Walls and Windows, Part ONE
To begin... NPR Diane Reame(sp?) Show, this morning, with guest, Nora Bokov(sp?), head of the National Inst. on Addiction, for the NIH. I recommend hearing this very clear interview, to both my friends into psych., and folks dealing with drugs, and/or addiction/obsession. It was a good refresher for me - didn't teach me much more than I've studied in the past - but it allowed for great brain associations. And, being a lot about the brain, it touched not just on addiction, but on how that relates to the wider worlds of psychology, evolution, the limbic system/development, dopamine, risk-taking, etc. Even if you have not studied these areas, you too will experience brain associations. Meeting new brains is a rare and healthy event we should all partake in rather than simply ordering brain take-out.
Trying to manage the caterpillar in my own brain, I am drinking anti-prionic coffee, and trying not to stress - (into a relapse/migraine). One of my revelations garnered from this NPR interview is that Nether Guy, whom I always knew was into gambling and so was susceptible to addictive or risk-taking behaviours, is, like a lot of redneck right-wing reptilians named George, addicted to his own fear. He could also be addicted to other things (drugs) besides cigarettes, gambling and spousal abuse - and drugs may explain his eruptions into stereo-cranking, (just as face-eating may be considered a bath-salt problem rather than a hate crime) - but here I am discussing his basic psychology... I've noted that the Nether People will tap or bang on walls, and do various other passive aggressive things from behind walls and doors. This is obvious cowardly behaviour, fancying itself as, I suppose, being bold and cool. Adolescent - symbolically still "lashing back" at parents, now at proxies for parents.
May 2011, the Guardian published an article, (including Steven Hawkings?), which claimed that the belief in Heaven is based on the fear of the dark - on an adolescent fear carried into adulthood like a vestigial limb. In many other ways, today's society is an unmatured collection of fearful, vain, jealous, spiteful, covetous, etc., adolescents, thinking in hormonally/endorphin-set FUNDAMENTALIST patterns, carrying forth the scary or irrational shades and shadows of dysfunctional childhood - or childhood in a dysfunctionalising society, (which includes all the industrial chemical toxins which are poisoning and stunting brains, etc). God is good, Devil is bad. Western God people are good, Moslem God people are bad. Blacks are bad. Whites are bad. Something monstrous around the corner wants to eat you. Nothing is worse than girls seeing your penis, besides wetting yourself in class. Bible good, vs science good. Sun causes global warming, no man does. Free will, and all the world, is derived from God - vs - all consciousness, and free will, is derived from the activities of virtual billiard balls in a concrete, material world - "A giant biological pinball machine with no will."
But wait. Even the idea of no Heaven, presented in the Guardian article, is based on a fundamentalism, of the scientific sort - the billiard-ball sort. How can we compute a (FINITE) universe based on billiardballism, when in fact, deep down, atoms and subatomic particles are NOT billiard balls? They phase through a realm(s) of supra-statistical potentiality, or hyper-chaos. (The way our brains were partly built to do. IMAGINE). Of course, if your numbers all involve but material, finite quantities, then the unmeasureables, like consciousness, will be ascribed to, or dismissed as, non-existent - just as doctors who can't diagnose an illness will say, "It's all in your head" - which is a "scientific" conclusion preceding the actual INFORMATION or studies or proofs, etc. The great HUBRIS of this, reigning within the fundamentalist minds of many scientists, and/or atheists, is that the conclusions are already decided, now it's all a matter of working backwards and selecting those studies which confirm these presumptions. This is no different than fundamentalist religionists having their minds made up prior to selecting incoming information, deciding that they are always right, and that God and Heaven, etc., actually DO exist.
Important - http://phys.org/news/2012-07-dice-quantum-mechanics-nature-unpredictable.html
Both are based on adolescent reasoning. The difference with the flawed science to which I refer is that it is all particularist and choked full of numbers and equations that are off limits to the common man. Both fundamentalisms are based on the ego's will to power, or control, ultimately. (All existence has this basic "existential bias," but it needs to be recognised - or else we end up with Tyrannical Theocracies and/or Technocracies. And, both science and religion need to be more responsible in "factoring it out"). So, this idea that HEAVEN is nothing but a vestige of our adolescent fear of the dark is only partly true - or only true through one dimension or one polarised lense of a prism - and, while true, it could also be said to be NOT TRUE. And, isn't that what people do anyway, those perpetual contrarians?! Those crazy power-hungry fundamentalists? What I decry is this reduction of thought and of society into polarised camps of one fundamentalism versus some opposite fundamentalism. (Sometimes, this can be a false equivalency, yes. But not when ALL disciplines or sectors are analyzed en masse).
