Thompson, Candrikirti, semantic nominalism

Following up on Thompson's Waking, Dreaming, Being, this article seems to support the notion of self-designation as necessary for humans to perceive something. It notes that the color blue didn't appear in languages until much later than other colors. We may have seen it but couldn't identify it. Or maybe we just couldn't see it until we could designate it.

"But do you really see something if you don't have a word for it? [...]  [B]efore blue became a common concept, maybe humans saw it. But it seems they didn't know they were seeing it. If you see something yet can't see it, does it exist? Did colors come into existence over time? Not technically, but our ability to notice them may have."

Thompson used Candrikirti regarding self-designation. It is consistent with this article by Sonam Thackchoe: "Prasangika's semantic nominalism: Reality is linguistic concept." An excerpt:

Spock's wisdom

Progressive and regressive policy results

Which is better?

Waking, Dreaming, Being, chapter ten concluding

Continuing from this post:

Thompson offers an interesting recontextualization of subtle energy via the bio-electrical charges produced by cells and their organization, including the neuro-network of the brain. This is an embodied version of prana or chi that provided a material substrate for consciousness. Our evolved neuro-structure transforms from being a self-specifying system into one that is self-designating. The latter can designate itself as a self that can conceive its own subjectivity. This capacity is limited to humans, apes, dolphins, Asian elephants and the Eurasian magpie. (Remember the magpie?) This capacity is paired with the ability to see oneself in the third-person perspective. However it is only developed in intersubjecetive relation to another and not inherent in itself. Which of course reminds me of Mark Edwards' work on the so-called exterior developmentalists like Vygotsky and Mead. (See his three-part series “The depth of the exteriors” that begins here.)

The above capacity of called self-projection which gives rise to a historical self that Damasio calls the narrative self and phenomenologists called the autobiographical self. We can conceive of ourselves as a unique identity that exists through time. Specific brain areas are activated when the narrative self is functioning, particularly the frontal and medial temporal-parietal that relate to planning and memory respectively. The default network is also involved, which happens when outward-related tasks are low. Hence when meditation commences one immediately becomes consciously focused on this stream of self-consciousness. It also teaches one to observe this stream of I-making from a background awareness, which I've long proposed is the witness of the third-person perspective unlinked from attachment to objects, including the narrative self sense.

Waking, Being, Dreaming, chapter ten continued

Continuing from this post:

It's time to interject some posts in other threads, like this one and several following:

This article by Thompson & Davis relates back to my earlier ruminations on memory and the five aggregates. A brief excerpt with further study and commentary to follow:

"We outline here how the traditional theoretical context of mindfulness practice can offer important suggestions for scientific research. In particular, the five aggregates model draws distinctions that are not always clearly formulated in contemporary cognitive science, but that are crucial for a scientific understanding of the function of mindfulness meditation. We suggest below how empirical hypotheses about the role of memory and its relation to attention and consciousness in mindfulness meditation can be refined in light of distinctions suggested in the Buddhist five aggregates model" (586-7).

There were a lot of technical terms, both Buddhist and scientific. He tries to bridge them to find correlations but admits they are at times questionable or approximate at best. Nonetheless to translate, we've seen some of this earlier in this thread and elsewhere, the aggregates being, body, emotion, base mind or core attention, volition and consciousness. He relates the 3rd and 5th to open monitoring and concentration meditative techniques. Granted both have a focused attention and monitoring function and activate both aggregates. The latter monitors wandering away from and return to a selected object of focus. The former monitors wandering away and a return to focus on whatever is present. It activates more the base level and inhibits selective attention.

Right to work for less States

Robert Reich correctly frames these States as "right to work for less." The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), that regressive org run by the Koch brothers, proposes model legislation on this that regressively-controlled States enact verbatim. Such legislation in those States lowers wages and benefits drastically and destroy unions. This in turn has decimated the middle class, all of which the regressives want. So don't believe regressive lying rhetoric that they support the middle class with good-paying jobs. It's just the opposite with such legislation: low minimum wage jobs with no benefits that require public assistance to survive.

