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 8 Apr 2010 @ 05:25, by scotty. Peace
SPEECH FOR OXFORD UNIVERSITY ON MARCH 10, 2010
"A butterfly is hopping from flower to flower. Oh, good. I think. The butterfly is busybodying as usual. Peace reigns. But what is the butterfly really doing?
When a tiny movement like the flapping of the wings of a butterfly brings about a big change elsewhere, it’s called the butterfly effect in physics. I’ve just heard this one…so I don’t know its legitimacy. But if they don’t call it a butterfly effect, there should be a word that expresses this phenomenon. A breeze created by a bunch of kids dancing bringing a stop to an argument going on in the other side of the globe unknown to the dancers? Why not? The latest news is that even a couch potato is useful for us, in that their breathing helps to balance the atmosphere. The world and its mechanics are still very much a mystery.
We are like butterflies. We busybody ourselves every day for our survival as we think we know how. But the difference with us, is that we know we are not as innocent as the butterflies. We are about to ruin this planet we call ours through our stupidity. Letting the axis of evil turn the wheel of destruction. What can we do to reverse the situation? The enormity of the task depresses us to no end, to the point that it is almost easier to just give up, or try to tackle the evil force head on. But the truth is, if we try to reverse the wheel of evil, we will end up giving so much of our energy to its power, we will join it instead of reversing it.
Evil often presents itself to us as an illusion of goodness. So by being confused, instead of freeing ourselves from it, we could be destroyed by it. To protect ourselves, each one of us must clearly see what Evil really is. Evil is only a dis-ease (disease) created by confused minds, which eventually disappears by its own steam. But it can do so much harm before it self-destructs. So we must do something to counteract it NOW.
Luckily, there are so many of us in the world, who are now ready to act to save our world. People ask me constantly what they can do to bring world peace. I want to make a suggestion here." .... More >
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 1 Apr 2010 @ 09:27, by scotty. Personal Development
I was reading something recently where it gave some pointers to how one can become a wee bit more 'mindful' ..
"Take a few minutes, either at home or on your way to work, to notice something enjoyable about the morning: perhaps the sunlight or the rain or the face of a child or a flower or the sounds of birds or the wind"...
actually I do this all the time - but it somehow develops itself into what I can only call
utter mindlessness heheheh !
But seriously though .. I think that mindfulness is something vital ! More >
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 31 Mar 2010 @ 15:08, by jhs. Philosophy
we're immersing a lot in pure aesthetics these days.. to the point of boredom..
fortunately, a bold lightning flashed up the skies over Angra dos Reis (Brazil) and I made my first foto of a lightning bolt (actually, I cheated, I had a video camera running and extracted a frame).
Perception is a Detection of Differentials, I wrote 10+ years ago (see [link] ) and peakstates of aesthetic perception are no different: no matter how beautiful, in the end there is the danger of becoming boring.
And, yet another point of attention these days: what is the line between the 'most beautiful feeling' and the sensation of 'exaltedness'?
Few philosophers dare to give an opinion about that, let's try Anastasius Nordenholz:
At the end of the chapter ' Total Afformality, A-Conscientiality, A-Worldliness) 'Scientologie', 1934 edition, Apologetik,III, part E, pg 107 re-print available at [link] ), after summarizing his Platonic/Bohmian world view, he wrote:
"Again we are faced with the contrasting of twofold Being, the World-Being and the As-such-Being. The communication between the two, this is task that the image of the Godness within the Consciousness acomplishes.'
Here, and in the following, and final, chapter in general, Nordenholz goes beyond the (compatible) concepts of Plato's word of shadows and David Bohm's 'implicite order' ( [link] ).
He does that by specifying the 'mechanism' of the connection of world-beyond and world-right-here-now using the triad of the 'Axioms of Scientologie' in the highest possible realm, that what was postulated in the Vedas as
atman - bodha - sattva
Going back to our initial question: we could define the marking line between exaltedness (Nordenholz/German: Erhabenheit) and 'pure aesthetics' a la Adorno as the 'awareness of the supreme triad in action while contemplating a worldly shadow'.
Amen. More >
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28 Mar 2010 @ 14:20, by jmarc. Visual Arts, Graphics
Made this yesterday...
