Cycloshamanism

It is funny as we walk about the world around us, thinking about the day we are about to live and the effects that our decisions may have on the days and people ahead of us, that one might begin to examine the process that creates our complacency; our ability to look over systemic interactions that obviously show favor to one or another person for one reason or another. What is it that drives a person? Is it really just this slurry of personal perception, cultural models, yoke of traditional visions of self in the world, roles, gender, economics, class, and caste? Or is it the articulated vision of a small group of megalomaniacs, played out on the chess boards of nation states, countries, cities, states, or what ever operable formation of group identity? Played in relation to each other, a dance of relationships between the fire and forge of political dissidence and negotiated collaboration. 

In bringing about the understanding that all of humanity’s troubles, sorrows, discrimination, and competitive roots is the very fact that every situation and engagement people connect themselves to are rooted in the creation and perpetuation of expectations. In the creation of expectation a person makes themselves susceptible to the surprise of disappointment and the stigma that is attached to failure. With every expectation forged in the minds of humanity, every human being willing associates and attaches themselves to the chains of our own enslavement. Human beings are tied to the hopes of a better tomorrow; for the continuation of their personal existence, for life and limb, for the possibility of creating some machination that will grant a notion of immortality and perpetuate their “existence” into perpetuity. 

These sort of desires add much needed fertilizer to the soil of the lands of discontent and competition. This helps cultivate the culture of the me that is so pervasive in America and allows for the hegemonic socio-politicoeconomic groups to maintain their positions of authority and power over culture and society. In the production of lofty goals, the head is turned to the sky, chin up, only to be caught unawares (due to the narrow focus of the person’s awareness) by the hook from their neighbor. Crashing down to the ground and writhing in pain is the result from idealism and the fabrication of hopes, dreams, and expectations of success. 

It seems so counter intuitive to maintain such a self deprecating mode of mentally constructing one’s environment, and their understanding of it and its effects upon the person. Knowing all too well that to have high hopes only brings about disappointment the overwhelming majority of the time, one would figure that a person would see the destructiveness of the pattern and make a choice to break the cycle. Yet, like a boxer walking back into the ring of combat hoping for one result over that of another, yet still aware of the potentiality of damaging, and thereby jeopardizing, their life and ability to enjoy it in more of a longer term sense of linear time, humanity continues to beat their head against the proverbial wall until its head is bloody and caved in by the sheer stupidity and stubborn behavior that is the creation and pursuit of “hope”. We are such a masochistic lot and it seems so counter intuitive to the perpetuation of any entity’s existence to maintain such self-deprecation. 

There is a few funny notions that I have begun to realize about this thing that humanity calls “hope.” Hope is the tool of the few that lashes the many to the yoke of self oppression and dispossession. It is that which allows for the existence of the mentality that recognizes that there is “good” and “evil” in the world, that life is polarized proportionately to a person’s ability to recognize the poison for what it is; hope and expectations are the mandrake root of humanity. In the right amounts, in the pursuit of communally creative projects, hope has the ability to inspire. Yet over the edge of the spoon just the tiniest fraction, and the entire recipe is failed and ruined by the potency of the ingredient. Hope tends to cloud the peripheral, it obscures the margins and those mile markers that may identify the lines of demarcation between one socio-geographic cultural setting from another. It can fog the recognition of connectivity between one entity to another when the blade of understanding is overly ground and honed; it will only cut at the perfect angle and because of this it becomes only a tool of specialization. Over specialization can only lead to the extinction and it can only lead to the blade becoming too thin allowing it to break under pressure. 

Balance in form and execution is necessary for progression. Hope leads to the scales leaning to one or the other in the perceptions of reality. In this, imbalance is created and instilled. 

This is the balance that is spoke of by so many; the harmony between the left and the right, the front and the back, the up and the down, the clockwise spiral up and the counter-clock wise spiral downward. Much like the wind and water that hold no expectation of self nor the environment that they travel through at the moment of recognition of such movement, balance and harmony bring about an image of prescient awareness with a recognition of the potential in all. It just doesn’t expect shit out of anyone, that way every performance is an unexpected joy to partake in, every twist and turn observed pushing the reader to turn  to the next page on the book everyone calls life. 

George Carlin and his notions about human arrogance may have been some of the more clearly stated observations about the human condition; to perceive and distort the world that surrounds us all through a subjectively attenuated lens of understanding that seeks only to control that which is uncontrollable. It is amazing what human arrogance can produce, at least in the creation of self-importance and a homocentric vision of the inner workings of this grand organism that people have been giving the unique pleasure of participating within and with. These are many of the points that go about and rattle in my, as I would be arrogant enough to assume as well in the minds of others, mind as I traverse this planet on my daily routines and travels. My question, after this moment of reflection and observation, is what the fuck gave humanity such lack of humility; such narcissistic arrogance? 

