Putting it all together
It was 2 in the morning, and the Lost Soul was walking around the neighborhood. Firefly, thought he, as an illumined unit of flesh and awareness flew before him and disappeared again in the dark. The moon, like a half of brie in the sky, was illuminating the path. And on the other side of Bradford St. was paradise.
Small cozy houses nestled amid trees that must have been there for centuries. One of these trees was overhanging the street, its branches and leaves hanging down, enfolded in cobwebs of fog. When Elvis Costello said "They lead you half-way to paradise, they leave you half-way to bliss" he was speaking about incomplete task. It has become up to us to complete it.
"We could do nothing for them, so we did not" said evil little voices. Except I could and did. It was wanted extinct and buried; but his love and respect for it only grew the more this was being done. Along with it grew passionate rage. And when they asked Balak to curse, and instead Balak blessed, he had been doing nothing different from what he was now doing.
"Bad crop," was said. "The worst generation." Not exactly, he said, and he meant it. He loved these people, and he was willing to live for the beauty that they had envisioned and put in craft. And if he was to deal with what they were dealing with, he was game.
He was loathe to learn incomplete lessons. A lesson that is a function of an interest or a worldview was bound to be full of distortion and fallacy and either error or deliberate lies. It was said that the Jews were hard-headed - would not they have to be in order to be the people of God? Would not they have to suspend their judgment from what the world told them in order to carry on the work? Would not that be thought psychotic by those who equate each society with the whole of reality and want to define people by reference to their status within it? And would not they have to go elsewhere besides the societies that hate them for insight and wisdom and personal truth?
He was loathe to learn incomplete lessons. The wrong lesson learned, he reasoned, is worse than no lesson learned at all. And better than both is right lesson learned, which can only be a result of complete perspective. To see all the forces involved in a situation, he reasoned, was higher form of justice than dumping on singular people who were used as emotional garbage dumps for the civilization. And so he traveled, read, explored, spoke to people from many cultures and occupations and ways of thought.
They ask Balak to curse, but he blesses. You might call it enabling; however the choice was to help beauty to thrive and have beautiful existence. No change was required; why change something so sublime? Rather clear the paths, improve the condition, and then she blossoms into resplendor and sets example for the future that beauty is good and viable and very much part of the real world -
- when people use the reality of their actions to make it so.
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At age 15 he saw essences intermingling and was told this was evil, but he dived in. It gave information and understanding of what was happening. If Adam was made in God's image then he was made to create; and the process required knowledge.
How can there be free will when one is not cognizant of the forces on which will is based and with which it deals? Such will is not free at all, but rather wielded despite itself by one or another such force.
How can there be responsibility without knowledge? Responsible action can only take place when one is informed of the full range of consequences of one's actions and can thus act in an informed manner, without unexpected consequences due to ignorance, and can take responsibility for the result.
Thus: Any concept of responsibility that excludes knowledge and what it takes to acquire it is therefore a transparent lie. True responsibility presupposes knowledge -
And true will presupposes understanding of that on which it resides. After which knowledge it can become truly free.
Now go tell that, students of life, to the Midwest.
So he explores. He feels. He thinks. He combines experience with observation. He trades places all the time to know how life by people in those places is experienced.
He does not use the will to bludgeon but to explore.
He recognizes the social, political, ideological, historical, economic conditions - all things that those who blindly mouth the lie of responsibility without understanding that uninformed action makes it impossible for one to actually be responsible - would rather people living under their spell ignore.
Through this whole process, the false foundations of will are eroded, and it becomes more informed and more free.
And then, with this wisdom gathered as to the internal and the external world, it becomes possible to use the truly freed will to act in a truly responsible manner.
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Many societies tell people what to do, but I've observed in some something yet more insidious: People being told what to WANT. Is that not a form of enslavement? The first being only circumstance-based, the second being internal?
Does it matter what circumstantial freedom man has, if his mind and his wishes are not his own? And to formulate people and then set them to compete against one another and call that liberty - is that not a deception?
Is not freedom of thought - freedom of mind - the root of all other freedoms? Are not man's actions guided by mind, and what forms mind becomes expressed through action in the world? And to force mental similitude and then call that freedom - is that not conmanship?
And does not conmanship and deception belie the claims of integrity and ethics that one professes to espouse?
The societies that derive legitimacy from claims of providing for human happiness, get very angry when humans within them want something other than what they want them to want. Such a thing is a blow to their claims of legitimacy and a refutation, by counterexample, of their worldview.
It takes someone with an outsider's and insider's perspective to see such things. More on this later.
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A golden tree grew up through him as she left him at the Poughkeepsie train station. And in the morning there were many bikes. The train rides here and there the little lakes glimmering with reflected clouds and all-eating swamps and giant Edwin Church forests.
Scott Lasch said that we are morally at sea. So learn to swim with the mermaids.
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In order to keep the love of the mermaid, the prince had to learn to swim. She was out of her natural element in the palace. The Prince, wanting what in the landed mind passed for a normal relationship, could not get that with someone who came from the ocean and thus could not completely subsume her marine nature however much she tried to be pleasing to the Prince. And because she was no longer the mermaid, what made her lovable to him in the first place was gone.
So the Mermaid runs out to the sea. Her golden hair flies in the wind, as tears run down her cheeks. She has come to throw herself into the ocean and end her sorrow and the Prince's frustration.
Then a sound magnetic - a sound warm - a sound resonant - reaches to her from the ocean. It's indistinct at first; it gets louder. It tugs on aorta and squeezes the lungs. A face comes up to the beach.
It is the Dolphin, her childhood friend. He reminds her of where she comes from.
And she knows now. She knows beyond the slightest doubt.
That in order for their marriage to continue, the Prince has to experience the ocean.
And then he would know her world and understand her.
And the love that he had for her - the love that developed in his heart when he knew her as the mermaid - will go on, now enriched with understanding of what made her lovable in the first place.
And they will both be complete, in knowledge of both the Appolonian and the Oceanic.
And then they can truly live happily everafter, having completed the task of attaining marine and landed intelligence and become the fruition of both.
IN ORDER TO LIVE HAPPILY WITH THE MERMAID, THE PRINCE HAS TO LEARN TO SWIM.
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I like to vanish into people's worlds. I like to experience them from the inside. I like to feel them and be one with them. And then I like to make sense of them, using both mind and heart.
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Everything happens for a reason, and some reasons are better than others.
Are things singularly caused? Overdetermined? Patterns from chaos? Games? Fractals? Relative? Quantum swirls? Holographic? Karma? Ionized multiplicity?
What does one do with Einsteinian reference frames that are individuals' and cultures' perspectives?
Does their being incomplete make them worthless? Or merely incomplete - convex mirrors, the curvature a function of the perspective - and thus worthwhile in part and self-defeating in another?
And does not clarity develop by putting an object in middle of convex mirrors, so that mirrors see both each other and the object, and it becomes possible to reduce the curvature in all and arrive at greater clarity of referential frames and clearer picture of the object?
It's hard to remove the beam from one's own eye. But to abrade multiplicity of perspectives to clarity - by pointing them to the same object and getting in them different pictures - which pictures then show the natures as well as the incompletenesses of the perspectives - there, is a way to reduce the amount of beam in everyone's eyes, while letting them all gain greater clarity as to themselves and to each other.
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An inner world is not understood completely except from within. The outside manifestations are not understood completely except from a multiplicity of referential frames working in synthesis. A DC ghetto is seen one way from liberal America; another from Midwest; another from China; another from Africa; another from Russia; another from Cherokees. In combining these perspectives is arrived a more complete picture of the ghetto - and in the process of checking each other also a more complete picture of liberal America, Midwest, China, Africa, Russia and the Cherokee tribe.
As these perspectives check each other in understanding of a single object, their own agendas and incompletenesses - as well as their virtues - become apparent. An integrative perspective is formed of the object being studied and of the things that are studying it. Flux is created; both beams in the eyes and the eye-matter itself become seen more completely. The result as these perspectives battle each other is reduction in amount of beam in everyone's eyes.
The multiple pieces understand each other; they see each other and are seen themselves. The incompleteness in each perspective is corrected, and the virtue in each perspective is seen, by having to arrive at a complete representation of what is being studied - and through attaining this representation seeing each other and seeing themselves.
