Jim Morrison, Eminem And Human Condition

Jim Morrison wanted to kill his father and have sex with his mother, and Eminem wanted to kill his mother. The first thought that in his Oedipal ranting he had discovered the secret of human condition. This claim is refuted by the behavior of Eminem.

The real reason for the behavior of both is the way in which they – and their generations – were raised. Baby boomers were raised in households in which the mother was the nurturer and the man was the disciplinarian. Mothers were nice; fathers were mean. So the children liked their mothers and hated their fathers. Children will always like people who are nice to them better than they will like people who are mean to them, and there is nothing Oedipal about it.

The parents of Emimen's generation did things differently. Their mothers left men who were mean to them; and many became mean – or at least disciplinarian - themselves. So predictably the children hated their mothers.

In the first case the children hated the male parent for being mean; in the second case the children hated the female parent for being mean.

That is a much truer human reality than what we see in Jim Morrison's claims.

In my generation, women have been taught to be mean. It is known as Third Wave feminism. That is likely to create more Eminems down the road.

But then there have been many men in my generation who, in reaction against Third Wave feminism, adopted misogynistic beliefs. They listen to Eminem or follow Osama Bin Laden. This is likely to create more Jim Morrisons.

And then there is the possibility for children who are worse than either of the above: Children both of whose parents are mean to them and who hate both their fathers and their mothers.

What would a generation like that look like? I cannot predict. Maybe some of them will be motivated to figure out better ways to do things, and maybe some of them will achieve these ways. But then there is a strong possibility that such people will just be hateful, both to other people in their gender and to the other gender. Maybe they will want to kill both their fathers and their mothers; and maybe many of their fathers and their mothers would deserve such an attitude.

In my case at least none of these things are likely to happen. I have been very good to my daughter, and so has her mother. But many other children are not so lucky; and I shudder to think what would happen in a situation in which a Third Wave feminist gets together with someone like Eminem.

Both Jim Morrison and Eminem expressed a truth that was experienced by their generation. But in no way did either one express a universal human reality. There is one human reality underlying both of these men: That children will like parents who treat them well and dislike parents who treats them badly. That is the case regardless of the parent's gender. And this truth will continue being expressed through all of history.

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Marx And Reagan

Marx was wrong on most of his central contentions. There is no such thing as a historical inevitability; people's choices have taken different parts of the world into any number of places at any number of times. The businessman is not a thief; he is someone who gets things done. And religion is not “the opium for the masses.”

Why am I saying this? Because the world's major religions, with the exception of Buddhism, were started not by economic or political leaders but by the hoi polloi. Both Christ and Mohammad were anti-establishment radicals with no experience of economic or political power; and while Mohammad became politically powerful in his lifetime as a result of inventing Islam, Christ died on the cross.

We see the same thing in contemporary religious movements. Christian fundamentalism was not invented on Wall Street or in DC and militates against both. The New Age movement was started by academic dropouts who militated against the academic and medical establishments. Taliban was begun by politically and economically powerless students in Pakistani madrasas. Not Luther, not Cromwell, not any number of other influential leaders of Protestant Christianity, were part of political or economic “elites” prior to starting their activities.

Why do these religions carry the appeal that they do to the less well-off? Probably because they were started by people who were not part of “the ruling class” but became far more powerful than any of these “ruling classes.” Whether through force, miracle or persuasion, these people's beliefs then were adopted by people with economic and political power as much as they were by the hoi polloi. They were claimed by the kings and nobles; then they were claimed by the colonists and the bourgeoisie. So that when Marx saw an order of exploitation, he impugned the religions that were possessed by both the exploiters and the exploited alike and saw them as being part of the problem.

Marxists claim to speak for the working classes, but so do Christian and Islamic fundamentalists. In America, we see a phenomenon that inverts the claims of Karl Marx. There are more Marxists among the “elites” than there are among the “masses”; and there are more conservative people among the “masses” than there are among the “elites.”

