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The Ultimate Act of Freedom
The Ultimate Act of Freedom
By
Cognitive Dissonance
Which came first, the chicken or the egg? I ask not because I require an answer, but rather because I desire to ask better questions both of myself and of the world around me. Asking a question that seems to compel the questioner to chase his or her tail is not as pointless as it may seem if the query can be redirected to challenge ‘common’ knowledge or long standing beliefs.
So let me try again with a different question. Which came first, the sociopathic leadership or the seriously dysfunctional populace? I suspect the answer is both and neither.
As with most symbiotic codependent (dysfunctional) relationships, there is no Yes or No, Right or Wrong, Black or White answer. Asking which came first is missing the point since one component of the relationship cannot exist as it does now without the other, at least not for long. A better question might be…..why do we believe there is a defined cause and effect relationship that creates the present day insanity when the very nature of insanity itself requires none in order to exist?
As I have said several times before in my comments and contributing articles, insanity is the ultimate in perfection. It is self replicating, self sustaining and most importantly self affirming. Nearly all sane (or near sane) entities cease and desist wasting energy on useless or self destructive tasks once its futility or danger is obvious and affirmed, often by outside forces or authorities but occasionally by self examination which prompts self awareness.
Insanity on the other hand is its own sole and ultimate authority which in turn acts as the energy source to keep the perpetual motion insanity machine marching forward toward a parabolic blow off of self annihilation. The potentially lethal mistake we all tend to make is in believing that there is only one flavor of crazy. There are in fact seven billion variations of the base product, uniquely customized in cut, color and clarity to meet our own individual needs and perceptions. So in effect the problem is not they, those and them, but us, we and me.
A Mind of its Own
I’m certain you have seen any of a dozen variations of the comedy routine where out of the blue the comedian’s arm or hand becomes possessed and tries to choke the comedian or otherwise attack the body that the arm is attached to. Suddenly the appendage has a mind of its own and that mind is usually extremely self destructive. It can be hilarious stuff when performed well, with a classic example being Peter Sellers as Dr. Strangelove.
Of course we all know this can’t really happen. A person’s brain controls all the appendages via the central nervous system, aside from certain special conditions such as a disease of the body. So while the body’s ‘operating system’ pretty much functions independently of our conscious awareness, essentially utilizing its own firmware/software routines, we (as do all other animals) command our assorted joints and appendages with broad commands to suit our needs and wants.
For example we think ‘I want that over there’ or ‘I want to pick that up’ rather than thinking about moving individual muscles. Though I suppose it could be argued that we don’t even ‘think’ about these commands in the same way we think about those financial problems that have been bugging us. We just sort of see or perceive that we want to do something and the internal software routine figures out the details. Either way, the only (perceived) difference between ‘we’ and the flea is that ‘we’ are conscious, and we believe the flea is not.
Perhaps it is this ability to command our appendages that afford us our false sense of perceived independence from, and control of, the body. Yet in so many ways it is our body and not our mind/consciousness that actually controls the appendages, though not in the direct sense of the word ‘control’. We spend our entire life attending to the needs of the body; feeding, sheltering and tending to all its various needs whether physical, emotional or psychological. And yet we maintain to our dying days that ‘we’ are in control of the body, rather than at a minimum acknowledge the obvious codependency.
Codependently Dysfunctional
In so many ways the human mind and the body are engaged in a symbiotic codependent dysfunctional relationship. Dysfunctional because for as long as the conscious mind believes it is the master of its domain (when clearly it is not) the relationship is not a healthy one by any stretch of the imagination. This error of perception (actually a deliberately staged continuous deception perpetrated by external sources) is one of the reasons I often speak about looking within, of understanding our motives and dependencies in order to move deeper down the rabbit hole.
We carry this potentially fatal disconnect with us when thinking about and interacting with not just the physical world around us, but with the social order and the so called powers that be, aka ‘our’ leadership. We believe ourselves disconnected from the world around us; particularly from those who we believe ‘control’ us or who are ‘leaders’ in our world. We speak of this phenomenon by using distancing terms such as they, them and those. We consider ourselves divorced from the cause and only subject to the effect.