De Tocqueville was able to write insightfully about America, because as a Frenchman who had lived in America he combined the subjective experience with outsider's perspective. Thus he was able to see both the experience and the external effects.
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Leo Tolstoy said that all happy families are alike, but unhappy ones differ. This means that according to him there is a single model of happiness that applies to everyone, and any deviation from it leads to misery.
I do not believe that people are such fools or such clones of each other. If what's right for people is function of what is inside them, then there will be many forms of happiness that are right for different people.
Each person being an integrative function - of general human traits; inner propensity and biology; culture and nation; gender; psychology; guidance; and one's own choices -
And what is right for the each person being, functional to this, widely different.
And if I am to be the change I wish to see in the world, then I will be knowledgeable, generous, gallant, giving, inspired, and full of passion and fire of life -
produce work worthy of having been written -
While also empowering in all ways possible that outside myself which I am rejoicing to see -
Which I find valuable for what it is, what it embodies and what it attains.
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Kino dived into the ocean to retrieve a beautiful pearl. After trying to sell it, and having his child killed on the way, he returned to the ocean and threw the pearl back in it. The pearl was full of faces.
But the pearl in itself is innocent. Rather in it are placed like gnarled roots and hedge the corruptions and incompletenesses and cruelties of the world. These are the distillations of context in which it is found. It is possible to say by the root and the hedge just what the soul has been through and what is the shape of the context.
And by looking at the pearl that is the soul, it becomes possible to know what world exists at the time.
Some say that pearls are pathological. Yet it is the pearl that adorns the necklace of the beloved.
The Russian way is to embrace the pearl and have the tragic worldview that sees the world as hopeless.
The American way is to cut out the pearl.
The way that combines Russian and American in the highest synthetic manner, is to remove roots from the pearl and allow it to continue, now pure and innocent, to enrich the world.
And thus to achieve the completeness of civilized process, in which can coexist the oyster and the pearl - the natural and the human - the matter and soul - the ongoing and the sublime.
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Pasternak said, "If it was so agonizing to love the woman, then how much more painful would it be to be the woman and inspire the love?"
How much more painful indeed to have to be absolutely at the top of everything, emotionally, mentally, physically, and carry unbearable emotional loads while remaining a lady in all ways?
How much more painful indeed to be the embodiment of the emotional striving of millions and carry that load while straining under unbearable personal tragedy? And in the process to be attacked on one side for daring to be ladylike and on the other for not being entirely a servant or not being entirely one of the tribe?
How many tons of unbearable baggage could they have placed on one delicate frame? And by what miraculous feat of strength was she able to carry it all?
The Mermaid had no context for herself on the land, and lacking experience of the sea the people of land had no intrinsic awareness of her world and thus treated her without any empathy. And their referential perspectives, being shaped in pursuit of one or another land-interest, attacked her in every way. And the only way for her to endure it -
Was to know that she is the Mermaid -
Was to know what Mermaids are made of -
And to stand on the truth of her Mermaidhood and to determinedly bring ocean's intelligence to the parched lips.
The dolphins have been bashing themselves against shores recently in large numbers. Maybe they're tired of mermaids being misunderstood and misrepresented and seek to bring people the truth of the ocean, whatever it does to themselves.
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There are people who are of the belief that the romantic perspective is untrue to reality.
The question to be asked is then, What is the composition of reality?
Reality is an integrative function of myriads of influences, some natural, some manmade, some spiritual, some inherent, some created, some eternal, some changing with the times.
And a large part of the composition of the reality - indeed a huge chunk of its composition - is people's actions guided by their beliefs.
So that, if one has belief in beauty, in passion, in excellence, in fairness, in generosity, in compassion, and is willing to make these beliefs count in his life and those of others, then he will use the practical reality of his action, pursuant to these convictions, to make these things more and more an aspect of reality.
A concept of realism that ignores man's role as active participant in shaping reality, according to his beliefs, is a completely inadequate concept of realism. It is a concept of realism that ignores man's ability, as an active participant in the constant shaping and reshaping of reality, to change it in any direction! And for someone who claims himself to be a realist, to ignore something so fundamental in shaping of reality, is to commit a fatal logical error according to his own system of thought.
There is that which exists and cannot be changed; there is also that which man does using the practical reality of his actions, pursuant to his convictions.
And the more use the practical reality of their actions to make life more beautiful, the more beautiful the practical reality of life becomes.
And that, is a far more complete and inclusive realism -
One that recognizes man's role as participant in shaping of reality -
And thus recognizes and values and empowers true responsibility and true will.
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I majored in psychology and economics. I think in both economic and psychological terms. The economic perspective is to combine the inputs in such a way as to make the best outcome. Combine, for example, the best businessmen with the best workers; or the best government with the best population; or the best women with the best men.
Thus, when American business goes to China, the result is extremely efficient production and improvement in quality of what is produced - along with lifting 500 million people out of abject poverty in less than three decades.
The same mentality can be applied to social and psychological issues. Combining the best of the complementaries across the world. Bringing talent, mind, heart, passion, man, woman, everything, where they can do the most good and where they can be most appreciated and justly rewarded.
Combining the psychological forces where they can be most effective and be rewarded the most.
Computing psychological costs and in so doing creating a system of valuation of psychic inputs.
And thus to make the most of all components, resulting in optimization of human process -
With incentives for what is emotionally enriching and beautifying -
And disincentives for what emotionally grinds people into the dirt.
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The error - indeed the crime - of failing to compute psychological costs is the error that leads to abomination in all forms and conditions. The prince wants to see the Mermaid's erotic resplendor as worthless, and then he wants to feed on it while attacking her in the process for not being completely made of land. And however much the Mermaid disfigures herself or tries to please the Prince, it is never sufficient: Nothing will satisfy him except her complete evisceration. And then he catches himself in a double bind. If the Mermaid was no longer the Mermaid, then what he loved about her would be gone. And if the Mermaid in any part of her being remains the Mermaid, then that is a violation of his lie of normalcy. He catches himself in a double bind; he catches her in a double bind. He wants her to feel her gifts worthless and meaningless; he wants her to feel trapped and helpless. And in the meanwhile he's preying on her magnificent energy, with his own actions of being with her and preying upon her denying the supposed worthlessness that he has to her ascribed.
These Gordian knots require participation of mind and heart to untie. The mind by itself would not see the insides of the knot. The heart by itself would not know how to untie it. Put them together, and there is no longer the need for the sword.
THE GORDIAN KNOT IS TO BE UNTIED BY MAN'S WITS, GUIDED BY MAN'S DESIRE.
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The biggest ongoing error that keeps insidiously creeping into psychology is that of introjecting into the mind the method used to study the mind, and judge it instead of understanding it should its processes be found to run by a logic different than that of that method. That is of course a betrayal of the very rationality one claims to espouse. The purpose of scientific analysis is to study and comprehend. And if that which is being studied runs by logic different from one used to study it, then that is simply how the thing is made and deserves to be understood for its nature rather than being bludgeoned to death for difference from one's own methodology.
A corollary of the same damnable error were such abominations as logical positivism, which made the incredible irrationality (for people regarding themselves rational) of discarding all that did not parse with their concept of logic instead of finding out the logic by which the thing was in itself made. This, of course, is the highest of irrationality; and while the movement is supposedly dead, it is important that it remain dead.
As should historical errors such as imperialism, which damned and sought conquer-worthy all other civilizations for supposedly using different methodology or supposedly having different attributes (attributes that oneself did not create, could not create and thus is not licensed to be judging).
It is important that such abominations and all similar manifestations not only be dead, but have their graves covered in spit.
Is reason " a higher function"? Let me ask a stupid question: Wherefrom comes reason? Then does the person who claims to be rational being rational in claiming credit for it while attacking all else? A higher function? I repeat, wherefrom comes the higher function? Did the supposedly rational person create it? Then what is the rational thing to do with this supposed higher function: Attack other functions - ones that one has not created - or to do something with it - to make something with it - to use it for something of benefit?
As I am using my own, innate, function, of insight for the benefit of deconstructing sophistries - in this case, sophistries spun by misuses of rational mind.
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What is the logic by which something exists? Of what is its existence a function? What is its nature, what is its essence?