Senator Warren on the TPP

In this article she specifically highlights one aspect of the TPP, Investor-State Dispute Settlement. This is basically a corporation can sue a government if the latter's regulations cost the corp lost profits. The judges in this case are not courts but a panel of businessmen who represent the very interests they are supposed to judge. In case you think no, this can't be right, some of the suits already brought include a French company suing Egypt because the latter raised its minimum wage. A Swedish company sued Germany because the latter is phasing out nuclear energy. No shit.

Regressives enact hatred of science and love of money

We've long know this is the regressive agenda. They decided to make it law today. From the article; see the rest for more details.

"The GOP-dominated House passed a bill that effectively prevents scientists who are peer-reviewed experts in their field from providing advice — directly or indirectly — to the EPA, while at the same time allowing industry representatives with financial interests in fossil fuels to have their say. Perversely, all this is being done in the name of 'transparency.'”

Hermenati

Since my theurjisms* are sometimes so naughty, and since I'm a hermeneut, perhaps I'm a hermenaughty? Or to spell in like Illuminati a Hermenati? It is of course an open secret society. Other possibilities: hermeneuti, hermenutti.

* The creative jism of theurj, 'in yo face.'

Net neutrality won

Yeah! See this story. The FCC voted today to reclassify ISPs as utilities under Title II, what the millions of us have been petitioned for. We defeated the big money from the ISPs and their paid lackeys, the Republican regressives. You see, we can make progressive change when we organize and get active, even against the powerful. Hopefully we can do this for the 2016 elections.

Stewart's epic takedown of regressives

He accurately describes regressive ideology, which trumps fact, science and yes, even patriotism and freedom. He echoes George Lakoff who said: "The highest conservative value is preserving and empowering their moral system itself."

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Clowning around

See this article from Integral Church, "Foolishness and the kingdom of the bad."

E really does equal MC2

See this article. Researchers are predicting that they'll be able to create matter directly from light in the next 12 months via quantum electrodynamics.

Waking, Being, Dreaming, chapter ten

Continuing from this post:

The self is neither identical with nor separate from the five aggregates. The latter are body, feeling, perception, will and consciousness. Hence consciousness per se is not the foundation for the self or the universe at large. Thompson's enactive view of the self, which he bases on his interpretation of Nagarjuna, does not see it as an eternal essence but as dependently arisen and contingent, yet not reducible to the ephemerally fluctuating aggregates. It is “a self-specifying system,” a “collection of processes that mutually specify each other so that they constitute the system as a self-perpetuating whole in relation to the environment” (325). Here we see the sort of dynamic systems autonomy Bryant or Varela discusses. However I would qualify that this system is in relation to an environment, not the environment, since per OOO and other contemporary ontologists there is no one overriding and self-same environment that itself inherently exists (aka the assholon). A system selectively responds to those things or processes which promote or debilitate it, so out of any number of possible things or processes outside its boundaries only those selections are in its enactive environment.

Richard Wolff: "Capitalism is over"

He said at 7:00. He then talks about what happened in Greece.

History proves regressives wrong

Time and time again.

Different Kind of Love

Lyrics from a song I wrote in my 20s, oh so many years ago. I do not have a recording of it and I'm in no position to perform it these days. The first and third verses have one chord progression, the second and fourth another. The last verse repeats part of the first's progression.

Different Kind of Love

Ooo I feel so good I'm in love again
only this time it's different maybe
this time around I ain't gonna hold on.
I'll open my heart and say that I love you
give you everything I got I will
give you all the love I got to give.
But this time we break on out of the pattern
loving then going our own ways
sharing but keeping our own separate lives.
Not always expecting you to be there
getting along for myself nicely
learning to love an live with myself.