And yet all around us we see on a daily basis various examples of nature interconnected, of animals moving and acting as one even though they are seemingly as disconnected from each other as we perceive ourselves to be separated from one another. Watch carefully as birds flock, fish school and cattle herd. Even a stand of trees or a patch of wild flowers will communicate with each other either through interconnected root systems, pheromones or other (un)known methods or processes. But communicate they do and it is only our denial that prevents us from recognizing the same in ourselves and others in the human herd.
Choice and Free Will
That which we try to ignore, outright deny or reject out of fear controls us, oftentimes on a deeply subconscious level. This concept as it applies to ‘them’ is very difficult for most of ‘us’ to grasp, let alone accept, principally because we believe ourselves to be ‘in control’ of ourselves, but not at all in control of, or responsible for, ‘their’ actions other than possibly in the most indirect and inconsequential way. No one rain drop feels responsible for the flood, yet here comes the rain. Can you say hip waders?
Why is it that throughout history every so called leader has demanded consent (some demand more nicely than others) from the population, regardless of whether the consent is coerced, connived or freely given? Think about that carefully for a while rather than to just dismiss it off hand with any of a dozen rote responses. A symbiotic relationship, no matter how dysfunctional or self destructive, requires consent from all parties at some level to function as it does.
As ridiculous as this may sound nothing truly compels us to consent even when the ultimate violence is threatened if we do not comply, that of (extreme) distress and/or death. We can choose death, though many will argue that to choose death is irrational or insane. However as I said earlier, that which we try to ignore, outright deny or reject out of fear controls us, oftentimes on a deeply subconscious level. And the vast majority of ‘us’ ignore, deny or reject seriously contemplating ‘our’ own death, whether by natural causes or externally applied violence.
We wish to believe that we live in a cooperative society; that we participate of our own ‘free will’. And yet when we see those flashing lights in the rear view mirror or open that demand letter from the IRS or ‘Justice’ system we do not actually participate of our own ‘free will’, but simply because a threat of (ultimate) violence is implied if we do not.
Still, this is consent simply because there is/are alternative(s) available. We consistently take the softer easier way and comply, then rationalize and justify it as reasonable, rational and sane. It is important that we recognize the difference between ‘free will’ and ‘consent’ because in so many ways they are very different concepts.
Since we make the (un)(semi)(fully)conscious decision to comply in many ways we are ‘willingly’ part of the very system we rail against as predatory and abusive. While many might argue that this is all just semantics, I contend that the world would be a very different place if we had the courage to consider the always available alternative choices other than the softer easier way of complying. Please notice I said consider, not agree. One must always (seriously) consider everything even if one does not agree.
In most, but not all cases, our pain comes not in knowing what we should do, but in actually doing it. In fact most of our emotional/psychological pain springs from the cognitive dissonance of trying to ignore, deny or reject that which we know to be true and correct.
The ultimate act of freedom is to seriously consider breaking the chains that bind us. And those chains are not physical and won’t be found binding our wrists or ankles, but rather they are self imposed upon our own minds. Freedom, true freedom, can only begin when we willing choose to start down the path of personal sovereignty and total personal accountability.
01-17-2014
Cognitive Dissonance
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Exactly right...balance ;-)
I do not need my ego inflated in order to be centered.
I know this too. But sometimes it's really hard to put down my pom poms when you are being brilliant. :-)
Can't agree with this at all.
Any act I take of non-violence against a threat is non-consenting.
I have no choice to choose death. My body refuses it at all times. I can not over-ride this.
If a threat of violence or death is put upon me by armies or police I have only one choice: submit or ahead of time prepare with thousands more guns and people and kill them all. ALL. In advance of all threats.
"Since we make the (un)(semi)(fully)conscious decision to comply in many ways we are ‘willingly’ part of the very system we rail against as predatory and abusive. While many might argue that this is all just semantics, I contend that the world would be a very different place if we had the courage to consider the always available alternative choices other than the softer easier way of complying"
We'd be Cambodia under Pol Pot. All those who defy will be killed and we lose forever.
It wasn't until an external intervention fixed Cambodia & it's really not repaired given all the landmines everywhere. That which was lost can't be regained & that loss, to choose it, is as smart as cutting your own throat immediately in this very moment of reading these very words.
It's suicidal & that defies all life. To embrace suicide to make a point is the failure of all failures.
