Posts Tagged ‘ Loss of Self ’

What the American Way of Life has Become

Americans seem determined to be a stupid as possible. And they have succeed admirably.

And the rest of the world seems to be following their example. The American Way of Life (actually a way of death) is infectious. Because it is  so simple, as I said in a recent posting Obama has Taken Advantage of America - where I accidently stumbled on a label for it – the Topsy-Turvy World. Where everything is the exact opposite of what it seems to be.

The emotional appeal of this is irresistible. We get the satisfaction of being good – when we are actually being bad (what we actually want to be). And not only that – we can make money doing this.

This is possible because our minds conceive of opposites as being the same thing – and can easily confuse the two. We have always been this way, but until now common sense has usually kept the two separate. We have now found a way of overriding this – to our great detriment. But to our topsy-turvy minds it seems to be to our great advantage.

Actually, as much as I hate to admit it, this is not a new idea. Freud touched on it in his Civilization and Its Discontents. But he didn’t dare offend his readers by accusing them of being stupid – and liking to be that way. Even though the Nazis were all around him – and doing just that. As a result, all his four sisters – women in their late seventies, died in Nazi concentration camps.

People have often been stupid – but now we cannot tell the difference.

2013
05/07
CATEGORY
Philosophy
1 comment

Social Incompetence

We are so pleased with out technical competence – the cell phone, for example, that has taken the world by storm (especially the undeveloped world) – that we have overlooked a parallel development – our spectacular social incompetence.

This is surprising. After all, we expected our new networking technologies to improve our social lives – by making it easier for us to communicate. What happened?

Our focus changed – from us to them (the various embodiments of the Computer) and we have became more interested in them than in us. Almost anywhere you can see people staring at their computers – evidently thinking somehow that they have all the answers.

We have outsmarted ourselves – by making a technology that seems to be human – and not only that, but super-human.

2013
05/05
CATEGORY
Internet
Sociology
Software
Technology
Leave a comment

Love

William Shakespeare - Sonnet CXLVII: My love is a fever, longing still

What on earth was love? Somewhere along the line we lost it – can’t get it back – and don’t want to.

We are now interested in other things. Things we don’t know about, and don’t want to know about. We do know, however, that love is not among them.

As in this poem Sestina: Like - by A.E.Stalllings

A Sistina is:

a lyrical form developed before 1200 by Provençal troubadours and now fixed in the form of six 6-line stanzas originally unrhymed, six end words repeated in different order in each stanza, and a 3-line envoi in which three of these six words occur in the middle and three at the end of the lines

And desuetude is:

discontinuance from use, practice, exercise, or functioning - or - a state of protracted suspension or of apparent abandonment

If you are like my sister, you prefer Cowboy Poetry.

2013
05/05
CATEGORY
Poetry
Leave a comment

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
2 comments

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
2 comments

Managed Democracy

We take it for granted anymore that democracy must be managed by the better kind of people.

This is not a new idea at all – the Founding Fathers were careful to establish a republic – not a democracy – which was modeled, frankly on the British model. There were some ardent democrats among them – Thomas Jefferson, for example. But economic concerns predominated – Americans became more concerned with making money than with freedom.

As industrialization became more powerful, America quickly sorted itself into the haves and the have-nots. In Marxist terms – the Capitalists and the Workers. But even here – the managers – the company men who kept the wheels of progress lubricated – were not hard to find.

But eventually – with the advent of mass communications – something even more radical appeared – the masses and their managers. The people who watched their televisions – and the much smaller number that managed what they saw on them.

The model for all of this was the Organization – Business, or the Corporation – which was a blend of a hierarchical control structure (top-down control) and total conformity – control from the bottom up.

No one found this the least bit unusual – that was just the way things were. When in fact – it was highly unusual – and should have set off all kinds of alarm bells.

Why did this not happen? Evidently, because people had become overwhelmed by too many changes – caused by too many and too powerful technological changes.

These changes were noticed – how could anyone not notice them? But their effects on people were not noticed at all. Or only by a few – and these were ignored as alarmists. People were convinced that a new era had dawned – where everything was new (and better) including them.

When, in fact – they had been managed into oblivion.

