Why You?

Every once in awhile I awake to a need to open a door into why and what’s going on with me. The other day on EONS I was asked about a couple of quotes I use for signatures. This is what followed:

1. The lyricism of “addiction” may find inspiration in the image of the “outlaw, ” the great social nomad, who prowls on the confines of a docile, frightened order”,
2. “Remind in the state of constant departure while always arriving - this saves on introductions and good byes.”

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Hi,

The first quote - Michel Foucault, well kind of - I took a part of a quote of his relating to the “Mad” and inserted what I did; the second comes from the movie “Waking Life” - directly. The next paragraph are my views of the process relating to the in-person social networking to the online. In fact I might say it a little differently now - in the sense that social networking of all types are at the same time competing for superiority - they are also in a state of paradox while they are bucking the head winds of fragmentation - a lost of cohesion (trust) within the social body, as exampled this week in the United States Congress over the Bailout Bill and the credit freeze.

I read your profile - I liked the tracing of your journey - thus far. I’m at a similar point inasmuch as I am being pulled out and deeper into the social networking space. I resist. I resist a path while I continue to search. I would have my search play out differently except it stays open to we while others close.

An, example - as you may notice I joined EONS some time ago (2007) - pretty much as I have done with so many others - if you travel around social networking sites I am engage lots of places. I did not put any effort into EONS as it was awkward to use (so I thought) it was for an older demographic - I still like to think of myself as someone “hot enough” for all ages. I did not get involved with any of the group conversations or inviting people to become friends or any such tactics until recently.

This space was just to slow - too old - too too, I think this demonstrates that one of the reasons I come to social networking - to attract the females like yourself - maybe younger - but good looking ladies, nonetheless. But as my past female attraction tactics where based on “being chosen” all I thought I needed to do was to show my face - you remember “if it is built - they will come” well for me it was “IF I show my face, they will chose me”.

Now that was not the only reason I engaged in social networking - it was also to make a living and by building a consulting practice, but the tactics all follow the same line of reasoning. “If I show up, tell my story, share my thoughts, they will chose me”.

My ongoing experience has had less success than I desire and I have to believe that inside this fact is the lesson that draws me deeper along a path I am yet to take. Part of me thinks that to make and enhance relationships is happenstance - stuff happens without reason or cause; part of me thinks that deep social movements can be influenced directly through an understanding of the conspiratorial nature of social existence - a spin off from Michel Foucault’s notion of “Power”.

In it he sees that “Power” is characterized by tactics of people like myself - you - everyone/anyone often quite explicit at the restricted level where they are inscribed (the local cynicism of power), tactics which, becoming connected to one another, attracting and propagating one another, but finding their base of support and their condition elsewhere, end by forming comprehensive systems (folk you hang with - social networks - groups within groups - outlaws); the logic is perfectly clear, the aims decipherable, and yet it is often the case that on one is there to have invented them, and few (my ego laments its own arrogance into taking my own interest seriously) who can be said to have formulated them.

All of this while I still hold on to a notion of God’s mighty deeps still and always working in the NOW. I tell you all this - I’m not sure why. It’s 5:44am - I’ve never seen nor read not know anymore about you - yet here I am. It’s a hoot!

Now what?

Levy

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: power, resilience, confession

And his eyes read “End”

THE OFFICIAL’S RULES:

1. The person performing the illusion must dig his way to a tomb with one way entrance.

2. The person must fill in any hole created with the soil from that whole.

3. The person is not allowed to use any technology in digging, or moving any soil – only his hands and feet.

4. The person in the grave is not to be allowed out by anyone, he must either escape himself, ala “KILL BILL VOLUME II” or die.

A Look at victim in the ground

5. There is to be a live-feed camera in the tomb, which cannot be shut off.

6. No one is allowed to interfere with the illusion.

These were the parameters to a young magician’s, Pirlo, final illusion. A crescendo. Pirlo’s pinnacle performance was to be both a homecoming and a farewell to the art.

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There was speculation. Despite reporters, scientists, and engineers, rummaging through the tomb, and finding no gadgets or trapdoors – there was speculation. Some assumed that the tomb had an escape hatch; others thought that he would never enter the tomb, but only appear to.

Famous at thirteen, for fermenting the Chicago River overnight, Pirlo had toured the world for years giving magic shows to packed arenas.

He bought a full block of real estate in upper Manhattan – the biggest retail purchase of a decade. He raised all the buildings in the area, and constructed an elaborate palace for himself, in which to live and work. He called it Giza.