Seeing all this, Reagan appropriated the Marxist and hippie rhetoric and took it into the opposite direction. He said that the “liberal elites,” “liberal establishment” and “big liberal government” failed to represent the values of the American people and that they were dictating to them a foreign totalitarian order that was against their beliefs. His message resonated with many people, and he became an exceptionally powerful president. He inverted the Marxian rhetoric and turned it into its opposite. The result was a very effective political force that continues to exert a vast influence – both for right and for wrong – to the present day.

So that while Marx militated against one set of elites, Reagan conservatives militate against another set of elites. Both have followers among the so-called “masses.” And then of course there are people among these “masses” who claim that both sets of “elites” are jerks and do not represent their interests or their values. Marx claimed to champion “the working class,” but his message has carried greatest appeal in the West to the well-off students and academics. And Reagan claimed to run against the government, and now there is a huge government building near the White House with his name on it.

Both the founder of America – Thomas Jefferson – and the founder of the Soviet Union – Vladimir Lenin – came from privilege. The first championed democracy, social mobility and opportunity for all men, and the last claimed to champion the proletariat. In both cases, we see people coming from the “elites” who took an anti-elitist stance. Both countries became global superpowers. And in both countries there was – and remains – a strong anti-elitist sentiment that can be taken, and has been taken, into any number of opposite directions. Some militate against economic “elites”; others militate against ones in media and academia. The first fail to realize and respect the role of entrepreneurship in creating prosperity. The second fail to realize and respect how much prosperity and democracy owe to science, journalism, education and the arts.

When the Soviet Union fell, the first two things that came back were consumerism and religion. A huge McDonald's was built near the Red Square, and the vast Christ the Savior Cathedral was rebuilt with a billion dollars of private donations. Both appear to have great appeal both to the more educated and the less educated; and Marx was obviously wrong to see both as an artifact of exploitation of working people by the propertied class.

Whereas Reagan was also wrong on a number of fronts. He was wrong about the environment; people have not created nature and cannot re-create nature, and blindly plundering it for gain that can be much better realized through smarter technologies leaves the world a worse place than one has found it. He was wrong about government being the source of oppression and corruption; there are many private religious, communitarian and economic entities that commit hideous violations against people, and unlike the government in a democracy they are unelected, unbalanced and unchecked. And his anti-academic policy has proven to be a disaster. When higher education is unaffordable and the primary educational system is weak, the bulk of the population lacks the knowledge that it needs to make informed political and personal decisions.

Both have been vastly influential, and I expect both to remain vastly influential. Which means that it is necessary to confront the people claiming the legacy of both where they were wrong. Marx was wrong about religion, business and historical inevitability, and Reagan was wrong on education, environment and the preference of unelected private power over elected public power. Both have claimed to champion the people against the elites, and both have many followers among the elites. It remains up to us - both ones coming from elites and ones not coming from elites - to make sense of both influences and refute them where they have gone wrong.

https://sites.google.com/site/ilyashambatthought/marx-and-reagan

My Angel

My angel takes away my pain

And gives to me the love I treasure;

My angel comes to me like rain

And gives to me delight and pleasure;

My angel sprinkles me with stars

And then illumines me with sunshine;

To Venus, Jupiter and Mars

We fly and carry in our passion;

My angel lends a helping hand

And gives the solace to the needy;

My angel looks to sea and land

And in them all creation heeds - and

When we are talking, all is right

And then we are birds of a feather -

In day, in twilight and the night

Me and my angel soar together.

https://sites.google.com/site/ibshambatpoetry

Bullying, Immigration And Race

When faced with a bullying situation, different places will approach it in different ways. A conservative will attack the person who is being bullied, stating that they are responsible for what happens to them and that they are weak, disturbed or dangerous to society. A liberal will confront the bully, in some cases claiming that he is a narcissist or a sociopath. A Christian will look at how to guide both to a better place.

