Only enlightened humans can wield a double edged sword without hurting themselves and others…
“They want us to accept that our rights are but privileges contingent on our compliance with the whims of tyrannical diktats…
“They want to usher in a totalitarian digitaliarism where access to goods and services such as the internet is tied to a digital ID…
“They want to preside over the resources and assets of the natural world and ration our access to those under the banner of sustainability…”
etc. etc.
But who is them?
Who is this powerful “they” the investigative reporters keep bringing up?
…
it’s clear as day
the “they” is the corrupt way—
it is the picture of Dorian Gray
yes
but ultimately
the “they” is the ignorance
in us—
.
“Forgive them,
they know not what they do”
as Jesus said
.
the “they” is the flip side of us
the “they”
is the order of the day
.
the “they” is technology
per se
as Heidegger conceived it—
not in the control of man
but the other way around
it being in control of man
.
the medium
that is the message—
.
wherein we are running
(but racing rats)
in the OS of technology—
in the matrix of enframing
that reduces the world
in the image of resources—
of the affordances
of a “standing reserve”
.
the “they” then is a way
of seeing
and a way
of unwholesome being
.
Heidegger saw technology as a force that is bigger than us and that could mean the end of us all if we failed to appreciate the way that it reduced our experience of the world to a standing reserve of affordances /resources; & facts—shutting us off from other realms of the truth.
It’s a short account of his haemorrhoidectomy and it’s quintessential Buk.
It goes:
the month of March is over. I went into the hospital on the 2nd., was sliced on the 3rd., and there was a bit of horror and disbelief—locked in with the whining crowd. and their T.V. sets and many of them with imagined ills, only wanting the great Mother because society has cut their balls off and they have lost touch with the undiscovered and important gods. no souls—just mouths, bodies pewking the misery of the sell-out. the bit of pain from the knives was nothing compared to being locked-in with them! at least on the job, you know that in a dozen hours you will be walking down the street alone—4 a.m.—with the last of the moon sinking into your skin and bones, the quiet air giving you no con-game… you slowly fill again, you go home. the mirror is hell, but that’s where you came from. but there’s always that stirring inch LEFT! that something you held all the way through. a seed. a lucky charm. love. guts. spinach. you name it. you know it. but in a hospital—that’s it. they’ve got you—(the docs and the nurses and the patients)—to talk to, fondle, slice, arrg. but I found me a little Mexican mop-up girl—all eyes and sadness, we had some laughs, corny stuff, I’d say, “Hey sweetie, you come to mop my white socks again?” “do they need it?” “oh yeah, once lightly!” and the little wench mopped my socks again! laughing. I always seem to meet these little Mexican girls working at dirty jobs, for nothing. beautifully real and easy. “If I could get out of this bed I’d chase you all around the room!” “why don’t you try it, you might catch me!” silly stuff, I guess. she’s 25 years younger than I am. old horny goat, Buk. but a lift. sure. she brought me a new pair of stockings when I left, threw them on my chest. “here! for your big stinky feet!” I didn’t have the guts to ask for her whereabouts when she wasn’t working.
Note: the Mexican mop-up girl he talks about is around 75 years old today—if she is still around somewhere.
.
I wonder…
.
Did she get the COVID jab?
Where does she live?
Does she remember Buk?
Does she have kids?
What is her go to ice cream flavor?
When was the last time she laughed and about what?
.
.
speaking of favourites…
.
I like to prowl ordinary places and taste the people— from a distance. I don’t want them too near because that’s when attrition starts. but in supermarkets laundromats cafes street corners bus stops eating places drug stores I can look at their bodies and their faces and their clothing— watch the way they walk or stand or what they are doing. I’m like an x-ray machine I like them like that: on view. I imagine the best things about them. I imagine them brave and crazy I imagine them beautiful.
I like to prowl the ordinary places. I feel sorry for us all or glad for us all caught alive together and awkward in that way.
there’s nothing better than the joke of us the seriousness of us the dullness of us buying stockings and carrots and gum and magazines buying birth control candy hair spray and toilet paper.
we should build a great bonfire we should congratulate ourselves on our endurance
we stand in long lines we walk about we wait.