The tabloids and news crews reported every step and maneuver as he prepared for the performance.

The Informant, a small-town southern news paper, announced that it had obtained segments of Pirlo’s “private magic documents”. Pirlo offered the newspaper billions to not reveal the trick. However, the editor, a man of modest means, released the concealed documents billions in a private film called “Pirlo’s secrets”. Teems of millions flooded movie theaters worldwide, but were frustrated by the inconclusiveness: no concrete explanation, no theory, no proof – the “private

basic idea

magic documents” were all encoded. Rather than an unveiling, the movie was a dialogue of possible explanations, using fragmented analysis and extrapolation. The most convincing evidence was presented in the last scene of the hour-long film, when a computer programmer described encrypted blueprints of a lifelike robot, in the image of Pirlo.

Pirlo maintained that a robot was not the secret to his trick. He alluded to something “older and more primitive, more innate”.

Days before the performance an Fx-Tech, a video game blog, produced a decoded version of the blueprints for Pirlo’s robot. Thinkers in every field stated that it was technology from a century in the future, Pirlo’s robot cures cancer, joked the onion.

However, hope amongst the masses grew. Scientific America indulged the public reporting “if it can do the things, the blue prints, say it would be the greatest technological breakthrough in a millennia, maybe two!”

Millions scanned the feed for clues. And s the moment drew closer, the bars and homes and stadiums were replete with eager masses, awaiting the bodacious.

Pirlo eats dinner with the OFFICIAL, on the balcony of the highest floor of Giza, surveying his garden. The OFFICIAL, saintly white skin radiates, beneath her whip cream gown. She tells him he needs to shave, and look tidy. At ten he leaves his abode. With a backdrop of pouring rain, and devastating electric vibrations, Pirlo walks naked, through his garden. One hundred thousand white candles illuminate Giza. He kneels. His eyes closed, he places his forehead on the muddy ground. With a flick of the neck, and crack of the jaw, he punctures the earth. He engages the bubbling blackness, biting, clawing, and carving. He makes a dent. A hole. A tunnel. Hours pass before he reaches the tomb, and without flinching he lunges into the chasm. Kicked by his falling foot, the walls of his tunnel collapse and the dirt follows him into the grave.

The Defense department monitored the ground to ensure that there was no tunneling of any kind.

Hours pass.

Pirlo walks up to the camera sobbing. On “Coffin-vision” Pirlo announces his failure. Then his regret. Then fear. “I mis-performed the procedure; I was never supposed to be in here. Oh my god help me, is anyone out there. It’s dark…” Millions watch silently; the feed is one way. “I fell in, the bot was supposed to fall in, but I did as well. He was supposed to be here alone. He was supposed to die here.” He presses. Presses a craftily made robot into the cameras, and says “yes, this is my trick, I’m sorry…You were all right, the rumor, the movie…” Crying, “I’m just a kid. I never wanted to do this, please. Mom I’m SORRY…” Pirlo cries, shivers, slams on the camera. The OFFICIAL watches from her bed.

TV Audiences everywhere sent billions of letters and videos, death threats, and lynch threats, to the OFFICIAL; pleading for her to forgo procedure and let the crew dig him up, chants of “let him live” were in every public square for weeks. From Moscow to Shanghai, from Barcelona to Reno, to Omaha, to Prague, there were the chants “LET HIM LIVE”, “LET HIM LIVE”. “LET HIM LIVE”…

However, a common trend in intellectual circles was to either accept and enjoy the fateful event – bask in the irony the rules he created; or to hold judgment till the last in order to not be fooled by his magic. Descartian precautions: it could camera tricks, a devious demon, dancing through our perception – cynics.

Still the masses: “LET HIM LIVE”.

The OFFICIAL did not flinch. She would not save Pirlo. She spoke of rules. Lawsuits, court orders, and procedures persisted, as the public and the government fought itself. Fought itself as to whether or not to allow The OFFICIAL to let die Pirlo. Even foreign nations sent in petitions stating their desire to not rescue the poor boy, “we cannot take the risk to wait and see if this man or machine. Save first, and then ask” – spoke Russian Federation President, Vladimir Putin. “

“Vlad: LET HIM LIVE”, tribune echoed.

Supreme Court Case characterized in the media as The OFFICIAL v. The WORLD, came down in favor of The OFFICIAL, and Pirlo or Pirlo’s robot in the cage was set

“TO DIE…”- times lamented.