Granted, humans have come up with our version of artistic expression; we have painted, we have made music, we have created new entities and machines that mimic nature’s unrivaled talent and ability to create the most complicated of organisms seemingly from nothing, yet all that humanity has made, while being beautiful and beatific in its own right (especially so in the light of human vision) pales in comparison to that which the organism of which we are completely dependent to has created and devised itself. It brings me back to my previous post. We inherently strive to overcome the shadow of that which created us, whether it is our parents, our instructors, the cadre in the military, the nation states that gave birth to the sociopolitical construct we call America, the philosophers of ancient Greece that created the political architecture that we refer to as democracy, to the privateers and merchants that blazed the trail to the consumptive addictions that we have been indoctrinated to recognize as the fruits of capitalism. Humans seek to climb over the corpses of those that fall before us while giving birth to the very environment that we have the arrogance to believe that we can change. 

At least from this perspective is where it becomes interesting, and where also I have already entertained the notions presented by George Carlin; this planet is just a larger version and reflection of the human organism, of the elephant, of the tiger, the wolf, the fish, the pigeon, the ant, the snail, and the whale. Or rather, the human is just a infinitesimal example and reflection of the earth, and in turn the earth is reflective of the sun, and the sun just being the moon on the still waters of a lake in regards to galaxies and the universe (as far as our limited understanding and perception can grasp on to the water that surrounds us all or the wind that wears down the peaks). If human understanding is accurate enough to the point to be relatively correct as to the age of this planet, and taking into consideration the environmental changes and affects that humanity has attributed to their global interactional history (what gal! and this is not to say that we have not had some effect), then in the grand scheme of things (that is to say if there ever was one) humanity’s time on this planet and their total threat to the continued existence of this orbiting rock is next to nothing; this is even considering the fact of whether or not humans decide to nuke themselves out of existence. 

Take this into consideration; does humanity really have the power to change this planet? I would answer yes. Yet, if one were to ask the question as to whether or not humanity can kill this planet? Absolutely fucking not. That is not to say, much like how Carlin referred to it, that humanity was incapable of committing such acts as to kill themselves and potentially a mass majority of the remaining species that are cohabitants on this rock with us. But this in the grand scheme of things is but a minor inconvenience to the planet. It could be considers in this sort of lens: when a human being has a severe bacterial infection, that person goes to the doctor, is prescribed antibiotics (the human body’s version of dropping a nuclear bomb), takes them to kill all the microbial inhabitants of the human body indiscriminately, and then eats yogurt to build a newer and hopefully better species and population. What makes humanity so much more important than the symbiotic organisms that we so regularly kill off within ourselves? Who is to say that the planet is not about to pop some globally sized antibiotics and hit the reset button? 

Yet if this were to happen, it would have not been the first time it has happened, and over the next 2-3 billion years this rock has left of life (before the sun grows into a red giant and expands to the point where it incinerates this world) I am sure that mother Earth will hit the reset button a couple of times before it is all done. The only thing that humanity as a species can do is fuck ourselves by instigating the immune system of this planet into high gear so as to accelerate the inevitable; human extinction. Would that be such a bad thing? Shit we have difficulty engaging with our neighbors without feeling an urge to kill them and steal their resources. All we can do is push ourselves closer to extinction, much like the 25 or so other species that are disappearing from the surface of this rock every day. 

So one would begin to wonder whether or not people actually deserve the gift that rests in our hands at this very moment? With all of the gifts of curiosity, ingenuity, creativity, and imagination, why is it that humanity as a whole cannot seem to pull itself together and be aware of the small part we play in the grand scheme of this planet, let alone the galaxy or universe? Is humanity proverbially stuck in a mindset of not being able to see the forest through the trees, where the devil that ushers in our own destruction lies in the very fact that we are so focused on the details, driven by the necessity to dissect everything around us that our balance has been lost, there is no equilibrium to speak of, and that since the vision is so intensely concentrated on the minute that the fact that the house is falling around humanity’s ears has yet to wake many human beings from their stupor. 

Environmentalists are some self-centered, conniving, narcissistic people that have yet to wake up to the fact that humanity is nothing more than a virus that is plaguing this planet. Much like how the human body musters up its own defenses against decease, so will the planet. And then folks, we are truly fucked. 

Before, as a class, we have looked at the ideas and premises (i.e., intentions) behind education. And, really, it can be seen from an innumerable points of view. Predominantly from the desire to understand the architecture of the institution and the reasoning behind the choices within its discursive engagements with the community. This was really about the process and reasoning behind the current formation of education within the structures of American culture and society. This leaves out the internalized interaction between student and instructor, the development of the relationship between. Yet the interaction itself, that of transmitting knowledge, context, inspiring understanding and curiosity, igniting the fires of self discovery, can only be intimately understood in the context of the relationship between the teacher and the student; the actual participants in this particular invocation of the living voice. And in that relationship competition becomes the hot iron requiring the strike of the hammer to shape it to the anvil. Succession is the foremost desire of any master; it hones the next carrier of their message and shapes the vessel of the knowledge will spill forth from to future disciples. 

Yet it would seem that the idea of competition between the students and the instructor, master and disciples, seem to be far removed from the potential realities that exist within the context of human perception and intention. This became really apparent in Amir’s relation that those that practice religion do so with the true intention of supplanting God in their lives through their reading of sacred texts and the emulation of those traits that are associated to God through the said sacred texts. Is this sacrilegious yet? Do I seem the heretic that spouts forth blasphemous conjecture? Or is it the possibility that even the most aware and devout of religious philosophers and practitioners don’t even understand and admit to their own deeply seeded desires and intentions? 