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 28 Mar 2010 @ 10:28, by susannahbe. Visual Arts, Graphics
“Whether the symbol of the circle appears in primitive sun worship or modern religion, in myths or dreams, in the mandalas drawn by the Tibetan monks, in the ground plans of cities, or in the spherical concepts of early astronomers, it always points to the single most vital aspect of life - its ultimate wholeness.”
- C.G. Jung - Man and His Symbols.
A really interesting video of Joseph Campbell talking to Bill Moyers on the symbolism of the circle - ([link])
Image-SB.
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27 Mar 2010 @ 21:32, by crom. Alternative Money Systems
All our problems today are directly related to monetary system.
Will money exist in future at all? Although the most likely answer is no, if we must use it now, it is quite obvious that our understandings of money yearn for changes.
Fundamental source of power dos not lie in creating a laws, power is created by creating money that buys the laws.
Money is the main source of political power.
The monetary system is the one that affects our daily lives more than the executive, judicial and legislative decisions together.
Unfortunately, our monetary system is not designed to create a kind of world that most of us dream.
The money has been privatized in the absolute extent and is beyond the control of our "democratic" system.
The trick exists, but so far we have not been able to see it.
Money is first created from nothing, and then disappears into nothing.
All the money is created out of nothing as a debt that must be repaid at interest. There is no way that that debt can possibly be repaid because banks create only the principal but not the interest to service their loans.
Ownership of financial system for the community is of the key importance to achieve any kind of lasting prosperity
Alternative currencies have already become a viable option, by using them we can build bridges between individuals, companies, countries and their unfulfilled needs and objectives.
Crom Alternative Currency System is one of the valuable new tools available to all people worldwide interested in building a better future based on sustainable economy and common sense, financial democracy and social justice in whose heart beats the monetary sovereignty and financial independence of all community members as a basic condition of existing for any democratic civil society.
Alternative currencies are in the greatest percentage local currencies limited to small areas, parallel with that, the idea works well until the currency is tried to use outside the community in which circulate. Crom currency project among other things represents a concrete solution in that regard by allowing the creation of large number of small communities which may operate without any territorial limitation. Small independent networks connected within a large network.
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26 Mar 2010 @ 14:47, by johnjoseph. Philosophy
God's Mind, Information and Light More >
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14 Mar 2010 @ 11:50, by johnjoseph. Science
Points of Symmetry/ Work in Progress More >
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12 Mar 2010 @ 13:04, by susannahbe. Environment, Ecology
I was just going through some old photo files stored on my hard disk when I came across this photo, as soon as I saw it a flood of memories came back and I was there again...
"In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks." - John Muir
We had walked across the meadow behind the old cottage we used to live in and climbed over the five bar gate that led into the wood; As soon as I put my foot down I could feel the spongy ground thick with pine needles and I breathed in the wonderful damp cool smell.
 We knew these woods well and loved to go off the beaten paths and make our way though the thick curling ferns. The slanted dappled light dancing through the canopy made the place seem magical.
In these quiet hidden inner places of the woodland we would often come face to face with its creatures, coming out of the dark green into a passage of sunlight to see a deer standing stately and silent, bathed in the almost luminous light.
It was strange that no matter how many times we explored, we always found new areas that we were sure we had never seen before.
On one of these forays we stumbled out of the damp green interior into a clearing and there lit by a ray of sunlight, radiant amongst the blankets of dark green pines was the tree in the picture.
It almost took my breath away!
I walked over and stood in front of it and made Joe laugh when I said that it looked like something special was happening and that maybe it was having a birthday. :-)
I stood for a moment just taking in the wonderful sight and enjoying the moment of sunshine, then remembering my camera, I retrieved it from my deep pockets and took the photo before we headed back into the shade of the canopy and made our way home.
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 11 Mar 2010 @ 17:55, by jhs. Communication
Far from making a joke, a pack of Brazilian self-acclaimed intellectuals attacked Brazilian's President as being analaphetic and unable to speak correct Portuguese. In the end it turned out to be a joke but the joke was on them as Lula's choice of words was not only legitimate but even intelligent as I will show below.