I like to prowl ordinary places the people explain themselves to me and I to them
a woman at 3:35pm weighing purple grapes on a scale looking at that scale very seriously she is dressed in a simple green dress with a pattern of white flowers she takes the grapes puts them carefully into a white paper bag
that’s lightning enough
the generals and the doctors may kill us but we have won.
what’s more interesting than the polarization intensifying in the global culture right now is the fact that there seems to be two major types of humans—each with their strengths (virtues) and weaknesses (sins). while some of us lean more toward socialism others of us tend more toward individualism. apparently.
the problem with communism and socialism (as I see it) is that it is based on the dynamics of codependence: wherein the parties are at the mercy of those who become the dominant members of the group; and the problem with individualism is that it is based on the psychology of separation and distrust.
in codependence the parties can abuse each other to the extent they are reliant on one another. in independence the individual is left to their own limited devices and is exposed to the elements.
these are the psycho-energetic poles we are magnetized toward when operating from existential anxiety. we either seek solace in the crowd or in the illusion of control of a self-directed life.
. . .
polarity is not something to be resolved, though. polarity is a creative tension or force that drives development and growth.
in a way we were all waiting for the present stir of events. that’s why it’s here. and all that we can do is embrace for impact.
Effort of attention is … the essential phenomenon of will.
William James
.
.
The way Social Media can in effect anti-socialize us and Smart technologies dumb us down is the way that our capacity for discerning attention is under great threat in the Black Hole Glut of the Attention (=Distraction) Economy.
.
.
And it all happens when we have no distinct idea about who we actually are and what we actually stand for.
Absent clarity of intent and intuitive self-reliance we’re bound to forfeit our agency and to defer to what (ever) is being curated for us.
.
Free will then is not exempt from causes and conditions but is rather the flexible coordination of attention, intention and emotion in skillful action. That’s what it means to be free from a psychological and phenomenological perspective.
Evan Thompson
.
Which reminds me of a profound poem by A. R. Ammons—which arrested my attention the very first time I read it:
“Honesty’s on short supply and we subsist on mendacities in times of grave crises. We cannot afford such luxuries as truth or common sense in drastic times.”
Norman Spineles
.
.
they are worse than zombies. they are holier than thouing their willfully blind way through the china shop of your conscience.
when you sit down to meditate: ask yourself directly what you are expecting from doing it. where do you expect to arrive at. what psychological state are you in fact chasing. what are you actually after?
for me: it is basically a sense of feeling OK. a sense of being right there where I belong. a sense of being grounded in the given moment and place. among the people who matter to me and the people to whom I matter. where I feel satisfied with where and what and how I am. where everything’s in its place. where I feel integral to a whole.
or basically a sense of having a clear conscience. a sense of being responsible for myself and for my life. that I am not a burden on anyone. that I am not an imposition. on the contrary: that my presence adds something of value to the people and the world around me. that I am conducive to the well-being of the world around me. that my contribution matters. that my talents are relevant.
yes.
I expect to be relieved of the pressure of feeling guilty for who I am. I expect to be guilt- and shame-free. I expect to feel that my existence is of use and of value and that I am a PLUS rather than a MINUS (i.e. a useless hunk of mushy flesh—a waste of precious resources).
that’s basically what I expect to feel.
and then: I allow myself the feeling.
.
4
nowadays the attitude of enjoying quietude is a rather neglected aptitude.
.
5
each moment you can choose between opening up—or contracting around a trickle and shallow treat of yet another distraction.
the more you choose the latter: the less you’ll feel alive and well.
.
6
the heavy flapping of pigeon wings wrinkles up the smooth fabric of quietude.
.
7
the whimper of a lawn mower
a mile away
.
a car’s door slamming shut
the engine revving up
.
a neighbor sweeping their
backyard
a couple houses down the
street
.
a black ant reconnoitering
on my left knee
greenapple snug on
the wet sand in front of me
.
a cockchafer riding the air
like chopper
the train at the edge of the
town passing by
in the direction of the capital
.
8
when a sliver of a childhood feeling pierces me. the richness of it overwhelms me. to such an extent that it feels too much to take. without breaking down into sobbing. how simple it was. and how free of the mind. of the demands of the ego.
it was so pure and so simple.
so natural.
.
9
the clouds morph into sky. the apple rots on the ground. there is coming and going. and a restless madness in between.
.
10
what a cruel joke is this. we learn how to properly live only in retrospect. we realize what matters only after it’s gone. we find true joy in the finality of our sadness.
.
11
being honest with yourself is difficult: precisely to the extent that you refrain from being bored—sitting in silence meditating on stuff by putting questions to yourself and inquiring—on a regular basis.
because the less you work out your honesty-muscle the more atrophied it gets.
some call it Corona. some say COVID-19. some use the formula SARS-CoV-2.
