Archive for the ‘ Negative being ’ Category

Being and Doing

These are two different things, but we tend to confuse them. We should consider their differences carefully (there are advantages to both ways) – but we seem to be determined not to think about them at all.

The basics are simple – being is organic, a part of life. Doing is mechanical, a matter of developing a routine, and then following it. This routine is usually unconscious and socially dependent – but it is mechanical – and very difficult to stop.

Being allows us to be emotional and socially interactive. Doing allows us to get things done. This fine balance was permanently disrupted when we got more emotional satisfaction from doing than from being.

The practice of meditation is very useful in helping us tell the difference. Once we get the mind quieted down (no small task) we can feel what is going on in our bodies and our minds (really the same thing).

Why don’t more people meditate? Because they don’t want their being to interfere with their doing – which is what they want to do to the exclusion of everything else. They want to be human doings.

Almost everyone will agree, in theory, that we should be more human – more compassionate and considerate. But in practice they behave entirely differently. And are completely unable to notice this.

This is our problem – not that we don’t have fine ideals – but that we have become so unaware, we cannot tell if we are following them or not.

This is, it seems to me – is a deliberate policy. We are the exact opposite of what we think we are. And this, we think, is very clever of us.

When, in fact, it is very stupid of us – because we have destroyed ourselves.

2013
05/04
CATEGORY
Meditation
Morality
Negative being
Philosophy
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Negative Reality

This was the discovery that ended the Modern world. We discovered we could do everything just the opposite to the way we had been doing them. This new way was more fun – in fact addictive. Once we started doing things this way, we could not stop – until we had finished the job. Until we had destroyed the world completely.

See how irresistible it was?

We had discovered something exquisitely simple – destruction is much easier then construction. So why go to all the work – when tearing things down is so profitable and impresses people so much?

There was, of course, a problem. There must be attractive new technologies to cover up this destructiveness – which is not really so pretty. They serve as a distraction so we won’t notice what is really going on. These so-called smart devices are busy making us stupid.  We love them.

The idea of negative realities comes straight to us from physics where they have been known for quite some time. Every particle has its anti-particle – and it goes much further that that – in ways I cannot comprehend – but they take seriously. That no one else can understand the chosen few does not bother them at all.

I adopt the same attitude – if you cannot understand me – perhaps that is because you have not become enlightened yet – to the way things really are.

After all, we are talking about a simple reversal here – including a reversal of values. Nothing complicated.

2013
04/23
CATEGORY
History
Morality
Negative being
Philosophy
Technology
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Living a Dream

I want to amplify on my last posting The Basic Problem. In it I said that we helpless – at the mercy of whim and circumstance – having no desire to be in charge of our world. This was not well-received – probably because it did not make people feel good – the ultimate good for most people.

I see nothing wrong with that analysis – as far as it goes. But I think we have look to below the surface to see what is going on beneath it.

In other words, to guess what is going on in our collective unconscious. This is not as difficult as it may seem – because, as humans, we have been doing this forever. Figuring out what people really are like – and what they really want. Because we are all experts at deceiving others. And even ourselves.

Now that we know about the unconscious (thanks to Freud) – we should be better able understand ourselves. Unfortunately, psychology – in the form of advertising – has been able to use mass communications (mainly Television) to turn us into nothing but consumers – unable to think at all.

But completely able to believe. And to believe messages never put into words. Which we pick up from the very air we breath in our mass culture. Without thinking, we believe what we are supposed to believe – and don’t believe what we are not supposed to believe.

All the while believing we are in perfect control of our lives. When nothing could be further from the truth.

Our schools should be helping us to resist the influence of advertising – but they have become part of the business complex that produces all this deception. And only wants workers who will fit in.

One message we pick up is that – we have become perfect! We are the result of a process that had made us that way. And anyone (such as the Taliban) who implies otherwise must be destroyed.

And this includes internal enemies who must be carefully ferreted out – by carefully monitoring every communication going on. Including this posting – as soon as it hits the press.

Drone warfare is the perfect analogy for what is going on. Society’s snoops – and there are enormous numbers of them, all highly paid – are in the business of detecting the enemy. And then neutralizing them – with the equivalent of a missile strike.

I have been on the receiving end of these hits – especially when working for the Military as a young man (they paid very well, and you didn’t have to do anything). And I can testify that it is not a pleasant experience. It blows you to pieces.

For those already blown to pieces (emotionally scattered) this is no problem. For those desperate to maintain personal integrity – it is devastating.

2013
04/06
CATEGORY
Negative being
Philosophy
Psychology
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The Life Force and the Death Force

People used to take these seriously. But gradually they lost interest. Why?