2013
04/16
CATEGORY
Business
Economy
History
Morality
Philosophy
Leave a comment

Happiness is Not Good Enough

I sometimes compare my happiness with that of the sparrows in my yard. They are perfectly content with their simple life. And I know I can be just as contented watching the clouds in the morning sky. Or drinking a glass of water. If I just take the time to give myself over to the experience.

But usually I think I must have (or be) something better – that simple pleasures are not good enough.

I remember once when we were driving through the Mexican desert in our new Mercury station wagon – back in the Fifties. It was the latest thing – when we first saw one, we knew we had to have one too. We soon found it was a piece of junk mechanically. The engine suffered from vapor lock – whenever it got hot, the gasoline vaporized in the fuel line. I once had to stand on the rear fender, blowing into the gas tank all the way across the Ft. Madison bridge (which was several miles long). The wood on the exterior rotted, and the door handles fell off. But it was stylish (when it was new). But let me return to my story.

As I said, we were driving across the desert – when we saw a young man riding his burro (he didn’t even have a saddle) as happy as he could be! We were shocked – he had no right to be happy. After all, we had our new station wagon – and we were not happy!

Looking back at it, this was probably why we enjoyed our trips to Mexico – we got in touch (for a little while) with a simpler (but perfectly adequate) life.

Unfortunately, that life has vanished too – as Globalization has swept over Mexico.

2013
04/16
CATEGORY
Morality
Philosophy
1 comment

The Loss of Human Potential

This is hard a hard problem to write about – for the simple reason that we have decided it doesn’t exist. We have lost interest in ourselves – and in our all-important thinking and feeling abilities.

We have decided we are only good for doing other things – and not for being our precious selves. A recent issue of Scientific American, for example, concentrated on proving that the self was an illusion – implying that it was not important.

Self-development, it seems to me – is all-important. And we should be making it our first priority. But the very idea makes us nervous – because, we think something else (the economy, perhaps) is more important.

What we do not say (but do believe) is that human beings have become unsatisfactory – compared to other things. Things we cannot specify, but we feel strongly to be better than us.

This is a disastrous state of affairs – the worst possible – but a situation we have carefully overlooked.

This has resulted in a cumulative negative feedback situation. People have made a society less and less interested in people – and society has made people less and less interested in themselves.

And we consider this a vast improvement – when it is a total disaster.

2013
04/08
CATEGORY
Philosophy
Psychology
Sociology
Technology
Leave a comment

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
Leave a comment

Living in a Time of Fast Time

If we believe in anything, we believe in Progress. And this belief has changed who are are. And our sense of  what time is like – and what it means.

Progress, I hardly need tell you, means things keep getting better. Look at that definition carefully – it does not say people keep getting better – it says things keep getting better. Thing is a important world in English. I just looked it up in the Merriam-Webster Unabridged – and I was flooded with meanings – all of them important.

For my purposes I will define a thing as a product that that has been manufactured. The prime example being the automobile – the product that changed forever who we were.

Who we were was changing – we were merging with our things. And as thing-people we were much better than we were – we thought. When in fact we were much worse. Because our ability to be human was greatly diminished. I must spend some time belaboring that point – which has more implications than you may realize.

It means that the past is bad, the future is good – and the present does not exist. We are actually living in the future – successfully staying away from our selves in the present – the only place we can actually be.

And not only that. The future is not fixed in time – but a vague objective that is moving away from us faster and faster. Making us run faster and faster – trying to catch up. As the Red Queen (in Alice in Wonderland) remarked.

This was written in 1865 – when people knew intuitively what the Red Queen was talking about. Things continued to speed up until sometime in the 20th Century – probably sometime in the Fifties (and the advent of Television)  - when they reached the breaking point. People can only stand so much speedup before they flip out.

We now live in a post-Modern – or post-Industrial – world. And we haven’t the foggiest notion where we are. We are in the grip of forces beyond our comprehension.

I don’t think they are beyond our comprehension – I work hard at comprehending them, and I flatter myself in thinking that I have somewhat succeeded. But vast majority are in the dark – and determined to stay that way. The analogy to Plato’s cave is irresistible.

They are in control – and I feel like the Stoics at the end of the Roman Empire. With the sky falling in around my ears.

Much to everybody’s satisfaction.

2013
04/01
CATEGORY
History
Literature
Philosophy
Sociology
Technology
Leave a comment
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 361 other followers