Sometimes the situation is quite clear-cut. At other times it isn't. We see some in liberalism seeing the Western man as the universal source of evil, but there have been severe wrongs done by people who were not a part of the Western civilization. Sometimes the little guy is the good guy and sometimes he isn't. The correct solution is not to take the side of either one against the other, but to guide both toward better thinking and better behavior.

Can, for example, white people and black people get along? They do all the time. However whenever people mix someone is likely to wrong someone else. We see this done both ways. Sometimes the aggressor comes from a more “elite” position and sometimes he doesn't. There are many men who either get together with women from lower socioeconomic positions and treat them badly or have sex with them and saddle them with children for whom they fail to provide. However I also knew of a man descended from a bad background who married a woman descended from English royalty and treated her terribly. I do not see a correlation between power and goodness. Both the big guy and the little guy can be good or bad.

So of course when someone mistreats one of their own, they may want to do something bad in return to their group. If a black man is violent to a white woman, other white people would use that to claim that black people are bad and that they should be attacked. If an international marriage goes bad, that can start off social conflict. So now we have many Russian women married to American men, and if the American men choose to be idiots and treat them badly then Russian men would likely have something to say on the matter, even though of course many of them are much worse.

With the black people in America, there are some who are descended from slaves and others who are immigrants or descendants of immigrants. Generally the immigrants are well-to-do and patriotic, whereas many of those who are descended from slaves are neither. That is because the first group has chosen to be in America and the other hasn't. If you have come on your own will to a country, then you have made that choice, and you will do what you can to both defend that choice and to make it a success. Whereas if you have not chosen to be in a country, then you feel like a victim and often bear ill will toward the place. When families immigrate, the adults are generally likely to be patriotic. The kids however may or may not be, as their opinion has not been consulted on the matter. Both for the children of immigrants – and for the people descended from slaves – the correct solution is to give them the choice that they believe they have been denied. Say, You are free to go elsewhere; if you choose to stay then be a good citizen.

Now back on the original subject of bullying, the correct solution is to have interest in the well-being of both parties as well as their improvement. It is to guide both toward better conduct and better character. The same should of course be the case with everyone else, whether or not they have been involved in a bullying situation. The correct solution is to have interest in the well-being and the improvement of everyone. Make a better world for the people and better people for the world.

https://sites.google.com/site/ilyashambatthought

Heaven In Her Mind

The heaven in her mind
Has no boundaries or separation
No darkness
No edges
No limit
And absolutely no evil.
The heaven in her mind
Shines like sun through a cloud
Luminous white
Melodious
And perfectly soft.
She reaches down to me
And she guides me
Gently
Skillfully
With musical fingers
Drawing light to shoot to her from my heart.
The heaven in her mind
Shines softly and supernaturally
And tells me to listen
Submerge myself
To quiet my mind
And to love her.
And I kneel before her
And shroud my head in heaven
And merge with her soul.
She takes me to heaven.
I've been to heaven today.

https://sites.google.com/site/ibshambatpoetry

The Sunflower And The Butterfly

The rain was pouring in sheets, and lightning struck the ground from the sky. It was November in Illinois, storm season. A fresh gust of wind from the North picked up a sunflower seed that lay on the road and carried it to the edge of a field. The sunflower seed fell on the ground and stayed there through the winter.

In the spring the farmer was planting corn and came across the first tender shoots. He rolled over them with his plow. "This no-good weed," he mumbled, "takes the soil away from good crops." Then he continued planting corn seeds.

The sunflower seed survived and kept growing. One day the farmer's son was playing in the field and came across the young plant. He said, "What is this stupid weed doing here?" He struck at it with a stick and tore off three leaves. But the sunflower continued to grow.

One day a butterfly was flying around in the cornfield and found the young plant. The sunflower asked the butterfly, "Why am I here? Everyone says I am no good and keeps trying to kill me. If I am no good, then why was I ever born?"