We don’t really know, because our behavior has become mostly unconscious – unavailable for conscious examination. This shift was a very big deal – but one we did not notice at the time – and of course now it is impossible.

But let me stop for a minute and think about what that word we is. It is not everybody – but close to it – roughly 90% of the population. But it is misleading to talk of mere numbers – all we can be sure of is that very few are conscious of what is going on. And that minority population is far from homogeneous.

I seem to be on the fringe with my theory of negative moral behavior. Which is so simple it hardly needs to be said – our moral behavior has flipped. What was good has become bad – and what was bad has become good. Instead of building a better world we now are building a worse one. And we consider this the proper way to be.

They are probably many theories of how this came to be – but since the problem itself has not been recognized, these theories have not gotten much attention either. The whole scene has gotten a white-wash job – we stoutly maintain it doesn’t exist. Ignoring our bodies – who know very well that something bad is going on – and have developed a variety of strange diseases as a result.

We feel – correctly – that if we realized where we are, we would have to change our ways. But we have developed a huge addiction to where we are. And would rather die than change.

As a result, our global culture is dying – and we are completely satisfied with this solution.

2013
03/10
CATEGORY
Morality
Negative being
Philosophy
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People are Horrid Examples of What They Could Be

And this pleases them enormously. They do not want to be good; they want to be  bad – and as bad as they can possibly be.

They are giving badness entirely new dimensions that no one ever dreamed of before. It does no good to point to each one – they multiply without limit. What we have to see is that we are the engine behind all this. And that we are unlikely to stop. Too much momentum has built up behind this social impulse – and we enjoy it too much.

No one can inform them of this. They will never, never admit it. Instead, they will kill the messenger. Who has the very difficult task of saying exactly what is going on.

What is going on is nearly impossible to say. I am listening to Lucretius’s On the Nature of Things. In his time (the first century BC) people wanted to know just that – what the heck was going on? Their answers were not very accurate – but their motivation was excellent. They wanted to understand their world.

In our time, we most emphatically do not. We want to be as ignorant as possible. And consider this perfection. Which it is, in a way – negative perfection.

I keep being forced into recognizing this negative state of being. I tried as hard as I could to work around it. But I might as well take the bull by the horns – and tell it like it is.

There is just one problem – no one knows what I am talking about. And, like I have said already, they do not want to know.

I can only watch the decline of our civilization from a safe distance. And satisfy myself by reading and writing about it.

2013
03/07
CATEGORY
Negative being
Philosophy
1 comment

How to Not See What is Really Going On

I am still reading about Social Entrepreneurship – and I have two conflicting feelings about it. First, I really enjoy reading about all the entrepreneurs, what they are doing – and how they are doing it. Doing things right is tremendously exciting for me – and is one of my main motivators.

But at the same time I have a lifetime of experience where I have been shown over and over that most people have just the opposite motivation – they insist on doing things wrong. And they insist on not noticing this at all.

The solution for the Social Entrepreneurship crowd is simple – find people who can do things right and support them so they can fix our problems.  Once this assumption is put into words however (something they cleverly avoid doing) - huge problems raise their ugly heads.

The most basic one seems to be that our present huge, complex, technical society requires management skills far in excess of those we have. Finding specialists who can do this for us is not the solution. For a number of reasons I need not go into here.

You may say that what needs to be done is to educate everyone properly – so they acquire these skills. And there is lot to be said for this approach. A good liberal education is indeed valuable – as I said in Why Liberal Education Matters. But as any good educator knows, there is only so much they can do. You can take a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink.

The horse (our present global society) will not do what is required of it – mainly become aware of where it is. This it absolutely will not do.

And not only that, our smart guys (who should know what is going on) have no idea how they got that way. They can only look on in astonishment as the mass mess things up.

And nobody, and I mean nobody, will admit things are in such a sorry state they cannot be fixed. Since I can see this – and I am not too bright – it puzzles me why other people cannot too.

To put this another way – we have come up with all kinds of clever ways of fixing our small problems. But have overlooked our Big Problem. Anything that does not look this in the face is merely a distraction.

2013
03/04
CATEGORY
Education
Negative being
Philosophy
1 comment

The Riddle of the Human Species

Edward O. Wilson in the NY Times

The Times gets some excellent articles by authors pushing their newest book. It also has some caustic reviews of some new books – just to give a proper balance.

In this case, Mr. Wilson, an eminent scholar, gets to explain his latest theory very capably. His argument, it seems to me, is bullet-proof. And is another one of those things everyone should know – but, due to our present negative development, is ignored completely. People do not want to know about themselves – or anything else.