Dusk, March, 21^st, Pirlo dies. The world watches in silence, as Pirlo twitches, loses breath, and fades. Celebrities and politicians sprinkle the special, “Coffin vision”, with voice-overs and speeches – sermons of hope and wisdom. The general public shuns and lambastes the few critics that remain – insensitive brutes, cynics.

Pirlo lies on his back, eyes piercing the cameras stare. Minutes go by without a blink. His eyes close steadily, and he emits a baritone sigh, that steadily sputters and ends. Minutes, pass and his body remains still. The lids of his eyes creep open for an instance, then close, as a smile grows on his face…

Scholars, and politicians, and religious leaders would discuss the meaning and severity of his death, and the introspection it incites within them. How could a state, with laws and dignity, let this little boy die? Millions attended shrines

Three days later, The OFFICIAL is walking through bustling time square. She stops, her flowing white dress waving in the wind. She is smiling as she glances upward. She ignores autograph seekers, and pick up artists, and just stands glancing. A few around her stop and squint, searching for what absorbs her – a stick figure on top of the coke bottle. “It’s him!” cries a peanut vendor, the bustle seems to stop as thousands follow his finger into the sky.

“It is, it is, it. Look…”

Pirlo waves; the crowd erupts. He stands on the oversized advertisement, adjacent to a stereo and microphone. He picks up the mic and shouts full force. “I GOTTTCHAAAAAA SNNNNITITTTITITTCHESSSS”, repeats, repeats, repeats.

“Robot Died, PIRLO LIVES”,

announced Life Magazine.

Many Hated it. Critics raved it. The Press Consumed it. The young worshipped it. Christians were split; some thought it was an act of great understanding to bring the world together in mourning, others thought that it was blaspheme, a crude reproduction of the death of Jesus. Liberals thought it was beautiful, the Republican’s “don’t like to talk about that stuff much”. Time Magazine showed teary eyed grandma’s and studio executives glued to the “universal prestige special”, as it came to me known. The world gossiped through the cruelty and the brilliance, the dedication and the mystery.

The OFFICIAL immediately released all documents and procedures relating to the illusion. Including a letter sent to the Informant with attached “private magic documents; and the decoded robot blueprint emailed to the Fx-Tech.

The day after his resurrection Pirlo announced, through his friend and confident Andre 3000, his plans.

Andre approaches the microphone, “One Love” instrumental pulsating. The mass of youngsters, flippant from juking, cringes. In slow Shakespearean tone and rhythm:

“Prince of metacognition, prince of precision,

Through me, Pirlo proclaims, his fiercest collision.

One journey done – of that you know none –

The next really isn’t the one

Magnificent Pirlo visits the sun.

The public was enthralled. The man of the year.

Godspeed quoth Time.

Pirlo gave interviews, lectures, even stadium renditions of his life story. Oprah got an exclusive, from his car.

He wanted to have one last interview on the Tonight Show on the night of his departure.

On the air he gave a delight chuckling interview, and talked about how its time to go and that he’s not sad, and understands what he needs to get out of, and come free into the next step. Not in a preachy tone, more of a controlled pray like tone, like a southern reverend coming home for the end of tearful piece. The crowd laughed, cried, and danced with him for half an hour.

As he is about to leave to the shuttle, he gets up and something eerie had happened. He hobbles about and looks back and see that a robotic leg has fallen out of his hip. As the public saw this, the Band struck out a creepy, screeching rhythm. The camera shoots to the band, questioningly, and back to the Pirlo. He chuckles and says “um excuse me”. It was a procedure after “I went surfing in my youth in Hawaii, just kidding seriously, could you hand that to me.” Jay Leno jumps over and grabbed the leg and examined, the camera peals in. Marvelously computers flutter with graphs and colors on the monitor of the leg cover.

Pirlo slowly starts to laugh, then laugh and shake, and shout with laughter. Then shake. Then shake, and then burst into a thousand pieces of metal. All but his head burst into shrapnel, missing the audience and all those on stage. A fisherman in Indonesia and a car salesman in Kansas City shutter as they realize: He chose this.

The intact, robotic head lay on in the middle of the tonight shows stage. Jay Leno and the camera man, crawls from under his desk, and scurries towards the head. Coughing and beckoning the cameraman, the host simply pushes the microphone to the lips of the object. “You got me, I’m no Pirlo. Anyways I’m out you guys,” the head says chuckling, “we’ve had a lot laughs. Peace.” The system twists’ and malfunctions. Then it utters in twisted slow tone. “Through my father’s death, we hope, you’ve seen life.”