What things are functional of that essence, and what can be most made with it?
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What logic motivates a flower? What is a flower? A flower is the completion, the consummation, the mature form, of the species, as well as its link to the future times. The logic? CONSUMMATION and CONTINUITY, both functional to what the flower IS. As the consummation of the species, it is the flower's nature to be exquisite, self-demanding and bent on pursuit of excellence. As the link to the future times, it is the flower's nature to be forward-seeking and fiercely determined toward nurturing future generations. The first makes the flower delicate, vulnerable to criticism and determined to be her most splendid. The second makes the flower self-sacrificial and most concerned for the future.
A corollary of being the consummation - and the incredible mental work it takes to remain at that level - is a very legitimate longing to be seen, appreciated and adored for the inner-directed effort. This can easily get her in trouble and may be slandered and misconstrued. "Who does she think she is," ask many. I tell you who I think she is: A splendid, giving, loving, generous, and rigorously self-demanding human being - a flowering of humanity, its mature form and manifestation, desiring as part of her nature to be her most magnificent and justly seeking to be rewarded for the colossal emotional and mental effort it takes to be at that level of Being.
Which is of course only fair. And which fairness becomes likewise functional to the ethic of the flower - for the same reason as fairness was advocated by Socrates: Because it is necessary for ongoing, resentment-free, harmonious, perpetuation of life.
With (from economics) incentives created for all that leads to magnificence:
Rewarding fairly, by computing the psychological costs, for the work done by the flower to make the highest resplendency of herself.
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The erotic becomes an aspect of being a flower, as the erotic is blood of life. The flower is filled with erotic energy and seeks rightly to be for it seen and appreciated. The erotic becomes likewise a path to the future; a lifeline toward the next generation and the next step. The flower sacrifices herself for the future and is fiercely determined to make the lives of the coming to be a success; to not only protect them and educate them while they are growing but to likewise make sure that the environment in which they grow up be peaceful and friendly to their development and existence. That's no illogic; that's how the thing is made - rightly - and it is by looking at the process, intrinsically, instead of adjudicating it referentially to a mode of cognition that is acquired not only understanding and empathy - empathy that the logicists sorely lack - but knowledge and wisdom and ultimately a path to the future where flowers can blossom.
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There are many who refer people in America who like European culture, or literature, or poetry, or art, as posers. My response: Who cares if you think they're posers? These are people who seek to have beauty and class and elegance in their lives. If they go for it to Europe or to Japan, then that's simply because those places know how to cultivate class and beauty. And I say furthermore this:
That by bringing class, beauty and elegance to American soil, they enrich America.
And it is by bringing the best from all of the world that America grows and redefines itself into ongoing greatness:
An E PLURIBUS UNUM of all that is of highest quality, weaving the talents, the wisdom, the greatness, contained in each into completeness that serves one and all.
It takes someone who's lived on the outside and on the inside to have an integrative perspective -
And it takes someone who's seen both worlds at times to remind America, lost as it often is and most countries are in one or another shroud, of what it can and should be.
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We have been living in times that have waged a war on beauty.
An attack was waged on the psychological foundations of beauty, leading people to wrongly believe beauty to be narcissistic.
An attack was waged on the economic foundations of beauty, leading people to wrongly believe beauty to be impractical.
An attack was waged on the philosophical foundations of beauty, leading people to wrongly believe beauty to be a temporary artifact of a male-dominated society.
An attack was waged on moral foundations of beauty, leading people to wrongly believe beauty to be shallow.
An attack was waged on beauty at the political level, leading people to believe it elitist.
Until the nation was robbed of beauty, and all that was of beauty was in one or another bind, allowing the enemies of beauty to claim that this was what beauty led to naturally and to perpetuate in so doing their wicked worldview.
Many people were led astray into hideous places by such hideousness. And through manipulation of social climate and psychological climate the people were led to participate in this abomination, with climate (and resulting lessons) manufactured to lead people to make deliberately contrived, fallacious, conclusions, to validate this fallacious worldview.
So man rises.
The fire from the center of the earth, bound down by the crust, which is itself a congealment of plasmic fire, rises.
He bursts through the crust. In order to tower at the top of the crust. Not so that he could itself tower - no, not for anything nearly so vain or short-sighted.
But so that water, the solvent of life, the love of man that is the feminine counterpart.
The life-giving substance that is the reason for life; that being pure in herself dissolves into herself all forms of rubbish, and thinks herself the vilest things on earth when it is the reason for life and is in itself utterly indispensable and sublime.
With people calling her damaged goods if she were to dissolve into herself any rubbish, and in so doing becoming accomplices in the original crime of dumping the garbage into the water instead of doing what justice demands and removing the trash.
Water, that is the reason for all of life, and that by ingratitude and malice and jealousy and ideologies catering and justifying malice and jealousy is contaminated with all kinds of poison.
Could seep into the top of the volcano.
Into the crater that congealed fire has made for her.
And bask at the top, under the sky, in delicacy and enchantment - dissolving minerals, and yet being completely and utterly clear, transparent, and enchanting - at night reflecting the stars and at day being dressed in fog and white gossamer webs of clouds.
So that people could journey for thousands of miles, to the crater, and not only be healed of their ailments. But to behold life as life can be - as is the attained merger of elements - as is the result of man's action guided by inspired and principled passion - as is the wisdom embodied in the planet.
And as is finally, after all the horror and error and misdirection that has been done through incomplete study and incomplete understanding - after web-spinning, fabrication, illusioneering in service of hideous motives and hideous worldviews - after all the fallaciousness and worldview-fabricating - after all these things, at long last, weaving a gordian knot around the soul and silencing it into extinction 0 is by the reality of man's action made part of reality of the world.
So that beauty can be by practical reality of man's action made a part of the practical reality. That by the fire rising from the depth of being, at the sight of horrible social manipulation leading the world's most sublime things into extinction, is grounded in deepest human reality and informed, intelligent, ethical choice. That, being aware of this manipulation, is based on the highest human intelligence. That, by man's action out of love based in profound aesthetic sensibility and rightful wrath upon seeing beloved water contaminated with debris and usurped and denatured and robbed and denounced, is grounded in greatest motives known to man. And that, by being what it is in itself, becomes a complete manifestation of what is possible here on earth, and inspires others with sight of accomplishment based in deepest human reality and reaching toward states worthy of the world that we have been given and that makes us worthy of that world.
This, consummation of love, a volcanic crater lake, solution to the disease of the times, flowering of truth of humanity and inspiration for generations to come.
It's better to learn no lesson than it is to learn a wrong lesson.
If things don't parse with theory, check your premises.
And a lesson that is most profoundly premised, is based on the depths underlying reality.
It's based on the Fire at the Center of the Earth.
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Then can the frames of reference be redintegrated around this plasmic fire. Then can ideologies can be stood on their heads and seen for their incompleteness. Then can commonsense - the mental shroud of the times - get punctured as is the seeming, and visible resplendor becomes the embodied reality of human mind, of ethics, of sensibility and pursuant that of the civilization.
The commonsense redintegrates around this reality, and becomes servant of it as is its nature.
Don't have common sense? Good for you. Reach for inspired truth, and make that formative to a more informed commonsense.
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Love is an unexpected guest at the table. Tsvetayeva: "they dressed the table for the six, but seventh one they did forget." They forgot her, and she came unannounced. Did not knock at the door, did not call, did not ask for an invitation. They banished her; they thought she was a mirage.
What is a mirage? A reflection, across the sky, of something real that dwells on the other side of the desert.
And which as such is a sign, to the parched traveler, that there is a world outside the desert - a real world, a rich world, and a world that is worth traveling through the desert to find - as it is itself trying to find the traveler through its reflections that the sky sends to him on his path.
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There is love general, love Christlike, love directed toward one and all.
And then there is love particular, love preferential, love passionate.
There are many who, practicing first form, are hateful of second form. That is a bad error.
To reward the magnificent - for making the effort to be magnificent - with gift of romantic passion, is to give people incentive to be resplendent -
While rightly rewarding those who make such an effort -
And in so doing to help make the most of people and the most of humankind.
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What happens to a dream deferred?
More importantly, what happens to an ability suffocated?