This is not consent by any imagination or definition. To even begin to believe that is to already throw away your own sanity.
The real failure is to think that life itself has intrinsic meaning and that no one can give his life any purpose other than survival therefore he must and can only live to survive.
The truth is life itself is meaningless and it's up to the person to give his existance a purpose and thus define his identity. To refuse to decide for oneself what it is that he wants regardless of other people's opinion is to refuse to live.
If that's what you call failure then all living things are failures because this survival instinct is hard-wired into every living thing ever to exist on this Earth, ever.
Survival & breeding are all the purpose demanded of life.
There are two different ideas about purpose here, one of them is about what a person or any living thing is supposed to do according to the genes, the other purpose is what a person chooses to do according to his aspirations.
The genetic purpose is a matter of fact and what it is is objective. The other purpose however is a matter of choice that the idea of true or false does not apply, the only thing that can be said about it is whether you agree with it or not.
I agree that as a matter of fact all living things including human beings are designed to survive and reproduce, but I don't think it is necessary that what one aspires to do must be what he is designed to do because he is designed to do so. One could choose to be a survivalist as if he could choose to be something else.
And I don't think living things living to survive are failures, the failure does not arise from the choosing of any particular choice, the failure arises from the inability to recognize the possibility of choosing and if animals are not capable of choosing then there is no failure to speak of. As for humans if they are equally not capable of choosing then I don't think their success/ failure to survive can ever amount to any success or failure worthy of meaning, after all they are just doing all they could ever do.
Excellent!
"Sometimes when you win, you really lose, and sometimes when you lose, you really win, and sometimes when you win or lose, you actually tie, and sometimes when you tie, you actually win or lose. Winning or losing is all one organic mechanism, from which one extracts what one needs."
- Gloria Clemente (Rosie Perez) from the movie White Men Can't Jump
Chicken. What you think you live forever. It is worthy to die so that existance can continue. It is your duty. Otherwise you and the future vaporize for no reason. We may not be able to determine the reason we are here but we may determine that reason in the future should we choose to take the appropriate steps. In this way we honor existence and do not defile it.
I agreed with the Seize Mars comment above.
I disagreed with the concepts presented at the beginning and end of this article, although mostly the middle was acceptable.
"Which came first, the chicken or the egg? ...
Which came first, the sociopathic leadership or the seriously dysfunctional populace?"
Sociopathic leadership is based upon the ability to back up dishonesty with coercion. It was the ability to back up deceits with destruction that drove there to become a seriously dysfunctional populace. The looping feedbacks of history show that the "fish rots from the head." What was crucial was the LONG HISTORY of creating a social pyramid system in which slavery was the main driving force. SURE, THE SLAVERY DRIVES A SLAVE SOCIETY TO ADAPT TO THAT, HOWEVER, THOSE SLAVES WERE SELECTED BY THEIR SURVIVAL TO ADAPT BY ADOPTING THE MENTAL ATTITUDES OF SLAVES. Mental slavery could not possibly be selected to develop without the masters driving that. Only after that is already a fait accompli does there THEN exist a seriously dysfunctional populace. Furthermore, from the point of view of the masters, their sociopathic leadership is very successful.
When asking that chicken vs. egg cuquaquum question (continuum cum quantum, quantum cum continuum) there is obviously an answer provided by the history of successful warfare based on deceits, backed by destruction. Mental slavery was driven by being put into the dilemma of a real context in which "Do what I say, or I will kill you!" was the overall context. There were lots of people who chose death over slavery. However, the surviving slaves learned to live inside of their slave society, with all the mental tricks and extreme cognitive dissonance required to do that.
Similarly, since the modern world is a sophisticated system of debt slavery, where EVERYONE is forced to use fiat money, made out of nothing, as debts, by private banks, empowered by the government, EVERYONE lives inside of a sophisticated slave society.