(This separation into reductionist camps parallels the up-down division of wealth in this country, which depends on lateral divisions between various sectors or ideological groups, as it depends on DIVIDE AND CONQUER. Once this lateral division, or fracturing, falls, then the up-down division of wealth/power also falls. Just ask Gandhi or Jesus - who mixed practical politics with small-scale, non-arrogant, anti-fundamentalist spirituality). What I would rather see is a HIGHER RESOLUTION of differing fundamentalisms - a finer mixture, a higher subtlety and sophistication and rationality. That would equate to more individual-based decision-making in a more democratic system - but try that now via the system choked with ADOLESCENTS, and you will likely fail. That is NOT to say that a social phase-transformation is not possible - rather, my ideas suggest that such is entirely possible. As such is possible in chaos theory. (Refer back to the artificial, forced state controls, leading to paradoxical turmoil, presented in the Tao translation, reposted yesterday. Also, a return to more refined thought or democracy or CALCULATING would also parallel a return to more sane ECONOMICS, or course).
So, we know the scientific, materialistic view that such intangibles as "Heaven" do not exist. That is easy enough to assume. But what about the alternate view where science is wrong in this assumption. Does Heaven then exist? Well, it does in the minds of many religious believers, which is not to be entirely WHITEWASHED over. But scientists are more incorrect by not allowing for the possibilities, and factors, where something OF human consciousness, which includes evolution itself, is geared towards making space for something like the reality of Heaven, fundamentally, or "cosmic spirituality", or a dynamical universe, more TRANSCENDENTALLY. And this is not to say that once we measure and calculate all of evolution that human-will shall one day be explained, and so dismissed as being fundamentally material. It is more to say that until we reach HIGHER than fundamentalist science or religion, (putting our subjective carts before horses, conclusions before premises, logics before associations, explanations before experience, RIGHT BEFORE REALITY, MIGHT BEFORE RIGHT, OR POWER/CONTROL BEFORE LIFE ITSELF), we will never TRULY MEASURE, in a revolutionary, transcendent way, the nature of these intangibles. "Heaven" may exist, we may find, as a function of will, or as some superstate in nature, or via present-world consciousness, and so forth. And we should be humble enough never to rule out the possibility of the conventional, fundamentalist Heaven, even as we hold the alternate views, such as that heaven is a product of an adolescent fear of the dark.
Fear of the dark. Scientific decisions and projections. Religious presumptions. What are all these? These are processes within the brain itself, involving neurons and photons and magnetic fields and cross-universal "Higgs field(s)", and so forth. I am moving towards suggesting that these thought processes, like the psychic realm, are not divorce-able from the brain's risk-assessments, decision-making, planning, logics - and SUPERSTITIONS. OK? Just keep the concept of SUPERSTITION in mind as you read on a bit. For there is no dividing line between logical connections, or mathematical equations, and superstitious thought - even as there is no dividing line between superstitious thought and addictive pathologies. Briefly, when science, (or religion), selects only specific elements to measure, over and over, basing its conclusions on these, not knowing to account for more discrete "associative" variables, then this can be compared to superstition and even to addiction. Certainly, the same, more obviously, can be said for religious fanatics who base their being "RIGHT" on cognitive loops of very unscientific thinking. The loops in science are far more tiny, yet are everywhere! Well, that is generally for the better, but not always - and, when too dysfunctional, it can feed into political systems where, e.g., Objectivism, or "cost-benefit analysis", or scientism, or "Genocism", etc., which rationalise very destructive and INSANE programmes and military campaigns, always complemented by some INTANGIBLE side of the ideology, which is what is depended on to put the cart of science before its horse, and mainly stultify scientific progress and emerging scientific paradigms, so that the power structure is preserved, defended and enhanced. (Note: Fundamentalism isn't always a bad thing. More on this in other posts).
ECON Note: Capitalist economies are very capable on phase-shifts, even if they are as far-gone as the DECLINING EMPIRE ECONOMY of the USA, so invested in megacorps, corrupt vested interests, military expenditure, political dysfunction, etc. Why? Because what you don't see, you tend not to know. There has been more to the movement of wealth to the top 1% than mere bank transfers of money, the Fed, Wall Street, taxes, etc. Dysfunctionalising capitalism itself requires VIRTUAL SCARCITY - or the exhaustion of the wealth of most actors - in order to thrive. The masses, and the classes, are habitually, and ignorantly, perpetually rendered towards a state of essential depletion of resources, such that they lose most of their degrees of freedom. ("Peripheral", "marginal"). They often willingly submit and contribute to this rendering of self towards a full state of virtual neediness.
Greatly, they are impoverished via direct expenses charged by corporations, banks, governments, prices, inflation, etc.
But there are peripheral or surfeit expenses paid, as when their wealth diminishes relative to growing, covetting, land-grabbing, controlling, prospering MONOPOLIES.
Fundamental reducers also include SECONDARY COSTS foisted upon them and upon THE COMMONS; profuse, covert and etc. competition from larger actors and throughout society and the reacting environment itself; the loss of access to control of resources; the loss of real rights, and so forth.
And, as intimated, people self-impoverish by contributing to a system of WANTS-AS-NEEDS, (via "paradoxical learning," "externalised locus of control"), always wanting to consume, rather than to stabilise property, e.g., or injuring their health caught in the shadow of this great consumption, and so on.