Phantasmic

Giuliani's kind of love

Following up on the last post, see this article on Giuliani's biographer claiming the G-spot is full of shit. G claims that "I would go anywhere, any place, anytime, and I wouldn’t give a damn what the President of the United States said, to defend my country." And yet per the biographer "Rudy may have forgotten the half-dozen deferments he won ducking the Vietnam War, even getting the federal judge he was clerking for to write a letter creating a special exemption for him." That's love all right, not of country but of one's own ass.

Fifty shades of Giuliani

A funny segment from last night's Real Time. As is often the case, there is some projection and perverse wish fulfillment behind comments like Giuliani's.

Bad mix

Faux Snooze is #1 with racists

See this story. An AZ college professor teaches a class about the actual history of slavery, genocide and Jim Crow and regressives accuse him of reverse discrimination. You see, this liberal professor is not engaging is neo-con ideological whitewashing of history by painting a beautiful picture of American exceptionalism.

Michael Reardon

From the Thomas Reynolds gallery in San Francisco.

Robert Reich on the Keystone XL Pipeline

Syriza's economic, democratic socialism

From this article:

"Restated for the 21st century, 'socialism' simply means that a people's judgments about its own economic life -- the kind of work people do, the kind of security they enjoy, the kind of dignity they feel -- come before the supposedly iron rules of the international economy. It would also be fair to call it 'economic democracy.' [...] Economic democracy (or, as Syriza calls it, socialism) is politics that puts human needs first and accepts that market-based destabilization, impoverishment, and humiliation are not natural disasters or comeuppance for bad behavior but forms of political violence."

Robert Reich on Walmart increasing its minimum wage

Per this FB post:

"The right is already putting out a false story about why Walmart raised its wages. Here's the Wall Street Journal's account:

'Wal-Mart Stores Inc. plans to boost pay for its U.S. employees to at least $10 an hour by next year, well above the minimum wage, signaling a tightening labor market and rising competition for lower-paid workers.'

"Baloney. Low-wage Americans are not in a tight labor market. They're still suffering brutally high rates of unemployment. Walmart raised wages because it was under increasing pressure from its current workers,and from a huge and growing national campaign focused on raising Walmart workers' pay. But Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal and other conservative outlets don't want that story told, for fear it might mobilize even more Americans to demand higher wages. Spread the truth."

Escher, that kidder

Metamodern metastasizing

Balder started a FB IPS post on this here. John said:

"I am less interested in the classifications as I am in who is doing the classifying? And where is the evidence? Or is this just someones's wish list for the good life? Seems the standards are so vague as to fit just about anyone I know. Only the lonely it would seem to me or those who have a lot of time on her hands would be that interested in joining this meta club. I have seen this self infatuation thing many times before. I guess I am triggered by going meta. The meta trap." 

Balder replied jokingly: "You're saying you have an allergy, John?"

I replied:

Scumbag ALEC is at it again

This time with trying to prevent city broadband internet competition. Free market my ass. From Credo Action.

Imagine having affordable, lightning-fast Internet access at your home that is 50-100 times faster than the national average.¹ That could soon be a reality, but the shadowy American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is working to make sure it never happens.² Nearly 20 states already have laws on the books stopping cities from providing fast, publicly-owned Internet access – and other states could soon follow suit. President Obama just urged the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to make it illegal for states to block cities from providing affordable and fast Internet access – and the FCC is expected to make a decision next week.

Tell the FCC: Protect our access to fast and affordable Internet service. Click here to sign the petition.

Job blue-ballers

Robert Reich interview with Salon here. See it for details. I particularly liked this quote on why more jobs are not being created despite the so-called job creators raking in the profits.