The single simplest symbol and most extreme particular example was when hemp was rebranded as "marijuana." The best plant for people for food, fiber, fun and medicine, became treated by the law as if it was almost as bad as murder. That went on and on, decade after decade, getting worse and worse, as vicious spirals of lies, BACKED BY VIOLENCE! It did not matter that the lies were absurd, and totally opposite to all evidence and logical arguments, because those lies were BACKED BY VIOLENCE. Therefore, cannabis culture became a slave society, and all kinds of silly behaviors became aspects of that slave society, that those slaves became proud of. Now that pot prohibition is going through a psychotic breakdown, the reality is not returning to sanity, but swinging from one extreme insanity that it was PUSHED to swing towards, back towards swinging out the other way ... The psychological dimensions become like a hybrid of the combination of playing tether ball and whack a mole, at the same time ... Nothing inherent to the cannabis plant made that social insanity develop. Everything was due to the ulterior evil purposes of the banksters and their buddies being able to back up Huge Lies with Lots of Violence. All the social insanity was driven to exist by ENFORCING FRAUDS, which drove people to adapt to that FACT.
The monetary system, as our state religion, was basically the same, only many orders of magnitude WORSE! In that context, I find it quite ridiculous to say that one has a "choice." INDEED: "We can choose death, though many will argue that to choose death is irrational or insane." ... THAT IS NO CHOICE!
In my view, the existence of weapons of mass destruction drives everything to become far, far, far more profoundly and problematically insane than ever before in human history. To be "serious" about attempting to resist a government in North America is practically the same as attempting to defeat NATO. To be "serious" about violent resistance would require seeking to capture control over weapons of mass destruction, and using those as a credible threat. Clearly, it is impossible to be practically and sanely "serious" about resisting government in North America with direct violence. There is no path whatsoever that leads to any kind of sane violent revolution, after the development of weapons of mass destruction, the same as there is no way to have any kind of sane total wars at all, after the development of weapons of mass destruction.
We are collectively stuck in the worst double-bind paradoxical Catch 22 imaginable! There are only two real "choices." One can attempt to resist lies backed by violence with evidence and logical arguments, which will be deliberately ignored, since those lies do not care about the truth, but only care about being able to back those lies up with violence, and therefore, one may try to follow that sterile dead end path of attempting "rational debate" towards accomplishing almost nothing. OR, one can resort to fighting fire with fire, and then, necessarily make things even worse.
Given how utterly insane the deeply entrenched established systems of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, really ARE, the only choices are to accomplish almost nothing, OR certainly make things worse. In that context, I try to maintain irrational hope in some series of political miracles that evidence and logical arguments may start to make a difference. However, so far, that only fails, or backfires, in the context of those established systems of lies, BACKED BY VIOLENCE, having no sane ways to effectively fight back against them WITH VIOLENCE, while those systems easily continue to operate themselves on the basis of evil deliberate ignorance.
The new dilemma is that, after the development of weapons of mass destruction has transformed the slavery situation, exemplified by "Do what I say, or I will kill you." to become "Do what I say, or I will kill almost everyone, probably including myself too." then that has become utterly insane, and yet, that insanity does not change the entrenched systems which were based on the history of slavery. Things automatically get worse, faster, while there are no plausibly effective ways to stop that. Entropy is such a bitch! In that context, I regard the statement that "... true freedom, can only begin when we willing choose to start down the path of personal sovereignty and total personal accountability ..." to be gibberish, which has no sensible meaning whatsoever!
The only consolations of philosophy are that the energy will continue to be conserved. However, there are no good resolutions to the entropic decay. We theoretically might be able to recycle more of our energy, in order to have more life and more consciousness. However, the war against consciousness, in the form of lies, backed by violence, is way easier to conduct, than to resist, and therefore, the war against consciousness is clearly winning. In fact, everything that is obviously important is overall getting worse, faster. The collective social insanities are steadily increasing, the same as the basic numbers of debt insanities are increasing, and those are matched by runaway social polarization and destruction of the natural world. In that context, personal sovereignty is nothing more than transcendental poetry. It has as much practical reality as a drop of water going over the waterfall dreaming about building a dam.
Rad, I generally enjoy your stuff. Pretty sure Cog has an editor, Mrs. Cog. Maybe you lack this luxury, but I'm tellin' ya' man to man, friend to friend, keep it short.
Who said brevity is the source of wit? Was he more, or less aware than you?
Well, acetinker, nobody edits my stuff, and whenever I attempt to do that, it usually gets longer, rather than shorter. After all, I only write to pass the time and to amuse myself, because there is no practical point to promoting more radical truth within the current political realities.