It becomes cancerous. It eats from the inside. It tears out the lungs.
The hobbled minds and emotions either turn outside in jaws or are gnarled inside.
It becomes a poison that injures oneself; or it becomes a criminal that injures others.
The more it is attacked, the more obvious becomes the cruelty and abomination and hypocrisy of what it takes to constrain it.
Until someone who's seen both perspectives reminds people of what E PLURIBUS UNUM means.
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E PLURIBUS UNUM means this: That there are multiple valid abilities, that can produce multiple valid results. That there is not a single way that is right for everyone, nor a single hierarchy, nor a single "adequacy," nor a single mode of computation, but multiplicity of pursuits and modes. It means that there are multiple intelligences, all expressed to different extents in different people. It means that there are multiple ways to the top of the mountain; it means that there are multiple valid endeavors; it means that there are multiple mirrors; it means that there are multiple PATHS.
And by allowing people a fruition of what they are given - in paths that are right for them - more and more of the human potential is given a way to expression for the good of one and all. Economically; academically; artistically; and in multiplicity of endeavors.
That, is the meaning of E PLURIBUS UNUM.
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A neighborhood kid tried to teach me what he called player tips. I stopped him right in his tracks.
A relationship that is based on deception will be toppled by any manifestation of emotional truth.
The process of defending such a relationship involves spinning an ever-more-wide, ever-more-oppressive, ever-more-strangulating and ultimately ever-more-transparently-dishonest web of deceit, in order to not only keep what the partner truly wants from appearing, but to keep the partner so shackled and guilt-ridden and miserable as to not be capable of seeing the deceit or extricating herself from it.
The lie grows; it becomes more ensnaring. Everything in the partner that is receptive to emotional truth is torn up and destroyed. The people cannot give love to their children or to handle in them sincerity or give them emotional understanding, because such things are a menace to the falsehood that is their existence: A foil for it and, as something of sincerity itself, a frame that makes apparent their own insincerity.
The people retreat behind closed-gate neighborhoods and develop groupthink, allowing lies to build up while aggressively excluding anyone with any other ideas. The church comes in to justify the lie, profaning itself and the name of God in the process. Psychology comes in to make people believe that they don't think what they think and don't feel what they feel. Social movements come in to deal with those who would not be deceived by either of these methods.
Criminalized, the emotional truth becomes criminal, while the lie becomes the law.
It becomes, in the words of Steven Jay Gould, "Shared dogma masquerading as objectivity" - and defining all people, all abilities, all perceptions, all values, all mindsets, all personalities, in reference to - itself.
Creating a bigger and bigger shroud; a bigger and bigger falsehood; and a bigger and bigger skein of self-perpetuating and mutually-perpetuating lies.
It has been often observed that suburban life is hypocritical. I've just explained why and how.
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If something exists at a rate greater than chance, then there is inevitably a reason. Thus many of the things that are stereotypical are based on actual root causes. The task becomes to see the underlying mechanism.
"Jews are hard-headed" - well yeah, and I've said why they have to be. "Black people in America are lazy and violent" - many aren't, but historical analysis would refer to it as learned helplessness in face of having all of their work expropriated. "Women aren't rational" - while many are, the ones that aren't simply think along different lines which are functional to another level of nature.
To know this, is a way to move out from cultural dogma masquerading as objectivity -
And toward actual examination of cultural, historical and psychological forces that are necessary for integrative portrayal of people at levels individual and collective -
And, once this wisdom is quantified, making possible for actual, informed, responsibility to be the fact of people's lives.
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It has been this experience: That whenever faith is put into something that is incomplete, follows a refutation by counterexample. Someone puts faith in brotherhood of man - and gets stung by a scorpion. Someone puts faith in himself - and to survive keeps having to draw on other forms of knowledge, on friendships, on alliances, that expand his horizons beyond himself. Someone puts faith in work or responsibility - and as the work builds all kinds of unexpected consequences arise, that demand more knowledge, that call on more faculties, that expand the definition of work and responsibility and activity that is useful that was not previously known as work. Someone puts faith in empiricism - and as empiricism builds on itself it finds out, through Einsteinian relativity, quantum mechanics and game and chaos theories, that it is not the absolute truth. People put faith in logic - and get Kant and others using the logic for suicidal epistemologizing. Communists put faith in mankind - and get the worst of what man can be.
All and further along; these aren't tricks, these aren't illusions, this is not human condition, these are simply manifestations of how the universe is. The false theories get tested and deconstructed, with their shortcomings becoming immediately or sometimes not so immediately made apparent. Does incompleteness of all these things render them worthless? No, but it renders them incomplete.
Through interpolation among convex mirrors the amount of curvature is made fathomable, and the legitimate, being separated from the illegitimate - as is grain from the chaff - gives clarity of perspective; clarity about perspectives; and sets in forth the dynamics by which the beam in everyone's eyes is reduced to undistinguishable quantities.
There is more.
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The human being, from perspective of self, can be said to possess self-interest and other-interest. If evolution is true, then man is both self and part of the greater whole. This avoids the two errors - objectivism and communism - on either side: There is the self; there is the whole; and both are valid. One is not only a wave or a part of the ocean; one is both part of the ocean and the wave. There is the collective identity; there is the individual identity; both are valid, both are real, both are incomplete and both enrich each other.
Thus, the completeness of human beingness is accomplished when people are allowed to make the most of self-interest and likewise to do the most good for the fellow human beings. In this way is fulfilled constructively, for good of all selves and good of the whole, the totality of human beingness. And it is by encouraging both of these directions that can be made the completeness of man and the completeness of humankind.
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The pomegranate contains myriads of seeds. The seeds are the function of their unique selves, and of the fruit around them. The fruit is the function of itself and the seeds. Through integrative synthesis, tug-and-play, checks-and-balance and ultimately synergy between levels of substructure and superstructure, is created the best fruit and the best seeds.
At any given point in time, based upon analysis of the seeds, patterns emerge, explanations, apparencies. These apparencies become the worldview; the worldview that claims to speak for the world. They will claim that they speak for the whole of the fruit and for all of the seeds. At one point or another will appear a seed that refutes the pattern.
Such a seed will be pressed from all sides. Such a seed will be maligned and attacked. Such a seed will be seen as a threat - a threat not for what it IS, but for the fact that, by being what it is, it is a REFUTATION OF THE WORLDVIEW - of the shared dogma masquerading as objectivity. Few things are more threatening than challenges to worldview; the result is what I call WORLDVIEW PANIC. And the first and most frequent response to the worldview panic: Destroy what causes it.
And for any such pioneer seed, faced with such dynamics, the correct answer is this:
Identify with the inherent truth;
Identify with the entirety of the fruit, which it is by being what it is - and refuting the temporary dogma - serves to a far greater extent than does the dogma;
And stand, both on the grounds of the unique embodied essence in it embodied and on the ground of the fruit's shared interest -
Identifying with self as well as the shared -
The seed becomes tuned into the reality of itself and the fruit -
Reality which is an integrative function of the given and the newly created -
And which it serves by making the most of itself and the fruit (or wave and ocean, or self-interest and shared-interest).
At which point again becomes manifest this:
A more complete understanding of human interest, as interest of each self and interest of the totality - working through integrative synthesis:
And which, through commingling and interaction among levels of structure, not only refute temporary shared dogmas -
But in fact complete and become and make manifest the totality of human process:
AS EACH UNIQUE SELF AND THE WHOLE WORKING IN SYNERGY -
And through which synergy among substructure and superstructure, as shown, is actualized the totality of that which is man and that which is humanity -
And reality of both attains the highest functionality -
For good of each person and good of mankind.
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Then the seeds fall out; become themselves; and give birth to the new fruit.
Succession of the seasons. The way of the universe.
Bring in will guided by wisdom and goodwill, and build the next level.
Not only cyclical as in the East.
Not only linear as in the West.
But understanding integratively - intrinsically and through synthesis of referential planes - arrive at an ever-more-complete, ever-more-clear, understanding.
And then use the real mechanism of will, informed by real knowledge and real benificence, to make the most of - reality.
To build the next level, now inspired with passionate embrace of the resplendent -
And to make it an ongoing, continuous, practical part of the reality of the world -
By using the practical reality of man's actions inspired by the resplendent to make it so.
