Colbert in his inimitable way shows how the regressives just can't see the obvious when it comes to killing unarmed black men.
Sunday, December 7, 2014
Mindfulness as justification for ignoring capitalism
See this article.
"But for some Buddhists, and we include ourselves in this group, there is a growing concern that the mindfulness movement has the potential to push to the margins contemporary Buddhism’s dialogue with tradition, diminishing its capacity to serve as a challenge to materialist attitudes and values. The rapid mainstreaming of mindfulness has provided a domesticated and tame set of meditation techniques for mainly upper-middle-class and corporate elites so they may become more self-accepting of their anxieties, helping them to 'thrive,' to have it all—money, power and well-being, continuing business-as-usual more efficiently and, of course, more 'mindfully'—while conveniently side-stepping any serious soul searching into the causes of widespread social suffering."
"But for some Buddhists, and we include ourselves in this group, there is a growing concern that the mindfulness movement has the potential to push to the margins contemporary Buddhism’s dialogue with tradition, diminishing its capacity to serve as a challenge to materialist attitudes and values. The rapid mainstreaming of mindfulness has provided a domesticated and tame set of meditation techniques for mainly upper-middle-class and corporate elites so they may become more self-accepting of their anxieties, helping them to 'thrive,' to have it all—money, power and well-being, continuing business-as-usual more efficiently and, of course, more 'mindfully'—while conveniently side-stepping any serious soul searching into the causes of widespread social suffering."
Saturday, December 6, 2014
Chomsky on democracy and oligarchy
See the interview below. Turnout in the last election was so low because we don't feel like our voice matters anyway, since it doesn't. As has been made abundantly clear, the voice of the 1% rules and we know it. So why bother? The regressive lackeys in Congress have been all about ensuring that government doesn't work, knowing that we'll just blame it on the system and say 'fuck it.' And of course it worked. Meanwhile they manipulate just enough of their base with red meat to get them to the polls to win elections. I can fully understand why even Randi Rhodes retired from giving a shit.
Thursday, December 4, 2014
Racism is dead, right?
It is according to Fox (and the Supreme Corp.). So how does Fox go about telling us this? With Aryan Barbies...
Wednesday, December 3, 2014
Tuesday, December 2, 2014
Bernie Sanders 12-point economic plan
See the video below. The following bullet points work for everyone, even the rich.
- Invest in our crumbling infrastructure with a
major program to create jobs by rebuilding roads, bridges, water
systems, waste water plants, airports, railroads and schools.
– Transform energy systems away from fossil fuels to
create jobs while beginning to reverse global warming and make the
planet habitable for future generations.
Consciousness in dreamless sleep
In the following video Thompson describes around 37:00 what that consciousness is like as reported by
both advanced meditators and non-meditators. The former see it as a
luminous, non-dual awareness; the latter as a dark, non-dual awareness.
Which reminds me of this meditation.
At around 43:00 he thinks this state, in contradistinction with Vedanta, is "the sentient aliveness with the body," "a basal biological phenomenon." Vedanta sees it as the transcendental witness. See earlier in this thread, with links to the "states" thread.
Also see this IPS discussion thread on this work.
At around 43:00 he thinks this state, in contradistinction with Vedanta, is "the sentient aliveness with the body," "a basal biological phenomenon." Vedanta sees it as the transcendental witness. See earlier in this thread, with links to the "states" thread.
Also see this IPS discussion thread on this work.
Monday, December 1, 2014
Can capitalism and democracy co-exist?
See Chris Hedges' interview of Sheldon Wolin here. A few Wolin excerpts follow:
"There's been a kind of conjuncture between the way that social and educational institutions have shaped a certain kind of mentality among students, among faculty, and so on, and the media itself, that are in lockstep with the requirements of the kind of political economic order that we have now, and that the basic question, I think, has been that we have seen the kind of absorption of politics and the political order into so many nonpolitical categories--of economics, sociology, even religion--that we sort of lost the whole, it seems to me, unique character of political institutions, which is that they're supposed to embody the kind of substantive hopes of ordinary people, in terms of the kind of present and future that they want. And that's what democracy is supposed to be about."
"Nietzsche was trying to really retrieve a notion of the value, intrinsic value, of political life. And he found it, however, only comprehensible to him in terms of some kind of dichotomy between elite and mass. [...] Nietzsche would inevitably try to turn into vehicles for celebrating or encouraging elite formations. And he simply could not conceive of a society that would be worthwhile in which elites were not given the most prominent and leading role. He just couldn't conceive it. He had the kind of 19th century sort of Hegelian notion that the masses were ignorant, they were intolerant, they were against progress, and all the rest of it. He simply, like so many very good writers in the 19th century, didn't know what to do with the, quote, people."
"There's been a kind of conjuncture between the way that social and educational institutions have shaped a certain kind of mentality among students, among faculty, and so on, and the media itself, that are in lockstep with the requirements of the kind of political economic order that we have now, and that the basic question, I think, has been that we have seen the kind of absorption of politics and the political order into so many nonpolitical categories--of economics, sociology, even religion--that we sort of lost the whole, it seems to me, unique character of political institutions, which is that they're supposed to embody the kind of substantive hopes of ordinary people, in terms of the kind of present and future that they want. And that's what democracy is supposed to be about."
"Nietzsche was trying to really retrieve a notion of the value, intrinsic value, of political life. And he found it, however, only comprehensible to him in terms of some kind of dichotomy between elite and mass. [...] Nietzsche would inevitably try to turn into vehicles for celebrating or encouraging elite formations. And he simply could not conceive of a society that would be worthwhile in which elites were not given the most prominent and leading role. He just couldn't conceive it. He had the kind of 19th century sort of Hegelian notion that the masses were ignorant, they were intolerant, they were against progress, and all the rest of it. He simply, like so many very good writers in the 19th century, didn't know what to do with the, quote, people."
Jordan & Tatiana
Once again they won the US Open classic division. And yet again they choreographed another innovative and spectacular routine, performed to near perfection. Inspiring.
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Harris: "Many of us have acknowledged that although 'replacing religion' may not be an appropriate goal, religion does offer people many things they want in life—and these are things that most atheists also want. We want nice buildings that function as dedicated spaces for reflection and celebration. We want strong communities. We want rituals and rites of passage with which to mark important transitions in life—births, marriages, deaths. We just don’t want to lie to ourselves about the nature of reality to have these things. This poses a real challenge, because once we get rid of religion, we are left without an established tradition for meeting these needs, and the alternative is often piecemeal, halfhearted, and unsatisfying."