…and his eyes read “End”

Resilience - Poetry and A New Language Game

Why resilience? I define myself using a term established by Richard Rorty - “liberal ironist -the name for the “sort of person who faces up to the contingency of his own most central beliefs and desires –someone sufficiently historicist and nominalist to have abandoned the idea those central beliefs and desires refer back to something beyond the reach of time.

So my anthem is resilience - the sustaining of life’s daring. From this date forward I will be contributing more and more material along this theme. If you find any material that you think should be included, send it to oldude59@happinessaddiction.info

clipped from www.blockislandtimes.com Poetry project begins with inquiry into resilience and the human spirit “There is a small world of people interested in human rights and writing,” says Marjory Wentworth, Poet Laureate of South Carolina. Wentworth and three other poets from that small world, Carolyn Forche, Taha Muhammed Ali, and Peter Cole, will be here, in our island world, this weekend at the first session of the 2008 Block Island Poetry Workshop, “Poetry, Resilience, and the Human Spirit.” “They are looking for a way to process their emotions. They are afraid, confused and angry,” Wentworth said. “When people get that sick they have little control. They’re told what to do. “ “It was a great way to process the information,” she explained. “There is a redemptive quality in creating a poem about these things.” This weekend, Wentworth and Forche will team up to do a workshop together. “We’ll teach reading between the lines. We’ll write poems from newspaper clippings.”

Barack - Damn!

If you listen, you will learn!

What’s Cool — Happiness Turn On Its Ironic Head?

Happiness - Inside Out

We like to have background noise — whether we’re in the car, at home, or in the office — we have the radio or TV on or the sounds of kids and coworkers keep a constant white noise. How many of us like quiet and solitude? How many like introspection?

More often than not, our outer life is the result of our inner life. Try as we might to hide certain aspects of ourselves, our character and motivations leak out. Do we like what we see? Do others? Here are four tips that will change your inner life and, consequently, impact your outer life:

1. Allow time to spend time in solitude ands silence.
2. Surround yourself with good counselors — this includes family, friends, and professionals.
3. Strive for balance in your personal life, family life, and work life — prioritize your time.
4. Be accountable to someone(s) — a life examined is a successful life.

WeirdGuy

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: lifehackshappiness

Evil

Evil tries to be complicated.  Its methods are tricky–working by indirection and opposites, by mirror-effects and sleight of hand.  But how evil operates is not the same type of complexity as it is in every day thought.  What evil means in our context relates to a collapse of faith in the markets.  If radical enough, and global, evil opens a trapdoor upon yet another dimension of chaos, wherein unarguably evil characters emerge–evildoers, indeed–and do terrible harm in the world.  This is the point that evil harkens back to its roots of the word in Old English (yvel) suggest ” exceeding due measure” or “overstepping proper limits.”  Therefore evil in the organizational sense is the word we use when we come to the limit of humane comprehension.

 

The question of evil is one of why we, as rational and capable beings, cause avoidable suffering?

 

Permissible evil has the sanction of custom and experience.  It is the human compromise with a force otherwise too corrupting, too radioactive, too horrifying, for ordinary life to tolerate.  Permissible evil accommodates hypocrisy and, in doing so, domesticates evil.  Permissible evil is the evil we can live with.  It allows us to escape from the intimidating absolute that the word “evil,” used alone, implies.

 

 

We have good reason to fear the understanding of evil, because understanding seems to involve some sort of identification. But what we do not understand at all we cannot detect or resist.  We have somehow to understand, without accepting, what goes on in the hearts of the wicked.

 

So, for example the retributive function of justice, exercised in the name of outraged society, overrides the prohibition against killing, even thought that prohibition comes with nothing less than the warrant of Sinai.  So as war makes evil permissible.  So, at its worst, does religion, which, like war, has its rationales of righteousness and grants itself moral indulgences.  The evil is often transformed by war and claims of necessity: laundered from spotty and veil to gray and tolerated.

 

What is the law then?  That the atrocious act committed in retaliation for great evil is permissible and therefore, somehow, not evil?  If you initiate the evil, you are evil; but if you reply to evil with more evil, then that retaliation is not evil, but something else?