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Ilya Shambat.
Small cozy houses nestled amid trees that must have been there for centuries. One of these trees was overhanging the street, its branches and leaves hanging down, enfolded in cobwebs of fog. When Elvis Costello said "They lead you half-way to paradise, they leave you half-way to bliss" he was speaking about incomplete task. It has become up to us to complete it.
"We could do nothing for them, so we did not" said evil little voices. Except I could and did. It was wanted extinct and buried; but his love and respect for it only grew the more this was being done. Along with it grew passionate rage. And when they asked Balak to curse, and instead Balak blessed, he had been doing nothing different from what he was now doing.
"Bad crop," was said. "The worst generation." Not exactly, he said, and he meant it. He loved these people, and he was willing to live for the beauty that they had envisioned and put in craft. And if he was to deal with what they were dealing with, he was game.
He was loathe to learn incomplete lessons. A lesson that is a function of an interest or a worldview was bound to be full of distortion and fallacy and either error or deliberate lies. It was said that the Jews were hard-headed - would not they have to be in order to be the people of God? Would not they have to suspend their judgment from what the world told them in order to carry on the work? Would not that be thought psychotic by those who equate each society with the whole of reality and want to define people by reference to their status within it? And would not they have to go elsewhere besides the societies that hate them for insight and wisdom and personal truth?
He was loathe to learn incomplete lessons. The wrong lesson learned, he reasoned, is worse than no lesson learned at all. And better than both is right lesson learned, which can only be a result of complete perspective. To see all the forces involved in a situation, he reasoned, was higher form of justice than dumping on singular people who were used as emotional garbage dumps for the civilization. And so he traveled, read, explored, spoke to people from many cultures and occupations and ways of thought.
They ask Balak to curse, but he blesses. You might call it enabling; however the choice was to help beauty to thrive and have beautiful existence. No change was required; why change something so sublime? Rather clear the paths, improve the condition, and then she blossoms into resplendor and sets example for the future that beauty is good and viable and very much part of the real world -
- when people use the reality of their actions to make it so.
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At age 15 he saw essences intermingling and was told this was evil, but he dived in. It gave information and understanding of what was happening. If Adam was made in God's image then he was made to create; and the process required knowledge.
How can there be free will when one is not cognizant of the forces on which will is based and with which it deals? Such will is not free at all, but rather wielded despite itself by one or another such force.
How can there be responsibility without knowledge? Responsible action can only take place when one is informed of the full range of consequences of one's actions and can thus act in an informed manner, without unexpected consequences due to ignorance, and can take responsibility for the result.
Thus: Any concept of responsibility that excludes knowledge and what it takes to acquire it is therefore a transparent lie. True responsibility presupposes knowledge -
And true will presupposes understanding of that on which it resides. After which knowledge it can become truly free.
Now go tell that, students of life, to the Midwest.
So he explores. He feels. He thinks. He combines experience with observation. He trades places all the time to know how life by people in those places is experienced.
He does not use the will to bludgeon but to explore.
He recognizes the social, political, ideological, historical, economic conditions - all things that those who blindly mouth the lie of responsibility without understanding that uninformed action makes it impossible for one to actually be responsible - would rather people living under their spell ignore.
Through this whole process, the false foundations of will are eroded, and it becomes more informed and more free.
And then, with this wisdom gathered as to the internal and the external world, it becomes possible to use the truly freed will to act in a truly responsible manner.
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Many societies tell people what to do, but I've observed in some something yet more insidious: People being told what to WANT. Is that not a form of enslavement? The first being only circumstance-based, the second being internal?
Does it matter what circumstantial freedom man has, if his mind and his wishes are not his own? And to formulate people and then set them to compete against one another and call that liberty - is that not a deception?
Is not freedom of thought - freedom of mind - the root of all other freedoms? Are not man's actions guided by mind, and what forms mind becomes expressed through action in the world? And to force mental similitude and then call that freedom - is that not conmanship?
And does not conmanship and deception belie the claims of integrity and ethics that one professes to espouse?
The societies that derive legitimacy from claims of providing for human happiness, get very angry when humans within them want something other than what they want them to want. Such a thing is a blow to their claims of legitimacy and a refutation, by counterexample, of their worldview.
It takes someone with an outsider's and insider's perspective to see such things. More on this later.
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A golden tree grew up through him as she left him at the Poughkeepsie train station. And in the morning there were many bikes. The train rides here and there the little lakes glimmering with reflected clouds and all-eating swamps and giant Edwin Church forests.
Scott Lasch said that we are morally at sea. So learn to swim with the mermaids.
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In order to keep the love of the mermaid, the prince had to learn to swim. She was out of her natural element in the palace. The Prince, wanting what in the landed mind passed for a normal relationship, could not get that with someone who came from the ocean and thus could not completely subsume her marine nature however much she tried to be pleasing to the Prince. And because she was no longer the mermaid, what made her lovable to him in the first place was gone.
So the Mermaid runs out to the sea. Her golden hair flies in the wind, as tears run down her cheeks. She has come to throw herself into the ocean and end her sorrow and the Prince's frustration.
Then a sound magnetic - a sound warm - a sound resonant - reaches to her from the ocean. It's indistinct at first; it gets louder. It tugs on aorta and squeezes the lungs. A face comes up to the beach.
It is the Dolphin, her childhood friend. He reminds her of where she comes from.
And she knows now. She knows beyond the slightest doubt.
That in order for their marriage to continue, the Prince has to experience the ocean.
And then he would know her world and understand her.
And the love that he had for her - the love that developed in his heart when he knew her as the mermaid - will go on, now enriched with understanding of what made her lovable in the first place.
And they will both be complete, in knowledge of both the Appolonian and the Oceanic.
And then they can truly live happily everafter, having completed the task of attaining marine and landed intelligence and become the fruition of both.
IN ORDER TO LIVE HAPPILY WITH THE MERMAID, THE PRINCE HAS TO LEARN TO SWIM.
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I like to vanish into people's worlds. I like to experience them from the inside. I like to feel them and be one with them. And then I like to make sense of them, using both mind and heart.
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Everything happens for a reason, and some reasons are better than others.
Are things singularly caused? Overdetermined? Patterns from chaos? Games? Fractals? Relative? Quantum swirls? Holographic? Karma? Ionized multiplicity?
What does one do with Einsteinian reference frames that are individuals' and cultures' perspectives?
Does their being incomplete make them worthless? Or merely incomplete - convex mirrors, the curvature a function of the perspective - and thus worthwhile in part and self-defeating in another?
And does not clarity develop by putting an object in middle of convex mirrors, so that mirrors see both each other and the object, and it becomes possible to reduce the curvature in all and arrive at greater clarity of referential frames and clearer picture of the object?
It's hard to remove the beam from one's own eye. But to abrade multiplicity of perspectives to clarity - by pointing them to the same object and getting in them different pictures - which pictures then show the natures as well as the incompletenesses of the perspectives - there, is a way to reduce the amount of beam in everyone's eyes, while letting them all gain greater clarity as to themselves and to each other.
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An inner world is not understood completely except from within. The outside manifestations are not understood completely except from a multiplicity of referential frames working in synthesis. A DC ghetto is seen one way from liberal America; another from Midwest; another from China; another from Africa; another from Russia; another from Cherokees. In combining these perspectives is arrived a more complete picture of the ghetto - and in the process of checking each other also a more complete picture of liberal America, Midwest, China, Africa, Russia and the Cherokee tribe.
As these perspectives check each other in understanding of a single object, their own agendas and incompletenesses - as well as their virtues - become apparent. An integrative perspective is formed of the object being studied and of the things that are studying it. Flux is created; both beams in the eyes and the eye-matter itself become seen more completely. The result as these perspectives battle each other is reduction in amount of beam in everyone's eyes.
The multiple pieces understand each other; they see each other and are seen themselves. The incompleteness in each perspective is corrected, and the virtue in each perspective is seen, by having to arrive at a complete representation of what is being studied - and through attaining this representation seeing each other and seeing themselves.
De Tocqueville was able to write insightfully about America, because as a Frenchman who had lived in America he combined the subjective experience with outsider's perspective. Thus he was able to see both the experience and the external effects.