Yeah, like I said, you're quite full of yourself. If you could realize that one, simple thing, you might just change the world. Billiam Snakeshit knew, 400 years ago that which you have yet to discover. Still think you're so smart?
"There is no path whatsoever that leads to any kind of sane violent revolution, after the development of weapons of mass destruction"
There is one path.
We need to secure our food & water for years to come. Once ready we need to cut off all food & water to the overlords, either a seige or poison (probably poison).
They must all die & swiftly so they have no chance to attack us.
Then they are gone.
That's step 1. Step 2 is to ensure none of us take their place in the same throne of power. The throne should not ever have existed.
The real problem goes farther than social issues. It is the speed at which technology is advancing. At this time many possible synthetic doomsday scenarios are possible. The number of possibilities grows with each day that passes. Nukes were one way in the past. there are many more today and many more individuals have access to them. So what can be done?
The problem is global and no government or agency has the ability to stop the proliferation of technological advancements. A step toward solving this problem would be to distribute global governance down to the individual level and remove all outdated and centralized governance from the planet. We are starting with the financial system and the political system will then follow. There is not another way for us to proceed at this time.
YES, q99x2!
It is extremely important that the exponential rate of advance of technology EXISTS. What has already been proven in laboratories is enough to keep the next few decades possibly on track towards computing power reaching its points of "singularities," such as computers becoming more capable than an individual human being, and then becoming more capable than all human beings combined. Furthermore, there are possible basic science breakthroughs that could become technologically significant in the future, whose creative potential is almost impossible to imagine at the present time!
The deeper problem is the one I kept punching at in my comments, THAT WARFARE WAS THE OLDEST AND BEST DEVELOPED SOCIAL SCIENCE, WHOSE SUCCESS PARADOXICALLY DEPENDED UPON BACKING UP DECEITS WITH DESTRUCTION, which POINT I find tends to get deliberately ignored by those who like to promote impossible ideals as being their preferred "solutions."
The real world is a competition between different systems of organized lies, operating organized robberies. The ones that are the best at doing that prevail in each short-term increment, regardless of whatever the longer term consequences may be. Facile ideals about decentralization by killing the centralized forces tend to be ridiculous because the only practical way to do that would require a different group becoming better at being dishonest and violent, to displace the dominate group that evolved to be the best at doing that in the past.
All of that is now being pumped up and UP by technologies which are trillions of times more powerful and capable than any that ever existed before in known human history, which are surely headed towards becoming quadrillions of times more powerful and capable in the foreseeable future. Meanwhile, the primary ways that those technologies actually get employed is to become better at being dishonest, and backing that up with violence, which is WHY, right now, there is an extremely dismal prospect for human beings successfully adapting to having made scientific breakthroughs, which enabled such technologies to work.
IN FACT, the only theoretical solutions are better organized gangs of criminals, operating better combined money/murder systems. The only default is for the current systems to continue to go mad, and become even more self-destructive. ONLY another group which operated better systems of organized lies and robberies could displace those who dominate doing that now. Impossible ideals about stopping the established systems are non-starter, still born, dead ends. There is no real alternative with respect to having no government. There might be some real alternatives through better government. However, given the degree to which the established governments were built on the basis of backing up deceits with destruction, better government is extremely problematic, if not practically impossible. What we theoretically need are a series of profound paradigm shifts in the philosophy of science, which could transform the supreme ideology, which is militarism. All the popular notions which are based on stopping militarism from existing, and by its nature dominating what actually happens, are based on false fundamental dichotomies, and their related impossible ideals, which will surely keep on making the opposite happen in the real world.
We should breakthrough to accepting that governments are the biggest form of organized crime, controlled by the best organized gang of criminals, as the actual basis for our reality, and the only basis for making practical changes to those systems. However, at present that is almost impossible, since our society is almost totally dominated by professional liars and immaculate hypocrites, and that includes almost everyone who claims to be against the established systems.