The butterfly hovered gently over the delicate leaves and said, "You are a sunflower. You are in a corn field. The people here think you're no good because they are growing corn, and they think you're a weed. But a hundred yards from here, along the road, there are hundreds of sunflowers. They line the road and the drivers think they're very beautiful."

The sunflower asked, "Why am I here, where nobody wants me? Did other sunflowers hate me?" The butterfly swept her wings around and said, "You are lucky to be here. The other sunflowers get plucked and sold as food. Here, you could grow up. Count your blessings."

And the sunflower praised God and grew up to be as tall as the corn. When the farmer and his son saw it again, they marveled at it. "It must be a sturdy weed," the farmer said, "to have grown this tall under such conditions. We're not gonna touch it again." So they left it alone.

When August came, the sunflower was in full bloom and following the sun as it rose in the morning and went down at night. A butterfly came again and said, "See? Now you're all grown. Do you like yourself now?" "I don't know," said the sunflower. "You are beautiful," said the butterfly to the sunflower. "You are beautiful," said the sunflower to the butterfly. And the butterfly pollinated the sunflower.

The farmer's wife and daughter were walking in the field. The little girl said, "Look, it's a sunflower!" "Yes, dear," said her mother, "it's a sunflower. And it grew in a corn field even though your daddy tried to kill all the weeds. It must be a very special sunflower." "Let's pluck it for good luck," insisted the girl. "No dear," said her mother, "it must have been blessed to survive what it did. Kiss its leaves for good luck and then leave it alone."

The girl kissed the sunflower and then went home. Next morning the sunflower said to the butterfly, "I don't want to get plucked. I did not survive this long this far away from home that I should allow myself to be killed." The butterfly said to the sunflower, "Everyone dies, but if you rid your heart of darkness then you can live on in another form." "I need to repay the farmer's family for having raised me," said the sunflower, "and then I want to help other plants." So the butterfly said, "OK, then let them have your seeds and your petals, while you let your soul fly away with me."

The next night, while the mother was sleeping, the little girl went out into the field and plucked the sunflower. She put it in a vase. When next morning her mother found the sunflower in the little girl's room, she got angry. She said, "This plant survives storms, winter and your dad's plow, and you kill it. Are there not enough sunflowers along the road, that you had to kill something so precious?"

The girl cried and became afraid. She said to her mother, "I will be forgiven, right? I am a good girl, right?" The mother looked at her and said, "You have to ask for forgiveness, and you have to pray."

The girl came up to the sunflower and said, "I am sorry." Then she prayed that the sunflower live on.

The farmer saw the sunflower in his daughter's room and said, "It is not by accident that this plant lived while we were trying to kill all the weeds. Perhaps it is trying to tell us something. I'll build a plot next to the corn fields where we'll be raising sunflowers." And he cracked the plant, he took out the seeds from it and put them in little bag to grow the next spring.

As he was plucking out the seeds, from the sunflower emerged a beautiful butterfly. She flew away and found her friend. And together they went on spreading her blessings and knowledge to all the flowers that lived in the surrounding fields.

https://sites.google.com/site/ibshambatpoetry

Knowledge, Responsibility And American Values

Responsibility presupposes knowledge. Without knowledge, people do not understand the world enough to know the consequences of their actions, which means that they cannot act in a calculated manner to influence their environment in such a way as to achieve the intended result.

There are many demagogues claiming responsibility as their value while being against knowledge. These people rail against scientists, academia, climate science or "liberal elites" in the same sentence as they claim to support responsibility or integrity or American values. They are wrong - absolutely.

These people claim that prosperity is created by business and only by business. What they do not realize is where the knowledge behind this prosperity comes from. Most of what business sells is technology; and technology comes from science.

Which means that it is science, and not business, that is the ultimate source of prosperity. And while business certainly has a vast role in creating prosperity, without science capitalism would be nothing more than exchange of basic commodities at the level it was in medieval Persia.