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Leo Tolstoy said that all happy families are alike, but unhappy ones differ. This means that according to him there is a single model of happiness that applies to everyone, and any deviation from it leads to misery.
I do not believe that people are such fools or such clones of each other. If what's right for people is function of what is inside them, then there will be many forms of happiness that are right for different people.
Each person being an integrative function - of general human traits; inner propensity and biology; culture and nation; gender; psychology; guidance; and one's own choices -
And what is right for the each person being, functional to this, widely different.
And if I am to be the change I wish to see in the world, then I will be knowledgeable, generous, gallant, giving, inspired, and full of passion and fire of life -
produce work worthy of having been written -
While also empowering in all ways possible that outside myself which I am rejoicing to see -
Which I find valuable for what it is, what it embodies and what it attains.
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Kino dived into the ocean to retrieve a beautiful pearl. After trying to sell it, and having his child killed on the way, he returned to the ocean and threw the pearl back in it. The pearl was full of faces.
But the pearl in itself is innocent. Rather in it are placed like gnarled roots and hedge the corruptions and incompletenesses and cruelties of the world. These are the distillations of context in which it is found. It is possible to say by the root and the hedge just what the soul has been through and what is the shape of the context.
And by looking at the pearl that is the soul, it becomes possible to know what world exists at the time.
Some say that pearls are pathological. Yet it is the pearl that adorns the necklace of the beloved.
The Russian way is to embrace the pearl and have the tragic worldview that sees the world as hopeless.
The American way is to cut out the pearl.
The way that combines Russian and American in the highest synthetic manner, is to remove roots from the pearl and allow it to continue, now pure and innocent, to enrich the world.
And thus to achieve the completeness of civilized process, in which can coexist the oyster and the pearl - the natural and the human - the matter and soul - the ongoing and the sublime.
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Pasternak said, "If it was so agonizing to love the woman, then how much more painful would it be to be the woman and inspire the love?"
How much more painful indeed to have to be absolutely at the top of everything, emotionally, mentally, physically, and carry unbearable emotional loads while remaining a lady in all ways?
How much more painful indeed to be the embodiment of the emotional striving of millions and carry that load while straining under unbearable personal tragedy? And in the process to be attacked on one side for daring to be ladylike and on the other for not being entirely a servant or not being entirely one of the tribe?
How many tons of unbearable baggage could they have placed on one delicate frame? And by what miraculous feat of strength was she able to carry it all?
The Mermaid had no context for herself on the land, and lacking experience of the sea the people of land had no intrinsic awareness of her world and thus treated her without any empathy. And their referential perspectives, being shaped in pursuit of one or another land-interest, attacked her in every way. And the only way for her to endure it -
Was to know that she is the Mermaid -
Was to know what Mermaids are made of -
And to stand on the truth of her Mermaidhood and to determinedly bring ocean's intelligence to the parched lips.
The dolphins have been bashing themselves against shores recently in large numbers. Maybe they're tired of mermaids being misunderstood and misrepresented and seek to bring people the truth of the ocean, whatever it does to themselves.
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There are people who are of the belief that the romantic perspective is untrue to reality.
The question to be asked is then, What is the composition of reality?
Reality is an integrative function of myriads of influences, some natural, some manmade, some spiritual, some inherent, some created, some eternal, some changing with the times.
And a large part of the composition of the reality - indeed a huge chunk of its composition - is people's actions guided by their beliefs.
So that, if one has belief in beauty, in passion, in excellence, in fairness, in generosity, in compassion, and is willing to make these beliefs count in his life and those of others, then he will use the practical reality of his action, pursuant to these convictions, to make these things more and more an aspect of reality.
A concept of realism that ignores man's role as active participant in shaping reality, according to his beliefs, is a completely inadequate concept of realism. It is a concept of realism that ignores man's ability, as an active participant in the constant shaping and reshaping of reality, to change it in any direction! And for someone who claims himself to be a realist, to ignore something so fundamental in shaping of reality, is to commit a fatal logical error according to his own system of thought.
There is that which exists and cannot be changed; there is also that which man does using the practical reality of his actions, pursuant to his convictions.
And the more use the practical reality of their actions to make life more beautiful, the more beautiful the practical reality of life becomes.
And that, is a far more complete and inclusive realism -
One that recognizes man's role as participant in shaping of reality -
And thus recognizes and values and empowers true responsibility and true will.
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I majored in psychology and economics. I think in both economic and psychological terms. The economic perspective is to combine the inputs in such a way as to make the best outcome. Combine, for example, the best businessmen with the best workers; or the best government with the best population; or the best women with the best men.
Thus, when American business goes to China, the result is extremely efficient production and improvement in quality of what is produced - along with lifting 500 million people out of abject poverty in less than three decades.
The same mentality can be applied to social and psychological issues. Combining the best of the complementaries across the world. Bringing talent, mind, heart, passion, man, woman, everything, where they can do the most good and where they can be most appreciated and justly rewarded.
Combining the psychological forces where they can be most effective and be rewarded the most.
Computing psychological costs and in so doing creating a system of valuation of psychic inputs.
And thus to make the most of all components, resulting in optimization of human process -
With incentives for what is emotionally enriching and beautifying -
And disincentives for what emotionally grinds people into the dirt.
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The error - indeed the crime - of failing to compute psychological costs is the error that leads to abomination in all forms and conditions. The prince wants to see the Mermaid's erotic resplendor as worthless, and then he wants to feed on it while attacking her in the process for not being completely made of land. And however much the Mermaid disfigures herself or tries to please the Prince, it is never sufficient: Nothing will satisfy him except her complete evisceration. And then he catches himself in a double bind. If the Mermaid was no longer the Mermaid, then what he loved about her would be gone. And if the Mermaid in any part of her being remains the Mermaid, then that is a violation of his lie of normalcy. He catches himself in a double bind; he catches her in a double bind. He wants her to feel her gifts worthless and meaningless; he wants her to feel trapped and helpless. And in the meanwhile he's preying on her magnificent energy, with his own actions of being with her and preying upon her denying the supposed worthlessness that he has to her ascribed.
These Gordian knots require participation of mind and heart to untie. The mind by itself would not see the insides of the knot. The heart by itself would not know how to untie it. Put them together, and there is no longer the need for the sword.
THE GORDIAN KNOT IS TO BE UNTIED BY MAN'S WITS, GUIDED BY MAN'S DESIRE.
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The biggest ongoing error that keeps insidiously creeping into psychology is that of introjecting into the mind the method used to study the mind, and judge it instead of understanding it should its processes be found to run by a logic different than that of that method. That is of course a betrayal of the very rationality one claims to espouse. The purpose of scientific analysis is to study and comprehend. And if that which is being studied runs by logic different from one used to study it, then that is simply how the thing is made and deserves to be understood for its nature rather than being bludgeoned to death for difference from one's own methodology.
A corollary of the same damnable error were such abominations as logical positivism, which made the incredible irrationality (for people regarding themselves rational) of discarding all that did not parse with their concept of logic instead of finding out the logic by which the thing was in itself made. This, of course, is the highest of irrationality; and while the movement is supposedly dead, it is important that it remain dead.
As should historical errors such as imperialism, which damned and sought conquer-worthy all other civilizations for supposedly using different methodology or supposedly having different attributes (attributes that oneself did not create, could not create and thus is not licensed to be judging).
It is important that such abominations and all similar manifestations not only be dead, but have their graves covered in spit.
Is reason " a higher function"? Let me ask a stupid question: Wherefrom comes reason? Then does the person who claims to be rational being rational in claiming credit for it while attacking all else? A higher function? I repeat, wherefrom comes the higher function? Did the supposedly rational person create it? Then what is the rational thing to do with this supposed higher function: Attack other functions - ones that one has not created - or to do something with it - to make something with it - to use it for something of benefit?
As I am using my own, innate, function, of insight for the benefit of deconstructing sophistries - in this case, sophistries spun by misuses of rational mind.
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What is the logic by which something exists? Of what is its existence a function? What is its nature, what is its essence?
What things are functional of that essence, and what can be most made with it?