So, what happens is that, even in a country of great wealth, a landscape of virtual scarcity is carved out across the land, so that everyone is directed towards an ultimately zero-sum gain "FUTURE", whereby they are required to compete amongst themselves in order to survive, or else die, literally or in spirit or liberty.
SO..... Simply by adjusting structures and/or patterns and/or channels of economics and institutions, as by investing in grassoots-up stimulation, rather than top-down, and rather than AUSTERITY, it becomes very easy to provide the economy, and preferably the masses and the classes, with additional degrees of freedom, (which are their right after all), whereby spending and investment, etc., can be changed towards a new, more COOPERATIVE FUTURE.
Would that we not need virtual scarcity AT ALL! But there is so much more wealth potential latent in economies, which go unseen, because vested interests keeps pushing for the status quo, or the more-and-more impractical "future", as when Euro BANKS demand AUSTERITY merely for the sake of repaying the debts which they essential created via faulty risk-taking behaviour - assumptions and generalisations of safety, basically based on the greed of certain - a handful of - INDIVIDUALS. - (Rationalised via moral assumptions and arguments).
[2/10/13]: Some central banks and treasuries of countries may go on printing money out of thin air, and then the banks pass off the common-man argument that any debt owed (to them) must be paid up, come hell or high water. By doing this magic, they lock up the wealth extracted in the past, up there in their tip of the capital pyramid, and impose inflation or currency wars, (etc.), which only become a greater tax upon the common men, making them less able to pay their debts. as demanded. Inevitably, over-reaching capitalism, i.e., imperialism, ultimately must go to war and/or collapse. Capital has abstracted to such a point where it has practically evapourated, and become no good for much else than forcing, controlling people into war, as a further (uncontrollable) attempt to keep their relative wealth near the top locked up, (internationally). (Thus is makes sense that banks have funded Communist regimes or Hitlers in the past).
One outcome from war is a decimation of populations - i.e., leading to a relative labour shortage for those countries which are able to recover economically, mainly via manufacturing, and market capture, and increasing demand. Where once there may have been a labour GLUT, (even though wars may have yet been fought for even cheaper labour, as in the Civil War), now a labour SHORTAGE means that labourers are able to unionise and bargain for higher wages, much to the chagrin of the banksters, et al. But all is relatively well, since the economy is expanding, and social programmes may even (likely) be introduced to better the lives of a rising middle class. The very middle class the GOP puppet people have been at war against, most actively since the 1970s.
But, just look at this simple point: In an economy where virtually EVERY CORPORATION wants to reduce wages at their plants, then so in the over-all labour market, why WOULDN'T all business ultimately agree to conspire to crash wages through discord and WAR, in their perpetual, competitive race to the bottom, including the "#danger of collective action," or the mass violation of the Commons, (privatisation, etc)?! They are naturally oriented to support the STATUS QUO at al costs, including WAR, even though a war may ultimately weed many of them out AFTERWARDS, as well as raise wages! (So - we get back into the topics of paradoxical learning, or cutting off the nose to SPITE the face). It can a natural course for herds to cull their populations, but more on this topic elsewhere. But I will add, no animal but man follows this course more artfully, elabourately and INSANELY than man. I mean - exactly what is he meaning to evolve towards?!!! [end]
Aside: (Another way of bringing on a phase-shift is to transition to CHEAPER energy - and this is presently being attempted via today's STATUS QUO power and technology structures, the same wealth-inequality/perversion. To attempt to do it this way simply leads to congestion and war, and the substitution of the USA Empire with, most likely, a Chinese empire).
A dysfunctionalising economy which more and more demands turning up the screws on global virtual scarcity, (which also involve investment bubbles and many other phenomena), until socio-economic AUSTERITY programmes (predictably) fail, and then the power structure demands more virtual scarcity by creating amongst the divided masses and classes such dire LIFE-AND-DEATH situations and structures as WAR, and even revolution, is composed of a game of people, EACH WHO ONLY WANTS TO FIND A WAY OUT TOWARDS MORE MONEY, which is seen as more wealth or power. Either compete for these windows, or perish. And so we see such societies as sport freaks like THE VILLAGE IDIOT, NETHER GUY, RADICAL COMMIES, FUNDAMENTALIST LIBERALS, FUNDAMENTALIST RIGHTIES, HEDGE FUND RAIDERS, NAKED SHORT SELLERS, CORRUPT POLITICIANS, ETC. What started out as a desire for, "a way out," (in), in the form of a job, and also a car, and a house, and so on... end up, often, as an insatiable need to control and to damage. Might makes right. Doig the very opposite of what the greater society considers moral or proper. The right to lie and get away with it. The right to kill large groups of people and get away with it. And so on...
So... You say you want a revolution?...
You'd better free your mind instea-head.
What does this have to do with Nether Guy, and addiction, and MORE? Well, a lot, and not much. But I suppose I might recharge for a bit, and then continue this post as a part two, soonly.
For future reference - http://www.naturalnews.com/036412_coffee_dopamine_caffeine.html