"As long as political power is so skewed, there’s no reason to suppose that a lot of jobs are going to be created, for the simple reason that big corporations don’t want a tight labor market. They like a loose labor market; they like to be able to keep a lid on payrolls. Payrolls had been 70 percent of the costs of most companies prior to the Great Recession, and one of the reasons that companies have shown greater profitability since then is that they’ve kept a lid on wages, haven’t hired back people, or haven’t provided any raises. They want a relatively high level of hidden unemployed — that is, people who are no longer in the job market — as well as the ability to outsource abroad."

Greece leads the Commons (r)evolution

Michel Bauwens of the P2P Foundation posted this link in his FB P2P group. The name of the article is "The new Greek government endorses Commons-based peer production solutions." The new Greek Deputy Prime Minister literally said so. Who knew that a leader in the emerging Commons on a national scale would be Greece? I guess this is what happens when a country is pushed so far into a capitalist paradigm that fucks over most of its citizens. When will the US get the message?

The smell test

Maher's segment on celebrity perfumes is funny. In some cases something smells a little bit off.

Waking, Dreaming, Being, chapter nine

Continuing from this post:

Death is the topic of this chapter. The Tibetan Buddhist view is that we survive death as pure awareness. This 'mental' body then seeks a new physical embodiment for rebirth. Those in this tradition practice dying via a meditative process of dissolving the body, emotions and mind to arrive at this pure awareness that survives death. It is similar to the process of falling asleep, with the pure awareness of deep sleep similar to or the same as that in death. Hence dream and sleep yoga are further practices for death preparation.

However dreaming and deep sleep, as well as the imaginative practice of simulating death, are not actual, physiologically death. And comparing dreaming, deep sleep and meditative states to death just because we imagine the process is similar is not evidence that the process is the same during death. Thompson is “very skeptical” that such comparisons are a “literal description of what anyone will experience at the moment of death and afterward” (287). It does though provide for a “ritualized phenomenology” that trains one in a cultural, soteriological and meaningful approach to dying (291). It's a different matter though to transfer this to an ontological status.

Waking, Being, Dreaming, chapter eight continued

Continuing from this post:

Neurologically, in deep sleep brain waves slow down into the delta range. Large-scale brain integration and synchrony shuts down. Such integration is necessary for access consciousness but apparently not so for phenomenal consciousness, which is what meditative traditions presume is happening in deep sleep. Said traditions also claim that through such training one indeed can access the phenomenal consciousness of deep sleep.

The Capitalist and Commons perspectives

DearElizabetherWarren.com

See this message from Ready for Warren below and check out the new website here.

Today we're launching a new site -- DearElizabethWarren.com 

We're building a genuine movement to take back our political process from the big money donors and entrenched insiders. We're sick and tired of politics-as-usual, and we refuse to be invisible when the most important decisions are being made about the future of our country.

Whether you record a video, write a letter, or send a postcard, Elizabeth Warren needs to hear your story. Together, we can show Warren and the world just how wide, diverse, and deeply dedicated this movement is -- and the story that convinces Elizabeth Warren to run could be yours.

Watch the video, check out the stories, then share the site with your friends.

Who selects whom?

Nothing else matters

Love me like you mean it

The Words

She reminds me of Tori Amos.

10 reasons to vote Republican

See this article for the details. The bullet points follow.

1. You are a bigot
2. You like eating, drinking and breathing poison
3. You think the rich don't have enough money
4. You don't support our veterans
5. You like big deficits

Maher with a climate change denier

OMG, this is frightening, the level of denial and rationalization here.

Sound familiar?

Of the billionaires, by the billionaires, for the billionaires

Here's Senator Sanders on the corruption of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.

Regressives want to destroy the post office

See this article. If you believed the regressive narrative the post office (PO) is failing because it isn't doing a good job, that it runs a deficit and delivers poor service because it is a government bureaucracy. But as usual the regressives are lying because they want to privatize it and everything else, for that matter. You see, the regressives in Congress have manufactured a crisis where none exists. They saddled the PO with funding a retiree benefit program 75 years in advance. This is something that no other public or private organization has to do. So yes, with this restriction the PO runs in the red, but without this restriction that no other public or private organization has to do they would have had a surplus of $600 million in 2013 and $1.4 billion in 2014. The PO works and works well if left to the rules that every other organization has to run by. But that's the point: regressives want to see it fail so created rules to make it do so, rules by which any company would fail. See the article for more details on their insidious plan to privatize everything and fuck everyone else in the process.