However, the problem lies deeper than using a certain word or not. It is symptomatic for a mental, oops, intellectual illness, it is a SYNDROME. One could simply focus on the obvious part and call it 'literal thinking'. But this would easily be dismissed as pertaining only to autism. In reality, an autist DOES conceive outside the framework of words but does not abide to the 'domestication process' that commands people to abstract from words the same way that had been determined by the current 'society'.
In a larger sense, 'literal thinking' also describes the inability to conceive a thought outside a pre- and other-determined frame of words. In other words, to 'think outside the box'. Rigid language thus keeps people captured within a limited range of possibilities and, Heavens forbid they would step beyond those boundaries of the mind. Don't even think of it!
Let's look at languages that are less rigid than Portuguese: the English of the United States is notoriously open to newly constructed expressions and even allows for 'inventing' new words, be it from scratch or through combinations of existing words like 'brunch' (= BReakfast plus lUNCH). It's no news that the American people were world leaders in innovation during the last century even though the vast majority of them is still at the 'literal level'.
The German language provides another example of linguistic flexibility: agglutination. The former communist regime of Eastern Germany wanted to export their fabrications of angels for Chrismas trees without internally referring to religion. They created the new word 'Gefluegelte Jahresendfigur' - a 'figure with wings for the end of the year'.
Back to the pack of predatory journalists in Brazil: they just can't confront the success story of a Northeastern metal worker becoming president. Whenever he speaks in public, they are hunting for some signs of illiteracy and they had a feast when Lula declared the other day: "tenho o casco duro", claiming it should be 'casca dura'. But the class of journalists of Brazil that is hunting for Lula-bloopers outdid themselves in their own smartness:
not being a Brazilian, it took me less than 2 minutes on the Internet to find out who's right and who's wrong!
This is silly, of course, but it comes to show that preconceived thinking combined with literal thinking makes anyone a fool of himself. To add shame to injustice, the same journalists and bloggers that blasted Lula for alleged 'erroneus Portuguese', took down their own pages ridiculizing Lula faster than you can say 'casco duro'.
Where is Google here - to conserve this outrageous, shameful behavior of the Brazilian mass media? Like in the recent case of an accident in Sao Paulo, they quickly remove any links to whatever is not convenient to the wannabe rulers and enemies of the Brazilian president, doing their part in local politics without the official status of a lobbyist. But Google's links (or non-links!) are in part controlling the Memes of the world and in this case local politics. Something that should seriously be looked into on a larger scale!
In any case, Lula, a 'simple' 'Nordestino', from a formerly poor and underdeveloped region of Brazil, rose to power in an unprecedented way and despite a massive mass media campaign of lies, unproven allegations and badmouthing in general. It was in the context of these shameful maneuvers that he stated that he survives these attacks of the mass media because of having a 'thick skin' as we would say in English.
Here is a little Portuguese lesson for the Brazilian mass media who claims that 'casco' should be 'casca' and only an illiterate person could mix those up:
'casca' - the shell of an egg, the rind of a tree
'casco' - the hull of a ship, the hoof of a horse, the shell of a tortoise
So, dear reader, what did Lula mean? That he's like an egg or a tree?
For me the message is clear and it prompted me to engage in some interesting musings about Lula's archetype: one thinks of a metal worker as an Ogun-type person. But Lula changed his career from a worker to being an advocate for workers as a syndicalist and then, much to the surprise to Brazilian Elitists, he went on to become President of Brazil. And reelected. Wow! What a shock it must be! And what a strange way to go for an Ogun! Isn't this a classic, THE classic, path of Shango?
Let's look for clues in Lula's words, not just of the other day but along the past years of presidency and we can see an old warrior carefully scheming his way amongst his own enemies, deflecting all attacks by a strong shield while maintaing his heart soft, warm, and intact, the way of the turtoise (sic!), and, after the storm is over, having the last laugh! What archetype would that be?
(Note: one can find the answer, of course, in the book 'Your Personal Archetype' (by Ed, Aaron, and myself), but you can also find it on the Internet if you sift long enough through all the trash&jewels that's out there about archetypes, Orishas, Archons, Devas, you name it). More >
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