The people who claim to value liberty, responsibility or economic opportunity at the same time as they attack or deny science are lying. Scientific knowledge is at the root of prosperity as well as of all progress. Texas Oil is not the root of prosperity; science is.

And lacking or denying this knowledge, people engage in grossly irresponsible behavior, such as poisoning the oceans and the air and making the world a worse place for their children than they have found it.

Are most scientists liberals? Yes. Why? Mainly because the scientists do not make very much money for the time, effort and money they put into their education, which means that the people driven by economic interest tend to avoid the profession. The only people who go into science are either the people who love the field or the people who are driven by the ideal of service.

And if the conservatives seek a greater presence – and influence - in the academia, they would be advancing these things as their values and teaching them to their kids.

It is much easier to rail against “liberal elites” than it is to produce knowledge. What we see instead is these people railing against “liberal elites” while using their work to enrich themselves. They fail to compensate the people from whom they get their knowledge according to the value that they are getting from it, choosing instead to damn or defund them.

That is an act of supreme dishonesty. And dishonesty does not qualify as a conservative value.

Or as responsibility. Or as liberty. Or as American patriotism or the American way.

Is academia right on all counts? No. I have opposed political correctness ever since I knew what it was, because it is intellectual fascism. I oppose personality psychology because it damns people, claiming irrationally that some people are evil and can only be evil whatever they do, however hard they work and whatever work they do on themselves. And I oppose materialist fundamentalism – falsely known as skepticism - because I and many people I know – including eminent scientists, successful entrepreneurs and highly educated, highly accomplished professionals in fields ranging from software to medicine - have had very real spiritual experiences. Experiences with less than one in a billion chance of happening. And not one, but many of them.

Does the academia not reflect “American values”? Political correctness, materialist fundamentalism and irrational psychological theories do not; but for as long as American values include honesty and integrity, real science does. This is the case for physics or mathematics or chemistry or biology or computer science or medicine or engineering; this is also the case for climate science. Not only has it been validated by 10,000 of the world's brightest minds, but it should be common sense. You raise carbon dioxide emissions while burning down the rainforests that absorb carbon dioxide, you have problems.

Responsibility presupposes knowledge; and claiming to be in value of responsibility while being against knowledge is a racket. It allows people to use the work of the scientists to enrich themselves without valuing or compensating them according to the value of what they get. It leads them to behavior that is vastly irresponsible and that leaves the world a worse place for their children. It leads them to engage in brutal, destructive practices. It leads them to listen to liars and demagogues who con them and laugh all the way to Congress or all the way to the bank.

There is no responsibility without knowledge, and there is no prosperity without science.

It is time that knowledge, education and science be valued according to the benefit they provide.

https://sites.google.com/site/ilyashambatthought

Consciousness, Social Norms And Reality

The project of consciousness movement has been to make the unconscious conscious. It has been to examine the influences that one has had and discard what is invalid. I have had many influences, many of them vastly conflicting with one another; and I have been doing a lot to examine them, partly by myself and partly with the efforts of others.

I have known any number of people who did not like it where they came from, but still kept many of their attitudes. An acquaintance of mine from Louisiana said that you can take the boy out of the South, but you cannot take the South out of the boy. When I was 18 I had feelings for a woman named Louise. She came from the South, but she did not like many things about the South. They however remained within her. I loved the part of herself that was her and hated what came from the South. She has since then done a lot by way of examining her influences and has become conscious of what she was brought up with.

This brings me to a different topic, and that is adaptation to society. Many of the same people who militate against government power are insisting that people adapt to social norms. My response to that is based on political science. A rule that is not official is one that is not subject to accountability, check and balance, and that as such has nothing to keep it from becoming tyrannical. I would respect an official law, I would not respect a law that is unofficial, nor would I recommend that others do either. If you want your norms to be binding, pass a law toward that effect.