At present, the only way that we might get more real "decentralization" is after the dominate systems drive themselves madly into their own self-destruction, and so collapse into chaos, from having destroyed their natural capital to the point where they cannot be rebuilt, because the world after that collapse will be too impoverished to be able to sustain the complexity of centrally controlled political power. That will NOT be an improvement. What would be an improvement is for the centrally controlled political powers to be operated more sanely. However, that would require enough people understanding their realities in more thoroughly scientific ways, which included understanding the paradoxical ways that human sciences have been built on the basis of some people controlling others using force backed frauds.
We should be regarding politics as applied human ecology, in which the death controls are necessarily central to that. We should be understanding political economy actually operates within that context. The only real alternatives would take better death controls, as the central controls which regulated everything else. However, given that the actual death controls now operate through the maximum possible deceits about themselves, while their controlled opposition tends to always assert the absurdities that no such controls should consciously exist at all, we are in runaway social insanity situations!
You might find it strange but I think an approach like aikido would apply here.
Use your own deception & influence to get the worst criminals to destroy each other.
So long as they are the means of their own destruction & few others are their targets, the problem solves itself - with just a little help.
No matter the levels of (lethal) technology the levels of ignorance, hubris & entitlement are the approaches left open for such an attack.
Nothing about the technology of weapons has reduced these opportunities.
I'm not quite sure what you mean about "death controls".
As the blog title says & the movie/book, on a long enough timeline everyone's survival rate becomes zero.
Maybe along the way you can help decide when you die or how, or who will/won't make it happen. Maybe.
Nature takes care of the rest no matter our intentions.
i said it in another post to another writing:humans are brutal muther fuckers.
kids will brutally beat the underling. we live in a balance of brutality and love-newton thing.
but then there are certain peoples (wolves align power the same) that self apoint themselves
to leader. the very nature of this process is violent. smugly coated with love...
mick had a comment over on GDub's thread that fits here:
I think it's wrong to believe that wolves are the enemies of sheep. They are not. Wolves and sheep are symbiotic. They are two sides of one coin. The wolf pack does not simply destroy the herd of sheep -- the wolf pack manages it, so that the pack will never starve. And the herd desires that management. Would be terrified without it.
It is the desire of sheep to be sheep that creates wolves. And vice versa, like a double helix.
We cannot solve the problem merely by eliminating wolves. If we killed all the wolves tonight, the sheep would start re-creating them tomorrow.
If we start convincing sheep to stop being sheep -- the wolves will do everything they can to murder the ones that wake up. They will see those few as cancer cells in the body of the herd.
My solution is to outflank both sides, into the future. There is a single idea that the wolves and the sheep share. An idea cannot be destroyed, but it can suffer competition with other ideas.
Let us convince the young who will grow up to be wolves, as well as the young who will grow up to be sheep that there is a better way to live.
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2014-01-17/reactions-obama-speech-n...
Political Parables about Wolves and Sheeple
Most of my political bla, bla, blah is based upon attempting to understand human civilizations from the perspective of the evolutionary ecologies of energy systems.
As blindman pointed out, the men that prey on men are the same species. However, they have become so culturally different as to practically be aliens to each other. Furthermore, I tend to believe that the genetics of those different cultural groups of human beings have also diverged, although not enough to make different species, but enough to enable less compassionate tendencies to be more readily learned by the ruling classes than by the lower classes. One of the interesting questions in the history of human slavery was how much did the masters actually interbreed with their slaves. For instance, in American society at least one quarter of the "black people" have significant genetics from their "white masters." Clearly that was a case where the fact that the men that prey on men, and the men that were preyed upon, were the same species, had significant consequences, particularly when one consider the possibilities of "hybrid vigor," which is quite the opposite to the intense prejudices against miscegenation.
The study of the DNA of different people provides lots of surprising results. For instance, as I understand it, the majority of the men in England are genetically still Celts, despite all the waves of conquers that came through. Another example is that the majority of the people in South America appear to be the descendents of the native women and the Spanish invaders, who themselves were a motley crew. However, despite all those historical examples, the topmost of the top human carnivores appear to have been very, very concerned about their own bloodlines. (I believe that might be due to a concern that their cultural conditioning of the children will most probably be successful, rather than fail.) Yet, at the same time, big groups of the current top carnivores had a totally different culture grafted onto them, which they adopted, like a book of organized crime gang rules, in order to perfect their abilities to function as top carnivores. Obviously, the relationships between the various cultural and genetic dimensions of the different groups of people in human civilizations, that acted like slaves and masters, or sheep and wolves, is HYPER-COMPLICATED! That is especially true because there are at least 4 different subtypes: The Vicious Wolves, and their more Domesticated Dogs, versus the Zombie Sheeple and the Black Sheeple. A LOT of human history has been about slavery, and resistance to slavery.