Creating jobs by (re)building infrastructure

If you agree with Senator Sanders on the Bill per the video below please sign this petition, thanks.

Warren v. Clinton

For those of you who don't think Warren has a chance of getting the Dem nomination, see this. Warren leads Clinton in IA and NH polls, 31-24 and 30-27 respectively.

Robert Reich on socio-economic regression

His recent article is a major reason I call them regressives, as that is exactly what they are trying to do: turn back the clock to a gilded, fuedal aristocracy and roll back democracy. Their agenda and its result are ample evidence.

Pet memories

See this article and the video below on this parrot's reenactment of previous owners.

On conveyor belts and developmental constraints

Continuing from the last post, I was re-reading some posts from the IPS thread on religion. Here is my blast from the past in that discussion.

I'm looking over the section of Integral Spirituality on the conveyor belt. A few points of relevance for this thread.

He notes that agnosticism and atheism via formop cognition are legitimate forms of orange spirituality (191). They just need to acknowledge the legitimacy of other levels of spirituality, both above and below it. Hence the need for the conveyor belt. I'd here disagree with the statement that seeing absolute reality in terms of finite matter and energy is a reduction, but that's an argument long rehashed in many other threads.

Amber religion though needs to open up to orange and above religion. So is that saying religion itself must go through an orange agnostic or atheist stage? Or are there other forms of theistic orange religion. I don't see that addressed here. While there are examples of orange and green religion they are apparently not openly discussed by religious hierarchies.

Nonetheless, a key point of the conveyor belt is that everyone goes through each stage starting from scratch and we must honor that everyone has the right to stop at whatever stage they want. Religion thus must allow for the entire spectrum from pre to post. And religion must provide an environment for those that want to go post to support that development.

However, he uses an analogy on 193. Modern medical education does not start with the mythic level in applying leaches or using phrenology in diagnosis, then moving on the antibiotics etc. But this is legitimate for religions? He understands that in other domains certain worldviews and correlative practices are outmoded, i.e, transcended and replaced. But not with religions for some inexplicable reason. (Recall the thread on transitional structures.) For the moment I'd add that some rational and post religious views like Caputo and Keller do not continue to contain pre-rational elements.

Post-secularism

andrew started an IPS thread on the topic. My response:

This is not a disagreement between theists and secularists; it is only with the pre- and conventional theists. So to just agree to disagree with them is not 'post-secular.' I have no quarrel with post-conventional theists that have at least a rational basis, and it is 'reasonable' to expect that level of discourse. As but one example, I don't always go to church but when I do I prefer the Unitarian.* They accept people from any religion or no religion, so they are post-secular in that sense. And yet there are some foundational principles, Enlightenment rationality being among them. Granted that might not be the highest development level of cognitive capacity, but it is certainly the necessary prerequisite for anything even remotely calling itself post-secular. I think Habermas would agree, given his penchant for communicative action and ideal speech situations as foundational for his own rehabilitated Enlightenment project. I'm also recalling this post on the Lingam's conveyor belt.

* Stolen from the Dos Equis commercials.

This southern woman gives up on regressives

See this article. She can no longer talk to her southern neighbors about politics. Here are some of the bullet points as to why. She nails it. See the article for the details.

You support revisionist history. You use Biblical scripture to excuse yourself from feeding the hungry. You care more about your guns than you do about children. You get excited about people dying. You assume that everyone who needs help are losers and parasites who refuse to work. You don't want people who disagree with you to vote. You scream about undocumented immigrant children at the border, but you hire Mexicans to do your dirty work. You love war, death and destruction. It's impossible for you to see your privilege. You are lazy and refuse to read.