This theory is an excellent example of how a small minority is advanced – and the vast majority are not. And not only that – are determined to to destroy their species. However, this is my theory, and I will return to Mr. Wilson’s:

The social intelligence of the campsite-anchored prehumans evolved as a kind of non-stop game of chess. Today, at the terminus of this evolutionary process, our immense memory banks are smoothly activated across the past, present, and future. They allow us to evaluate the prospects and consequences variously of alliances, bonding, sexual contact, rivalries, domination, deception, loyalty and betrayal. We instinctively delight in the telling of countless stories about others as players upon the inner stage. The best of it is expressed in the creative arts, political theory, and other higher-level activities we have come to call the humanities…

The roles of both individual and group selection are indelibly stamped (to borrow a phrase from Charles Darwin) upon our social behavior. As expected, we are intensely interested in the minutiae of behavior of those around us. Gossip is a prevailing subject of conversation, everywhere from hunter-gatherer campsites to royal courts. The mind is a kaleidoscopically shifting map of others, each of whom is drawn emotionally in shades of trust, love, hatred, suspicion, admiration, envy and sociability. We are compulsively driven to create and belong to groups, variously nested, overlapping or separate, and large or small. Almost all groups compete with those of similar kind in some manner or other. We tend to think of our own as superior, and we find our identity within them.

Reading this should turn people on. But it will be lost in the noise of our Information Economy.

2013
02/26
CATEGORY
Negative being
Psychology
Science
Sociology
1 comment

The Right to be Important

Every person has this right. The Humanists used to speak of the dignity of the individual, and I could not put it better. We are very social beings, and we need to be important to other people. Without that. we wither and die.

But we live in a world were we, as human beings, are no longer important. And not only that, but were people are being destroyed instead.

At this point, I am wondering how to proceed. Because I am not sure how other people are reacting to what I am saying. The safest assumption is that they are not reacting at all – and have no idea what I am talking about. In which case, I can fold up my laptop and go home.

I will continue, however, with my readers who have some idea of what being important is – and try to say more about the subject. Bearing in mind that is a huge problem for me personally – being the son of an unloving mother.

This might be a good time to mention the shift in attitude towards children as they grow up. Small children are treasured, and people love being grandparents. But when they become adolescents this attitude changes. They are no longer little treasures, but dangerous beings in their own right. And adolescents act just as they are expected to – as dangerous rebels. Or, as dysfunctional nobodies – and they remain that way as adults.

This, it seems to me, is why the world is in such bad shape – because the people in it are in such bad shape. All the cell phones in the world are not going to make them any better.

To summarize – as we became more technically-oriented we became more like our technologies. This was not necessarily bad, it had lots of advantages. But it had a huge disadvantage – we became less human.

And we forgot what being human was like.

2013
02/22
CATEGORY
Negative being
Psychology
Sociology
1 comment

Our Goal is to Destroy the World

And we can see nothing wrong with that; it seems like a perfectly honorable intention; and it shows how much we have improved over our previous innocent condition – where we thought our job was to make the world (or at least our part of the world) better. It didn’t take us too long (only a couple of centuries) to see how foolish that was – and to mend our ways.

I am taking an online course on the fundamentals of philosophy, and this week was about morality. I found I agree most strongly with the relativistic approach – that moral standards vary from culture to culture.

Nothing, it seems to me, could be more obvious. To take an extreme example – the Nazi extermination of the Jews was entirely moral – from their viewpoint. The rest of the world made a big mistake in not taking their attitude seriously.

Likewise, we are making a big mistake in overlooking our present self-destructive impulses. We feel we are not responsible for them – because we do not recognize them.

2013
02/20
CATEGORY
History
Morality
Negative being
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Making Evil Better

This is going to be difficult to write about because it is so simple. And because no one wants to see it. After all, the worst possible situation is not something we want to know about. Even if it is the most important thing we need to know.

You can easily say “This is just another of Hal’s crazy ideas,” and let it go at that. Or you can try it on for size, and see if it is useful for you.

Personally, I find much of the world baffling, and am desperate to know why. This is such a simple answer, and explains so much, I find it a big help.

I have referred to this before as the negative being – and this is a convenient short label. It has an ancient pedigree – people have always noticed the power of evil and tried to make sense of it. And at various times they have concluded that evil was predominate in their time – and they would have to accommodate themselves to this brutal fact – but not become evil themselves.

In some cases – they have decided to join it (the easier choice) – and to make the situation even worse. This seems to be where we are now. This is something the ancients could not have imagined – but something we have to recognize, if we are going to cope with it.

Just recently, an old friend of mine has gone crazy, and I have been unable to understand her behavior. But if I assume her problem was her inability to cope with evil (simply because there was too much of it in her life) what she is doing makes sense. And I can sympathize with her family – because they too have been affected by her dysfunctional behavior.

2013
02/15
CATEGORY
Morality
Negative being
Philosophy
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