P.S.
More abstractly, I recommend the long scientific novel Evolution by Stephen Baxter regarding the ways that eliminating the top carnivores would open a niche for new top carnivores to evolve:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_%28novel%29
awesome insight tip-e as i am a student of natural interaction and how it relates to all species.
once a wolve gets a thirst for power and finds the rewards, death is the stuggle for change..
rarely will the alpha relenquish authority. rational thinking from the alpha perspective. Jamie, it would be advisable for you to step down and re-enter society as a common man and become a philantapist-not happening.
not sure that is something we can convince a youngster to do/be. just happens.
i understand the reasons this plays out(darwinian), a struggle for survival from the perspective of the struggler.
we can them bullies...
mick deserves all credit for the comment.
my thoughts on your thoughts:
there will always be alphas, as it is one of the aspect that is fundamental to our nature. it exists within all of us, some much more than others.
question: why does this alpha nature always dominate the 25-odd other natures that exist within us? which ones have been held dormant by this domination?
there are many words that exist that do not require the letter "A". what i think mick was saying was that we should begin to explore some of those words.
but hold on a second, wolves and sheep are different species
and the wolves eat the sheep, right? so my question is how
has it come to pass that people so easily incorporate this
metaphor into their coherent thinking concerning "culture"
and acceptable social structure, behavior and institutions?
what have we done? what have we allowed concerning our minds
and the infinite plasticity there ; think about that, no?
.
we are not sheep and wolves, we are "men". they do their
genetic cycling till death with no thought concerning
consciousness of themselves or the viability of their purpose.
.
are we not very different anymore?
wolves and sheep are different species
we are "men"
noodling on those 2 statements, including mixing & matching the nouns, might help with the answer, amigo :)
It was a very insightful comment by Mick. Cog and I have talked at length about the challenges (and advantages) of two seemingly Alpha type personalities (from ZH no less lol) living and now working closely together. If nothing else, it has been fascinating to examine our own behavior while trying to be more centered and staring down the barrel of one anothers alpha-ego. Now when we trigger each other, one of us usually hops into the analytical mode regarding what just transpired and we often end in laughter.
Mick may be on to something big here.
indeed
I agree entirely, which means in all likelihood, there is no solution to the predicament we are in.
How nature operates permeates all of society and man is almost completely powerless to resist it.
"How nature operates permeates all of society and man is almost completely powerless to resist it."
Well....then what's the sense in even trying to resist my own human nature? My programming is complete. I hope they use K-Y at least since I am almost completely powerless to resist.
All snark aside I choose not to occupy the lowest common denominator level.
Most of your 'human nature' is man's nature - most people have very little 'human nature'. That's the problem, and evolution isn't doing much to change it because of the way society is organized, change in behavior is not needed.
Man appears to be the missing link between anthropoid apes and human beings.
— Konrad Lorenz
I see some hanging chads there, not to worry--it won't change anything
Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose,
Nothing don't mean nothing honey if it ain't free, now now.
And feeling good was easy, Lord, when he sang the blues,
You know feeling good was good enough for me,
Good enough for me and my Bobby McGee.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTHRg_iSWzM
Good one Cog, reminds me to go reread some of Decartes and the Bhagavad Gita. Duality and symbiosis go hand in hand. A parasite needs a host. Day needs night. Man needs woman.
I am this mortal coil.
So I shall suppose that some malicious, powerful, cunning Economist has done all he can to deceive me – rather than this being done by God, who is supremely good and the source of truth. I shall think that the Labor Participation Rate, the Gini Coefficient , the Gross Industrial Output, Real Inflation, Taxes, Deficits and all economical things are merely dreams that the economist has contrived as traps for my judgment. I shall consider myself as having no freedom or liberty, or privacy, or constitutional rights or legal protection, but as having falsely believed that I had all these things. I shall stubbornly persist in this train of thought; and even if I can’t learn any truth, I shall at least do what I can do, which is to be on my guard against accepting any falsehoods, so that the deceiver – however powerful and cunning he may be – will be unable to affect me in the slightest. This will be hard work, though, and a kind of laziness pulls me back into my old ways...