Which liberation?

Spirituality beyond escapism: spirituality as activism by Zachary Stein:

"Today our enthusiasms for Eastern spiritual imports are leading us away from the discourse about individual rights and democracy leveraged so eloquently by Dr. King, which has served as the most powerful catalyst of social change in history. This language of liberation that is our heritage is being replaced by a language of liberation that is predominantly about the qualities of our own minds and emotional states."

Solar is cheaper than the grid

in 42 of the 50 largest US cities. See this article. This is so according to a new report by the North Carolina Clean Energy Technology Center, backed by the SunShot Initiative. This is in part due to a "rapid decline in the hardware costs for solar energy, which has made the technology much more accessible in all parts of the country," as well as "policies such as the federal Investment Tax Credit, state renewable portfolio standards, net metering and value-of-solar tariffs." It's amazing what we the people can accomplish when we set our minds (i.e. our ecological consciousness) to it.

Some of Hillary Clinton's financial backers

See this story on HSBC tax dodgers. Then see this one on some of those HSBC dodgers who donated big time to the Clinton Foundation. And we're supposed to believe that she is going to stand up for the little guy when her MO to date is to talk about it but really cater to the big money? Does anyone really believe her? If they say yes, follow their money trail.

Downward causation and free will

Following up on this post, see the video below. It's a long one, but this is the latest in the neuroscientific evidence for free will.

Senator Sanders on social security

He says it best so I'll let him say it:

Republicans hate Social Security because it has been an extraordinary success and has done exactly what it was designed to do. Since its implementation in 1935, Social Security has lowered the poverty rate amongst seniors from about 50% to less than 10%. And today it also covers 11 million Americans living with disabilities including 3 million children, making it the most successful social program in our country’s history. However, the success of Social Security has only emboldened conservatives’ attempts at privatizing and cutting. In fact, currently in Congress, members of both the House and Senate are attempting to divide the American people, telling them that unless we cut benefits today, they won’t be there for future generations. Let me be clear. Social Security has not contributed one nickel to our deficit or our national debt. It has a $2.8 trillion surplus. It will be able to pay 100 percent of promised benefits to every eligible recipient for the next 18 years, just as it has done for the past 79 years. And, all we need to do is ask millionaires and billionaires to start paying their fair share and we not only extend the life of the Social Security trust fund, we can afford to expand benefits for millions of Americans. Today, February 10, marks the day when the top one percent of wage earners in America stop paying into Social Security. This is because, right now, only the first $118,500 of a wage earner’s income is subject to the payroll tax that funds Social Security. Stand with me and Social Security Works in demanding that millionaires and billionaires start paying their fair into Social Security. When they do, we will be able to expand, not cut, benefits for millions of Americans.

Never say never

Regressives are really concerned about income inequality

Say what? Yeah, all the regressives are jumping on this bandwagon, at least in word, since it is the key campaign issue for 2016. But they are just words, or in other words, lies. Their actual policy suggestions belie their blatant, lying manipulation. Here's Robert Reich on that hypocrisy.

"Suddenly every Republican presidential aspirant is talking about it. Jeb Bush focused on inequality last week at the Detroit Economic Club; Marco Rubio is now emphasizing it while noting he's the son of a bartender and a maid; Rand Paul, saying he shops at Walmart, is 'worried' about it; Scott Walker fears the 'American dream has become out of reach' for too many Americans.

Why Hillary is just more of the same

See this article, which discusses a weekend NY Times piece on Clinton. Her propagandists are trying to build a centrist policy that doesn't alienate the rich, since that's where her money comes from. But a recent study shows we need far more than so-called balanced centrist ideas, since the inequality situation is far worse than even the most horrid of imaginations. Such centrism doesn't make a dent in it, and some of its framing assumes regressive assumptions thereby actually perpetuating the problem.