My parents did a lot by way of assimilating into America, and both of them are quite comfortable. I instead did my own thing. My life has not been as comfortable as theirs, but I have done more to contribute to culture and thought. I have translated five books of classical Russian poetry into English. America benefits both from people like them and people like me.

Should immigrants, as some say, assimilate? Doing so denies America all sorts of useful input. Nothing is owed to guys from Middle East who come to America and teach men in disadvantaged communities to be bastards; but much is in fact owed to people who bring into America valuable things from abroad. Americans eat at Chinese restaurants, drive Japanese cars, employ Hindu programmers, view movies made by Jews, follow sports played by black people. All of these people contribute much more to America than they would have if they had simply assimilated.

It is of course legitimate to demand that people follow actual laws. It is in no way legitimate to demand that people follow laws that are unofficial. Once again, a rule that is unofficial is not subject to checks, balance and accountability. This means that it has nothing to keep it from becoming tyrannical. And tyranny is not what America is meant to be about.

Once again, I would follow a rule that is official. I would not follow a rule that is unofficial, nor would I recommend that anyone else do either.

It is most certainly valid to understand where others are coming from; and I have done much work toward that effect, mainly at the encouragement of people whose views I respected. What is not legitimate is imposing on people unofficial codes of conduct. If you want your social norms to be binding, pass a law. Subject it to checks, balance and accountability. Do not create a hidden totalitarianism in a nation that is intended to be free.

Probably the best thing to have come out of consciousness movement has been the process of seeing such influences and making them conscious. That way one knows what influences one has had and can separate the grain from the chaff. Most of what one finds there is partly true. Most influences are right in some ways and wrong in others. The first step however is seeing them; at which point one can decide which influence is right and about what.

IN my generation, where everyone has been exposed to all sorts of conflicting influences, this process is necessary. We have been living in the world in which everyone influences one another in all sorts of directions. When Scott Lasch said that my generation was at sea, what he was seeing is an inevitable effect of democracy. Everyone will influence one another. The solution is not to prevent a mix; it is for people to see every influence for what it is and keep what is right while discarding what is wrong with each.

When I left the corporate world at age 24, I was accused of leaving reality. What I did instead was work on my mind to get rid of things that I had not chosen to be there in order to replace them with more informed choice. That of course got me labeled by any number of people as crazy or irresponsible. In fact it was highly responsible. I was making the unconscious conscious in order that I could make more informed choice.

Of course the consciousness movement – and its outgrowth the New Age – made any number of errors of their own. They decided that people's beliefs are the only factor in shaping their reality. That is very transparently false. Their situation is owed partly to them, and partly to all sorts of other factors, both ones human and ones non-human. They did not create the Sun or the Earth, and they did not create America.

When an adaptation or a mindset considers itself to be reality and nothing else to be reality, this error is one natural. They say instead that people make their reality. The problem in both cases is what people consider reality to be. A mindset or an adaptation is real enough, but in no way is it the whole of reality. Reality also includes the Sun, the Universe, the Earth, the oceans and the air, and other civilizations. Garbage in garbage out, as the computer programmers say. You create a false definition of reality, others may buy into that definition and see reality as such as the problem. The solution is not to side with either error, but to have a more complete view as to what reality is.

Reality as such of course is highly complex; and it includes all sorts of factors. I cannot accept the claims of materialist fundamentalists because I and any number of others – including people with strong academic and professional credentials – have had very real spiritual experiences. Nor can I accept the idea that people make their reality; it is obviously incorrect. I do not know at this time how to reconcile what we know from science with the experiences that people have had and continue to have. I do however know that both sides – the one that says that spirituality is for loonies and the one that says that people make their reality – are wrong.

Making the unconscious conscious is a valid pursuit, and one that is highly empowering as well as honest. What is not valid is claiming that one's consciousness is the only thing that shapes one's reality. Keep the truth and discard the error.

https://sites.google.com/site/ilyashambatthought