I personally prefer COVID 84. but COVID 22 sounds quite apt as well—IMO.
.
2
the irony of being censored for sharing stuff that is supposedly harmful for impressionable minds—when all the censors are doing is propagating content that is appealing to the reactive part of our mind.
.
3
THE TECH PLATFORMS HAVE LITTLE FINANCIAL MOTIVE FOR PRIORITIZING TRUTH OVER ENGAGEMENT.
David Fuller
.
4
yet another exercise in distracting from the real pandemic unfolding: that of a technocracy with its so-called smart gadgets—which indeed are instrumental in the ‘social distancing’ trending since a couple of decades already.
.
5
here’s one rule of thumb: the more blatantly they talk to you as if to a naïve child—admonishing from an opinionated and pontificating standpoint—the less you are to trust what they are saying.
.
6
YOU ATTRACT WHAT YOU PUT UP WITH.
Adyashanti
.
7
if you’re beaver enough to demand that we all wear a face mask then do not half-ass it when you are wearing it. you ain’t Pinocchio with too big of a nose to properly sport it. just wear it the way it is intended to be worn—dummy. exercise your cluelessness. advertise your hypocrisy.
.
8
IF WE LED OUR LIVES ACCORDING TO THE WAYS INTENDED BY NATURE AND THE LESSONS TAUGHT BY HER, WE SHOULD BE INTUITIVELY OBEDIENT TO OUR PARENTS; LATER WE SHOULD ADOPT REASON AS OUR GUIDE AND BECOME SLAVES TO NOBODY.
Étienne de La Boétie
.
9
the sheepish feel so embarrassed in the face of the skeptics that they feel compelled to find a way to shame them.
.
10
as the war on communism demanded of the citizens to enlist in the service of democracy—as their patriotic duty—so does the War on COVID (WC) demand of the citizens that they get vaccinated?
.
11
JUST EXPOSE AND ELIMINATE THOSE BAD GUYS. THAT IS THE PREVAILING HOLLYWOOD FORMULA FOR RIGHTING THE WORLD’S WRONGS: A HEROIC CHAMPION CONFRONTS AND DEFEATS THE BAD GUY, AND EVERYONE LIVES HAPPILY EVER AFTER. WHICH IS THE SAME BASIC FORMULA, INCIDENTALLY, AS BLAMING ILL HEALTH ON GERMS AND KILLING THEM WITH THE ARSENAL OF MEDICINE, SO THAT WE CAN LIVE SAFE HEALTHY LIVES EVER AFTER, OR KILLING THE TERRORISTS AND WALLING OUT THE IMMIGRANTS AND LOCKING UP THE CRIMINALS, ALL AGAIN SO THAT WE CAN LIVE SAFE HEALTHY LIVES EVER AFTER.
Charles Eisenstein
.
12
it doesn’t matter how blatant a lie is when enough people are psychologically invested in it.
.
13
the real problem is not the fact that the deadly pandemic story (or is it a paradigm?) is most dubious—but that for most people it is important that it be real (whether it is indeed true or not).
.
because it gives us an excuse to have a break from our 9 to 5 nightmare of decent and respectable (i.e. spiritually abject and wretched) citizenship.
and we get a free pass to regress to an infantile state—that in all likelihood we have yet to develop and evolve beyond anyway.
as we get to be comfortably numb and irresponsible (vulnerable little infants in need of paternal protection) while performing the act of being responsible: by socially distancing and muzzling ourselves and as good as bleaching our hands with disinfectants like OCD maniacs.
in other words: the real problem is that many of us are actually invested in the narrative being true.
.
14
THE DOCTORS ARE COMPROMISED. THE PROFESSORS ARE COMPROMISED. THE JOURNALISTS ARE COMPROMISED. THE POLITICIANS ARE COMPROMISED. ABOUT THE ONLY THING THAT ISN’T BADLY COMPROMISED ARE PEOPLE WITH AN INDEPENDENT SOURCE OF SUSTENANCE—INDIVIDUALS AND VERY SMALL GROUPS ARE ABOUT THE ONLY THING THAT IS FREE OF THIS DISEASE OF THE EMBEDDED GROWTH OBLIGATION.
Eric Weinstein
.
15
STAY ALERT
otherwise what? what happens otherwise? I fail to detect the little beastie? sneaking up on me sorry ass? or I cease perchance to worry? and unwittingly give my immune.sys a break and a chance to properly replenish itself?