Lawrence Summers, one of the said Clinton team, calls this kinder, gentler Democrat policy "inclusive capitalism." This is the Wall Street guy that was influential in the deregulation of the banking industry and the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act. He was on Obama's economic team and instrumental in the bailout of his banker buddies after the financial collapse. Yeah, that's just who we need advising Clinton in her own corporate-backed campaign with this sort of lip-service to progressive ideals when it's merely that; the policies maintain the status quo of power and money.

Regressives love to hate women

So the Republican healthcare plan is out and it hates women, as usual. It once again makes pregnancy a pre-existing condition and cuts maternity care. Women must also pay more for this 'condition.' It also kills contraception coverage. Those regressives love the fetus but hate the children and their mothers. Don't you just love them ladies?

Governor Walker caught in an outright lie

Another regressive Governor, this time from WI, was caught red-handed in a boldfaced lie. His own budget proposal deleted from U of WI's mission statement "basic to every purpose of the system is the search for truth."  We know that regressives do not like the truth or even education, so this is right in line with their agenda to defund education and dumb everyone down so they cannot discern the truth. But when he was confronted by this deletion he quipped that is was simply an error overlooked in the draft. Again the facts contradict this lie, in that there was a long chain of correspondence where his administration not only proposed this deletion but proofed and approved it. When the university fought back they were told to go to hell. This is typical operating procedure for the regressives. It's just amazing that their idiot constituents believe their lies and degradation of the social good.

Governor Christie's blatant corruption

There have been several examples of this, but this one is making the latest rounds. The NJ Governor has taken lavish trips at the expense of billionaires and foreign heads of State. Normally this would be illegal, but coincidentally Christie earlier signed an executive order making such graft legal. No, that's not corrupt, right Tony Soprano?

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Libertarian socialism as methodology

See this definition of libertarian socialism. It describes it as a methodological approach, since ideological ones tend to try to fit everything into its preferred model whether they fit or not. One example is Marx's "linear and inevitable historical progression." The same can be said for Wilber's ideologically fixated attachment to a linear and inevitable evolutionary progression, as well as the developmental model of hierarchical complexity. There are other forms of both development and complexity that do not adhere to this sort of teleology, like this as but one example.

The newer age

"To bring an end to the age of spiritual terrorism." Amen brother.

Waking, Being, Dreaming, chapter eight

Continuing from this post:

Can we be conscious during deep sleep? It seems perhaps so, but it is a prereflective or reflexive sort of consciousness. When awakened from deep sleep sometimes we forget who are what we are, but we know that we are. This is a temporary loss of our reflective, autobiographical self that must be reconstituted by memory. But there is a certainly about our prereflective awareness in that moment. I'm reminded of the discussion of the aggregates in the fold thread, how they are impermanent and fleeting and must be continually reconstituted from moment to moment. But that would apply equally as well to this prereflective awareness, that it too is not some permanent, pristine or original face.

Anti-vaxers spread disease

Get a clue youse guys; this is about public health. Maybe give a shit about something other than your personal, self-involved freedom?

Who should fight our wars?

Following up on previous posts about American Sniper, I'm just wondering if we don't we need this sort of psychopathic patriot to fight our wars, as long as we're going to have them? Can one be a bright, compassionate warrior a la Kung Fu? Or is that a myth too?

Hayak as a regressive leader

See this article for the details. The regressives have long adopted Hayak's anti central planning agenda. He was certain that in all cases it led to totalitarianism and dictatorships, hence any government planning and intervention is bad. While that proved to be true in some limited historical contexts like Russia, in other cases like western Europe and the US he was completely wrong. So he had to adjust his fanaticism against a softer socialism like government regulation of business, social programs and higher taxes to pay for it. Such handouts destroy individual initiative, a common regressive theme.