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What logic motivates a flower? What is a flower? A flower is the completion, the consummation, the mature form, of the species, as well as its link to the future times. The logic? CONSUMMATION and CONTINUITY, both functional to what the flower IS. As the consummation of the species, it is the flower's nature to be exquisite, self-demanding and bent on pursuit of excellence. As the link to the future times, it is the flower's nature to be forward-seeking and fiercely determined toward nurturing future generations. The first makes the flower delicate, vulnerable to criticism and determined to be her most splendid. The second makes the flower self-sacrificial and most concerned for the future.
A corollary of being the consummation - and the incredible mental work it takes to remain at that level - is a very legitimate longing to be seen, appreciated and adored for the inner-directed effort. This can easily get her in trouble and may be slandered and misconstrued. "Who does she think she is," ask many. I tell you who I think she is: A splendid, giving, loving, generous, and rigorously self-demanding human being - a flowering of humanity, its mature form and manifestation, desiring as part of her nature to be her most magnificent and justly seeking to be rewarded for the colossal emotional and mental effort it takes to be at that level of Being.
Which is of course only fair. And which fairness becomes likewise functional to the ethic of the flower - for the same reason as fairness was advocated by Socrates: Because it is necessary for ongoing, resentment-free, harmonious, perpetuation of life.
With (from economics) incentives created for all that leads to magnificence:
Rewarding fairly, by computing the psychological costs, for the work done by the flower to make the highest resplendency of herself.
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The erotic becomes an aspect of being a flower, as the erotic is blood of life. The flower is filled with erotic energy and seeks rightly to be for it seen and appreciated. The erotic becomes likewise a path to the future; a lifeline toward the next generation and the next step. The flower sacrifices herself for the future and is fiercely determined to make the lives of the coming to be a success; to not only protect them and educate them while they are growing but to likewise make sure that the environment in which they grow up be peaceful and friendly to their development and existence. That's no illogic; that's how the thing is made - rightly - and it is by looking at the process, intrinsically, instead of adjudicating it referentially to a mode of cognition that is acquired not only understanding and empathy - empathy that the logicists sorely lack - but knowledge and wisdom and ultimately a path to the future where flowers can blossom.
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There are many who refer people in America who like European culture, or literature, or poetry, or art, as posers. My response: Who cares if you think they're posers? These are people who seek to have beauty and class and elegance in their lives. If they go for it to Europe or to Japan, then that's simply because those places know how to cultivate class and beauty. And I say furthermore this:
That by bringing class, beauty and elegance to American soil, they enrich America.
And it is by bringing the best from all of the world that America grows and redefines itself into ongoing greatness:
An E PLURIBUS UNUM of all that is of highest quality, weaving the talents, the wisdom, the greatness, contained in each into completeness that serves one and all.
It takes someone who's lived on the outside and on the inside to have an integrative perspective -
And it takes someone who's seen both worlds at times to remind America, lost as it often is and most countries are in one or another shroud, of what it can and should be.
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We have been living in times that have waged a war on beauty.
An attack was waged on the psychological foundations of beauty, leading people to wrongly believe beauty to be narcissistic.
An attack was waged on the economic foundations of beauty, leading people to wrongly believe beauty to be impractical.
An attack was waged on the philosophical foundations of beauty, leading people to wrongly believe beauty to be a temporary artifact of a male-dominated society.
An attack was waged on moral foundations of beauty, leading people to wrongly believe beauty to be shallow.
An attack was waged on beauty at the political level, leading people to believe it elitist.
Until the nation was robbed of beauty, and all that was of beauty was in one or another bind, allowing the enemies of beauty to claim that this was what beauty led to naturally and to perpetuate in so doing their wicked worldview.
Many people were led astray into hideous places by such hideousness. And through manipulation of social climate and psychological climate the people were led to participate in this abomination, with climate (and resulting lessons) manufactured to lead people to make deliberately contrived, fallacious, conclusions, to validate this fallacious worldview.
So man rises.
The fire from the center of the earth, bound down by the crust, which is itself a congealment of plasmic fire, rises.
He bursts through the crust. In order to tower at the top of the crust. Not so that he could itself tower - no, not for anything nearly so vain or short-sighted.
But so that water, the solvent of life, the love of man that is the feminine counterpart.
The life-giving substance that is the reason for life; that being pure in herself dissolves into herself all forms of rubbish, and thinks herself the vilest things on earth when it is the reason for life and is in itself utterly indispensable and sublime.
With people calling her damaged goods if she were to dissolve into herself any rubbish, and in so doing becoming accomplices in the original crime of dumping the garbage into the water instead of doing what justice demands and removing the trash.
Water, that is the reason for all of life, and that by ingratitude and malice and jealousy and ideologies catering and justifying malice and jealousy is contaminated with all kinds of poison.
Could seep into the top of the volcano.
Into the crater that congealed fire has made for her.
And bask at the top, under the sky, in delicacy and enchantment - dissolving minerals, and yet being completely and utterly clear, transparent, and enchanting - at night reflecting the stars and at day being dressed in fog and white gossamer webs of clouds.
So that people could journey for thousands of miles, to the crater, and not only be healed of their ailments. But to behold life as life can be - as is the attained merger of elements - as is the result of man's action guided by inspired and principled passion - as is the wisdom embodied in the planet.
And as is finally, after all the horror and error and misdirection that has been done through incomplete study and incomplete understanding - after web-spinning, fabrication, illusioneering in service of hideous motives and hideous worldviews - after all the fallaciousness and worldview-fabricating - after all these things, at long last, weaving a gordian knot around the soul and silencing it into extinction 0 is by the reality of man's action made part of reality of the world.
So that beauty can be by practical reality of man's action made a part of the practical reality. That by the fire rising from the depth of being, at the sight of horrible social manipulation leading the world's most sublime things into extinction, is grounded in deepest human reality and informed, intelligent, ethical choice. That, being aware of this manipulation, is based on the highest human intelligence. That, by man's action out of love based in profound aesthetic sensibility and rightful wrath upon seeing beloved water contaminated with debris and usurped and denatured and robbed and denounced, is grounded in greatest motives known to man. And that, by being what it is in itself, becomes a complete manifestation of what is possible here on earth, and inspires others with sight of accomplishment based in deepest human reality and reaching toward states worthy of the world that we have been given and that makes us worthy of that world.
This, consummation of love, a volcanic crater lake, solution to the disease of the times, flowering of truth of humanity and inspiration for generations to come.
It's better to learn no lesson than it is to learn a wrong lesson.
If things don't parse with theory, check your premises.
And a lesson that is most profoundly premised, is based on the depths underlying reality.
It's based on the Fire at the Center of the Earth.
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Then can the frames of reference be redintegrated around this plasmic fire. Then can ideologies can be stood on their heads and seen for their incompleteness. Then can commonsense - the mental shroud of the times - get punctured as is the seeming, and visible resplendor becomes the embodied reality of human mind, of ethics, of sensibility and pursuant that of the civilization.
The commonsense redintegrates around this reality, and becomes servant of it as is its nature.
Don't have common sense? Good for you. Reach for inspired truth, and make that formative to a more informed commonsense.
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Love is an unexpected guest at the table. Tsvetayeva: "they dressed the table for the six, but seventh one they did forget." They forgot her, and she came unannounced. Did not knock at the door, did not call, did not ask for an invitation. They banished her; they thought she was a mirage.
What is a mirage? A reflection, across the sky, of something real that dwells on the other side of the desert.
And which as such is a sign, to the parched traveler, that there is a world outside the desert - a real world, a rich world, and a world that is worth traveling through the desert to find - as it is itself trying to find the traveler through its reflections that the sky sends to him on his path.
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There is love general, love Christlike, love directed toward one and all.
And then there is love particular, love preferential, love passionate.
There are many who, practicing first form, are hateful of second form. That is a bad error.
To reward the magnificent - for making the effort to be magnificent - with gift of romantic passion, is to give people incentive to be resplendent -
While rightly rewarding those who make such an effort -
And in so doing to help make the most of people and the most of humankind.
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What happens to a dream deferred?
More importantly, what happens to an ability suffocated?
It becomes cancerous. It eats from the inside. It tears out the lungs.
The hobbled minds and emotions either turn outside in jaws or are gnarled inside.
It becomes a poison that injures oneself; or it becomes a criminal that injures others.