A Sacred YES

What is most difficult is I dare to take all things as my will and exult in my strength and deny myself the calmness of Thy Grace. There are great changes that come about in the darkest hours where there is, despite my claims, no memory of hope and the encircling gloom is terrifying to the heart. It is this difficulty where the tussle takes me. Calmness in the midst of chaos, serenity in the midst of feverish activity is on one side. On the other is my ego that takes pride in climbing high mountains to tempt the tempter, feeds on the acorns and grass of knowledge and for the sake of community, suffering a hunger in my soul with a glint of haughtiness. There must be a secret that all commanders know, the secret revealed in crisis, that the soul that is calm with controlled emotion is performing an act of faith – the battle continues.

To encounter these forces one must remember our way back into the very center of our being, to that eternal fountain of replenishment. For it is only there that our addictions can be comforted. Otherwise we block, frustrate, and delay, giving over to a frantic spirit and a mind gutted with panic – our will can not feed our heart.

It is a hard lesson; perhaps it should be an easy one.

Consider: you have a vision, however vague, of your own sense of godhood. You are bewildered, tired, impatient – willing to be more and go faster. You are limited to only glimpses far between as you conceive time. But what is a week, a month, yea, even a year? In the deep, inner quietness of your spirit, time stands still—before and after are lost in NOW, there is no movement, no action, even the outer edges of awareness blend into the surrounding calm.

It is this calmness that now you must carry with you into the maelstrom of your hectic days and hungers. Let it be remembered that Grace is your nourishing companion. It is your innocence and forgetting, a new beginning, a sacred YES.

An Addict Waits

I am deeply conscious of my stubborn will - this hard core to my addiction - and my resistance to live in Grace, as it would wisen my mind, make tender my heart, and sensitize my spirit. Not for my addiction - I would yield myself to thee. I would give over into Thy custody the things that disturb me - frighten me - fill my days with uneasiness and my nights with the kind of gloom and foreboding that challenges my sleep - so I stay awake in misery. This I want to do no more but I can not stop - my mind battles - my addiction holds. Besides, I am never sure I can be trusted to close my eyes for fear I would only awake the same - addicted. To be rid of this fear - to expose myself in ways that would destroy this sick balance is my prayer of prayers. This small seed of your Grace is all that keeps me from leaping in to the void of death.

I wait!

I wait now for Thy Presence with the silent hope that something may transpire within me and over come this hold of addiction. - would it but tip me in ways to make for peace - a full nights sleep. While I wait I search my mind for that memory of those whose lives are a part of me in ways that are direct and sure. I would include them in this waiting moment, but there again, our Father, I am not sure that is what I really want to do. I wait, that my spirit may be clarified and my willingness may be at the disposal of that seed of Grace you placed in my heart.

I wait!

With all arrogances put side, with all weaknesses laid bare, with all my deep-lying hungers exposed, I wait. I wait for the baptism of Thy Spirit. My continuing to wait gives me inspiration that Grace has not abandon me. My waiting shows me again that Thy seed grows stronger in my heart. I wait - for if this be Thy will, it is enough, O God.

I wait as you teach me resilience.

Happiness and Economics

A Sketch of Happiness

A person is said to be happy when he demonstrates the ability to synthesize information in what Einstein captured nicely in the phrase “combinatory play”. The being of self-assurance and the ability to take risks. In some respects happiness is subversive, since it disrupts existing patterns of thought and being.

Joseph Schumpeter, the great economist described it as the “perennial gale of creative destruction” as the very essence of capitalism:

In capitalist reality, as distinguished from its textbook picture, it is not [price] competition which counts but the competition from the new commodity, the new technology, the new source of supply, the new type of organization… competition which commands a decisive cost of quality advantage and which strikes not at the margins of the profits and output of the existing firms but at their foundations and their very lives

Economists, physicists, and historians alike realize that there is a deep difference between homo economicus and homo happytius. One makes the most of claims that nature permits him to have - determined and lock-end. The other rebels against nature’s dictates. A being that flourishes best in a unique kind of social environment of thriving: one that is stable enough to allow continuity of effort, yet diverse and broad-minded enough to nourish in being creative in all its subversive displays. The penultimate issue, perhaps, with the emergence of happiness is the tension it stirs up. For the simple reason it disrupts, and by its very nature, being institutionally weak, needs to stand over against that its Being disrupts - Fear.

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Richard Florida “The Rise of the Creative Class: And How it’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life, Basic Books.

Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, p 84.