Share the scraps economy

In this article Robert Reich explores the capitalistic coopting and exploitation of the sharing commons, thereby creating the "share-the-scraps economy." His view seems much more critical and realistic than Rifkin's more surface treatment of it as a transition phase. Capitalists have no intention of giving up this exploitation and will do everything in their power to ensure that a real sharing Commons does not become the dominant socio-economic model. They see well the threat so coopt it and uses its catch words (framing), meanwhile maintaining its economic stranglehold on its 'members.'

Who decides what Wilber means?

Continuing from this post, who decides what Wilber means? Or Adi Da? Just themselves? LP's suggestion implies that we can take their stated meaning at face value, that they know well the full extent of their meaning, and that we do not. So we must be careful in interpreting what they say but they do not because they have privileged access we lack due to Supermind? This guy I know explored this question 10 years ago and it still stands the test of time. In Wilber's own words, the problem arises when a theory tries "to make its context the only context worth serious consideration" (p. 113).

On blaming the victim via Supermind

Continuing from this post on the IPS thread on Supermind, LP noted the following on the language of such elevated stages of humanity:

"We also have to (or at least we could...) keep an eye on our own tendency to react toward such terminology. The Adi Da case is interesting because his writings are full of clarifications about how we should 'hold' that aspect of his speech."

 So we're supposed to accept at face value what Da or Wilber say about how they 'hold' such speech? And not question that it's perhaps rationalization? They couldn't possibly also be guilty of projection, since that's what your apology amounts to. Classic Wyatt Earpy blame the other of what one is guilty. But how could they possibly commit such a relative offense from that privileged access to Absolute Supermind? It's simply got to be a projection reaction from the lower level critic only. "Suck my dick," remember Wilber said in response to valid criticism? (Note: that episode was the inspiration for the well-deserved nickname kennilingus.)

The real welfare queens

Regressives hard endlessly about those on social welfare, how they're living high on the hog at our expense of paying them lower than poverty level wages. Meanwhile the richest corporations, while having a nominal tax rate, never seem to pay anywhere near that amount, if anything. So here's Robert Reich on the President's plan for a one-time 14% tax on US corporations' money abroad, which money they've stashed abroad for the very purpose of not paying their fair share in taxes. This money goes to upgrading our infrastructure, something the very same corporations use proportionally way more than the rest of us, so why shouldn't they pay their fair share? They shouldn't according to regressive faux reasoning (aka rationalization). Meanwhile, the infrastructure will put to work hundreds of thousands of Americans, another thing regressives can't stand.

From Reich's FB page:

"This morning President Obama sent to Congress a budget that includes a one-time 14% tax on the $2 trillion in profits big U.S. corporations have socked away abroad, in order to pay for upgrading highways, bridges, and public transit in the America. Republicans are already screaming the proposal is dead on arrival, but it’s a good idea – and it won’t be dead if more Americans understand the back story.

Maher's new rule on socialism

America did best under socialist programs, and income inequality is a direct outcome of capitalism. Maher explains it best with humor.

Nosuch nonesuch

Following up on the last post, and in response to this IPS thread on Supermind:

Today's word of the day is nonesuch:\ NUHN-suhch \  , noun;.a person or thing without equal; paragon.

I can see that in a particular activity, like basketball (Jordan), or even in a particular philosophy (like Aristotle for his time). But these pass in time and others replace them as the best in a very particular domain. However when it comes to an nonesuch for ultimate reality for all time, like Jesus for heaven etc., there is nosuch thing or person. That very notion is archaic, counterproductive and even harmful to contemporary society. And as this thread attests, Wilber follows Adi Da in setting himself up as the nonesuch avatar for eternal ultimate Reality as such. It is also highly questionable whether he is even the unparalleled nonesuch for this very particular (not ultimate) nondual state. Ordinary ego inflation is rampant in this evolutionary spirituality business, something readily apparent and repulsive to most of us.