The more it is attacked, the more obvious becomes the cruelty and abomination and hypocrisy of what it takes to constrain it.
Until someone who's seen both perspectives reminds people of what E PLURIBUS UNUM means.
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E PLURIBUS UNUM means this: That there are multiple valid abilities, that can produce multiple valid results. That there is not a single way that is right for everyone, nor a single hierarchy, nor a single "adequacy," nor a single mode of computation, but multiplicity of pursuits and modes. It means that there are multiple intelligences, all expressed to different extents in different people. It means that there are multiple ways to the top of the mountain; it means that there are multiple valid endeavors; it means that there are multiple mirrors; it means that there are multiple PATHS.
And by allowing people a fruition of what they are given - in paths that are right for them - more and more of the human potential is given a way to expression for the good of one and all. Economically; academically; artistically; and in multiplicity of endeavors.
That, is the meaning of E PLURIBUS UNUM.
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A neighborhood kid tried to teach me what he called player tips. I stopped him right in his tracks.
A relationship that is based on deception will be toppled by any manifestation of emotional truth.
The process of defending such a relationship involves spinning an ever-more-wide, ever-more-oppressive, ever-more-strangulating and ultimately ever-more-transparently-dishonest web of deceit, in order to not only keep what the partner truly wants from appearing, but to keep the partner so shackled and guilt-ridden and miserable as to not be capable of seeing the deceit or extricating herself from it.
The lie grows; it becomes more ensnaring. Everything in the partner that is receptive to emotional truth is torn up and destroyed. The people cannot give love to their children or to handle in them sincerity or give them emotional understanding, because such things are a menace to the falsehood that is their existence: A foil for it and, as something of sincerity itself, a frame that makes apparent their own insincerity.
The people retreat behind closed-gate neighborhoods and develop groupthink, allowing lies to build up while aggressively excluding anyone with any other ideas. The church comes in to justify the lie, profaning itself and the name of God in the process. Psychology comes in to make people believe that they don't think what they think and don't feel what they feel. Social movements come in to deal with those who would not be deceived by either of these methods.
Criminalized, the emotional truth becomes criminal, while the lie becomes the law.
It becomes, in the words of Steven Jay Gould, "Shared dogma masquerading as objectivity" - and defining all people, all abilities, all perceptions, all values, all mindsets, all personalities, in reference to - itself.
Creating a bigger and bigger shroud; a bigger and bigger falsehood; and a bigger and bigger skein of self-perpetuating and mutually-perpetuating lies.
It has been often observed that suburban life is hypocritical. I've just explained why and how.
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If something exists at a rate greater than chance, then there is inevitably a reason. Thus many of the things that are stereotypical are based on actual root causes. The task becomes to see the underlying mechanism.
"Jews are hard-headed" - well yeah, and I've said why they have to be. "Black people in America are lazy and violent" - many aren't, but historical analysis would refer to it as learned helplessness in face of having all of their work expropriated. "Women aren't rational" - while many are, the ones that aren't simply think along different lines which are functional to another level of nature.
To know this, is a way to move out from cultural dogma masquerading as objectivity -
And toward actual examination of cultural, historical and psychological forces that are necessary for integrative portrayal of people at levels individual and collective -
And, once this wisdom is quantified, making possible for actual, informed, responsibility to be the fact of people's lives.
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It has been this experience: That whenever faith is put into something that is incomplete, follows a refutation by counterexample. Someone puts faith in brotherhood of man - and gets stung by a scorpion. Someone puts faith in himself - and to survive keeps having to draw on other forms of knowledge, on friendships, on alliances, that expand his horizons beyond himself. Someone puts faith in work or responsibility - and as the work builds all kinds of unexpected consequences arise, that demand more knowledge, that call on more faculties, that expand the definition of work and responsibility and activity that is useful that was not previously known as work. Someone puts faith in empiricism - and as empiricism builds on itself it finds out, through Einsteinian relativity, quantum mechanics and game and chaos theories, that it is not the absolute truth. People put faith in logic - and get Kant and others using the logic for suicidal epistemologizing. Communists put faith in mankind - and get the worst of what man can be.
All and further along; these aren't tricks, these aren't illusions, this is not human condition, these are simply manifestations of how the universe is. The false theories get tested and deconstructed, with their shortcomings becoming immediately or sometimes not so immediately made apparent. Does incompleteness of all these things render them worthless? No, but it renders them incomplete.
Through interpolation among convex mirrors the amount of curvature is made fathomable, and the legitimate, being separated from the illegitimate - as is grain from the chaff - gives clarity of perspective; clarity about perspectives; and sets in forth the dynamics by which the beam in everyone's eyes is reduced to undistinguishable quantities.
There is more.
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The human being, from perspective of self, can be said to possess self-interest and other-interest. If evolution is true, then man is both self and part of the greater whole. This avoids the two errors - objectivism and communism - on either side: There is the self; there is the whole; and both are valid. One is not only a wave or a part of the ocean; one is both part of the ocean and the wave. There is the collective identity; there is the individual identity; both are valid, both are real, both are incomplete and both enrich each other.
Thus, the completeness of human beingness is accomplished when people are allowed to make the most of self-interest and likewise to do the most good for the fellow human beings. In this way is fulfilled constructively, for good of all selves and good of the whole, the totality of human beingness. And it is by encouraging both of these directions that can be made the completeness of man and the completeness of humankind.
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The pomegranate contains myriads of seeds. The seeds are the function of their unique selves, and of the fruit around them. The fruit is the function of itself and the seeds. Through integrative synthesis, tug-and-play, checks-and-balance and ultimately synergy between levels of substructure and superstructure, is created the best fruit and the best seeds.
At any given point in time, based upon analysis of the seeds, patterns emerge, explanations, apparencies. These apparencies become the worldview; the worldview that claims to speak for the world. They will claim that they speak for the whole of the fruit and for all of the seeds. At one point or another will appear a seed that refutes the pattern.
Such a seed will be pressed from all sides. Such a seed will be maligned and attacked. Such a seed will be seen as a threat - a threat not for what it IS, but for the fact that, by being what it is, it is a REFUTATION OF THE WORLDVIEW - of the shared dogma masquerading as objectivity. Few things are more threatening than challenges to worldview; the result is what I call WORLDVIEW PANIC. And the first and most frequent response to the worldview panic: Destroy what causes it.
And for any such pioneer seed, faced with such dynamics, the correct answer is this:
Identify with the inherent truth;
Identify with the entirety of the fruit, which it is by being what it is - and refuting the temporary dogma - serves to a far greater extent than does the dogma;
And stand, both on the grounds of the unique embodied essence in it embodied and on the ground of the fruit's shared interest -
Identifying with self as well as the shared -
The seed becomes tuned into the reality of itself and the fruit -
Reality which is an integrative function of the given and the newly created -
And which it serves by making the most of itself and the fruit (or wave and ocean, or self-interest and shared-interest).
At which point again becomes manifest this:
A more complete understanding of human interest, as interest of each self and interest of the totality - working through integrative synthesis:
And which, through commingling and interaction among levels of structure, not only refute temporary shared dogmas -
But in fact complete and become and make manifest the totality of human process:
AS EACH UNIQUE SELF AND THE WHOLE WORKING IN SYNERGY -
And through which synergy among substructure and superstructure, as shown, is actualized the totality of that which is man and that which is humanity -
And reality of both attains the highest functionality -
For good of each person and good of mankind.
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Then the seeds fall out; become themselves; and give birth to the new fruit.
Succession of the seasons. The way of the universe.
Bring in will guided by wisdom and goodwill, and build the next level.
Not only cyclical as in the East.
Not only linear as in the West.
But understanding integratively - intrinsically and through synthesis of referential planes - arrive at an ever-more-complete, ever-more-clear, understanding.
And then use the real mechanism of will, informed by real knowledge and real benificence, to make the most of - reality.
To build the next level, now inspired with passionate embrace of the resplendent -
And to make it an ongoing, continuous, practical part of the reality of the world -
By using the practical reality of man's actions inspired by the resplendent to make it so.
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Ilya Shambat.
posted by Ilya Shambat at 4:16 PM
1 Comments:
Ilya;
A fine piece of work. It's nice to know we're neighbors, now, as well (just outside Washington DC these days).
Rudy
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