allows ignorant people (ignorence, from the verb "to ignore") to blunder into untenable situations and not have a clue that they don't have a clue. the rube oligharchy.
99% of the babble during the "run-up" to the war was inbred. imaginary constructs, straw men, empty rhetoric. false issues like, if you are "against" the war you are helping the enemy and harming our troops.
a clear straight voice from the heart speaking in the public domain could shred this kind of fantasy colloquy in a minute. if we could hear it.