.
CONTROL THE VIRUS
that invisible insidious menace. the boogey bug. the horde at the gates. and the best way to face the little bugger’s to hide from it and weaken myself further by over-sterilizing my environment and further degrading my immune system. sounds pretty sound a strategy indeed.
.
SAVE LIVES
whose life? mine? (if mine: relax! and don’t bother mate! I am actually okay with you BEING FREE.) or is it gramp’s or grannie’s life? (apart from meeting the kids and the grandkids they don’t have much life anyway.) what lives are we supposed to save again? (in what twisted world is disengagement the way to healing?)
.
how about ‘’KEEP COOL BUT CARE’’ instead.
or: ‘’KEEP IT BOUNCING.’’
doesn’t it make more sense to heed slogans like these?
.
17
IT’S EXTREMELY IMPORTANT, HERE AND NOW, TO START THINKING ABOUT THESE PROBLEMS — NOT TO LET OURSELVES BE TAKEN BY SURPRISE BY THE NEW ADVANCES OF TECHNOLOGY.[…] WE CAN FORESEE, AND WE CAN DO A GREAT DEAL TO FORESTALL. AFTER ALL, THE PRICE OF FREEDOM IS ETERNAL VIGILANCE.
Aldous Huxley
.
18
fkn shop assistant sent me out of the supermarket with a half-full shopping cart because I was wearing a scarf instead of a mask. he ordered me to leave at once.
I asked him if the scarf was not okay and how come and then if he could sell me a mask. he answered me by insisting that I left the premises. immediately and at once. pushing as he spoke with a rabid dour scowl the cart away from me.
and I smiled it off and told the guy to cool it and just keep it cool. and slowly I wended my way toward the exit.
bitch was baiting a scene from the get though. approached with a vengeance already angry.
I knew the guy was only following orders (and enjoying it). which was pathetic at best. but his autocue antagonism still hurt me somewhat.
what a pointless interaction. what a waste of emotional energy. but at least it got me thinking.
.
19
MUST THE CITIZEN EVER FOR A MOMENT, OR IN THE LEAST DEGREE, RESIGN HIS CONSCIENCE TO THE LEGISLATION? WHY HAS EVERY MAN A CONSCIENCE, THEN? I THINK THAT WE SHOULD BE MEN FIRST, AND SUBJECTS AFTERWARD. IT IS NOT DESIRABLE TO CULTIVATE A RESPECT FOR THE LAW, SO MUCH AS FOR THE RIGHT. THE ONLY OBLIGATION WHICH I HAVE A RIGHT TO ASSUME IS TO DO AT ANY TIME WHAT I THINK RIGHT.
Henry David Thoreau
.
20
to wear it or not to wear it. that is the question. to obey authority or to defy authoritarianism.
.
this mask phenomenon’s indeed way beyond a health and safety issue or an ethical question. it’s more like an existential dilemma in fact.
do you continue to place your trust in the leaders or do you start deferring at last to your deeper instincts and intuitions?
the answer is not that simple.
.
on the one hand it does seem advisable to wear it—even if only as a ‘gesture’ toward society. on the other though—when that society is trending toward a decentralized form of despotism and a subliminal type tyranny—it is as good as imperative that you refuse to wear it—as an assertion of spiritual integrity and self-reliance.
.
but then: who the hell can afford that?
.
21
IT’S NOT A HEALTH CRISIS. IT’S A MENTAL HEALTH CRISIS.
for one: take Henry David Thoreau’s definitive take on the issue:
THEY ONLY CAN FORCE ME WHO OBEY A HIGHER LAW THAN I.
now there’s a great sentence. there’s a great sentiment.
truly. one needs not say more.
authorities mandating masks and social distancing and all sorts of lockdown measures (god forbid: vaccination)—based on spurious statistics and fear-mongering sensationalist narratives—all but activate the dormant gene of civil disobedience in anyone with a functioning conscience.
why?
because them solemn sullen suited goons’re more opportunistic than caring. because they prioritize ‘insurance’ over ‘faith.’ because their law’s ultimately avoiding conflict (besides conflicts of interest) rather than seeking the truth.
but like I said: one needs not say more.
THERE ARE NINE HUNDRED AND NINETY-NINE PATRONS OF VIRTUE TO ONE VIRTUOUS MAN.
The Prancing Apprentice 