...For although I am free to think of these ideas or not, as I choose, I didn’t invent them: they have their own true and immutable natures, which are not under my control. Even if there are not and never were any outside my thought, still, when I imagine money I am constrained in how I do this, because there is a determinate nature or essence or form of money that is eternal, unchanging, and independent of the printing press. Consider the things that I can prove about money – that it is used as a medium of exchange, that its is a store of value, debt is not money and so on. I am forced to agree that money has these properties, even if I didn’t give them a thought when money first came into my mind. So they can’t have been invented by me...
Rene Descartes - Meditations on Neo-Keynesian Economics
Doors open were previously there were none. And damn wouldn't you know it, jogging the other day I found four of them outside a neighbors house. Brought em home and they fit perfectly in the two parts of the house that needed them.
One can choose to be a beacon of light for those lost in darkness, or succumb to it and become nothing but a shadow.
Thanks for your latest missive CD. Always look forward from hearing from you. Striving for independence from the herd, gives it own rewards.
"Striving for independence from the herd, gives it own rewards."
The herd's idiot box would never instruct us to find our own rewards (elsewhere) because then the idiot box would have no purpose. Can't have that.
Well I look at it this way. I've had quite enough of bemoaning the sorry-ass state of the American man on the street. The fatness, stupidity, etcetera. I get it. But the point is that this was done to us from the top down.
You create a welfare state, this is what you get. You subsidize failure, you get failure. You subsidize unwed motherhood, you get unwed motherhood. You subsidize poverty, you get poverty. This is the communist way and it has been done elsewhere. They know what they're doing, they've done it before, and they did it to America.
So there are a bunch of assholes in America? Yeah, no kidding, it was done this way on purpose. Anyways I am awake, so are many others. The good news it that more people are waking up every day.
The bad news is that I am past caring.
No shit, Seize Mars. I am so ashamed. Yet, I just don't give a fuck anymore. It's a conundrum, for sure.
I tried, and failed, to make the world a better place. The bitterness fades, but never really goes away, does it?
"The good news it that more people are waking up every day."
There are many different levels of awareness, of waking up. The trap we all fall into is that we suddenly become aware of a hidden reality and essentially stop traveling further down the rabbit.
I have many more miles of awakening to go before I am awake.
Well Cog, some useful stuff here - Thanks! On the contrary, I have no interest in descending the rabbit hole. No thanks, It's dark down there - Take me to the clean, fresh light of day. I'm made to live in the light and happiest there. As I see it, the problem to solve is getting out of that dark, dank rabbit hole where the ostrich buries her head. There is a much better metaphor than rabbit hole for life and happiness.
i think the analagy is that the room most improvement can be found is in dark places...
jmo
We are most blinded by what we can not see. And often we can not see because we will not look. Truth hides in plain sight and it is 'we' who put it in dark places.
i have been finding that if it is complicated or i am confussed it is in plain sight and simple.
we complicate most thoughts with wish/hope.idealistic crap. one first must be intellectually honest and practice humility.
First there was "The Golden Rule". Then came "Religion" to provide loopholes.
Yeah, there's that, but if your religion provides loopholes you musta been raised Catholic. Nobody, except the Jews allows such loopholes. The Catholics say you can be absolved of all sin by confession. The Jews say it's OK to fuck your neighbor if they're not Jews.
I'm not disagreein' here with ya' nickels, am I? Point being: I have absolutely zero use for "faith".
You make it sound like you have a choice.
So does this stupid article.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtrEN-YKLBM
"it was done this way on purpose."
I think that it was more as a byproduct than from intent (unless folks are being fattened up as meals for space aliens).
"The good news it that more people are waking up every day."
Waking up to what? Not to the reality that our quest for perpetual growth on a finite planet is a BIG FAIL!
Again with the Malthusian diatribe.
There are other planets you know, it's a big universe out there.
Seriously do I have to follow you from post to post and keep countering your flawed Malthusian argument?
Path of least resistance anyone? Exploitation of human weaknesses?