Religion, much like formalized education, is transmitted and sustained through the indoctrination of subsequent generations through pedagogical constructs and institutions (i.e., schools, universities, etc.). It has to be taught for someone to cultivate the desire to give a shit about the tenets while being able to ignore the atrocities the dogmatic codex is responsible for committing. Much like a person trains a dog, so does the religious schooling train the fundamentalist, fanatic, and zealot. So, where does the idea of competition with God comes in, you ask? 

Well here is the deal; to emulate God through the adherence to the dogma and the living of life through the narrowed and focused lens of its codex of social interaction, a person does so with the hopes of being able to be considered worthy of sitting next to God, in the presence of the Almighty, in the creator’s company the righteous shall be maintained for eternity. WOW, can people be anymore fucking arrogant? So ensues the race to the finish, which if a person desires to be in the presence of God, that is to say if there is even one to begin with, then one must mirror God in their actions, their thoughts, their emotions, their intentions, their detachment, their vengeance, their compassion, their love, their judgement, their power to dominate, their power to subjugate, in their paradoxical hypocrisy, in all the traits that are defined and listed as being divine in the sacred texts that they so readily attach themselves to due to their indoctrination. But in the context that the people in question have also been conditioned by the competitive aspects of their culture that have promoted self preservation and survival of the self, they too will approach the process of emulation with a similar competitive mentality that they have pursued their other goals in life with; equal is all well and fine, but better is superior. In the end even in the feinted humility that comes with popes and bishops, they too desire to be on par with God, if not better. 

So where does this come into education? Well, if one looks at the bases of the educational system that exists within American (since, culturally it is really the only one I can truly speak about with some confidence since it is my culture) is a reflection of those educational systems that were transported over to the continent by our founders; religious zealots, fundamentalists, and all those criminalized by our British parents. Education in America has been a process of shaping the next blades of righteousness to be used in the projected battles of good and evil that permeate the sociocultural landscape that is observed by the leaders. They are the producers o the status quo; they shaped the landscape to fit their vision of reality and their environment, to be inclusive of all structures that are emplaced to perpetuate the structure in its most complete form and context. 

As for the schools that we operate within in contemporary society, they are as just much of a product of this mentality and the internalized vetting process that removes the chafe from the berry as those that are educated and indoctrinated by the church. For in God we trust. At least that is what is written on our money (wait, does that imply that the God of America is really the financial system that this country perpetuates, with messengers of this “God” being the currency that we exchange?). But, this is a bit off topic. Maybe I will come back to this point at some time. 

Educational institutions are mere reflections of the mentality, of the system that created this country (in a historical context) and those that have maintained and shaped the system through its lifespan. That is to say that the institutions are made to perpetuate itself through its decisions in assigned leadership positions and roles while reinforcing the fiercely competitive mentality and desire for superiority that is deeply imbedded in a culture that is meritocratic (i.e., your social status and position in life is determined by how hard you work and the accolades a person is able to accumulate over their life). This is apparent in the style of instructors that we, as students, are face with handing over our lens of perception to in order for them (the teachers) to mold and reshape. More often than not the instructors that reside in the classroom are reflective of the administrations that hired them as the administrations are reflective (typically) of the municipality and likewise of the state and federal entities (to an extent of course, this is not an absolute). 

So as we have been educated to supersede God in our religious emulation of its tenets and dogma, so too are those same educational doctrines mirrored in institutionalized educational systems. A perfect example of this comes from the description of the Communications Studies Department at SFSU, “The department works to express, as accurately and clearly as it can, what it perceives, feels, and believes, encouraging students to do the same so that all may engage openly in genuine dialogue.” 

In the process of emulation, people seek to be that which has trained them, that has inspired them, and in doing so, the hope for the ambitious is to replace them. And if what Amir says about the only purpose of the teacher, the sage, is to awaken each individuate’s ability to see the God, to see the teacher within themselves, is this desire to supersede those that have educated us so wrong? Is this quintessential human arrogance?  

Socrates and the premise that all things that we learn are nothing more than just a culmination of internalized understandings of one interpretation layered upon another and then spoon fed as truth. What a person learns in a class room are not the truths of the interactions that may have been the activity that was the relationship between one person and another. Rather it is a painting of what happened and what was. In all that is learned it is just a mere representation of what was, but it is not the reality that was that social interaction that created the discourse in the first place.  It is the shadow that so many people chase to the ends of the world in the belief that the shadow we chase is in actuality the life that is ought after. In reality it is there to be able to create an imitation of the circumstances that produce the avenues that allow for self knowledge. In order to accomplish this a person must step away from the presented interpretations of any material, and must explore the subject themselves. It is a journey that must be completed by the individual. Yet this does not mean that it is to be done alone. 

In reading any information and theories of philosophy is but the integration of self into the theories that are being explored. This is also the case for the performance of lectures. Though the reading and listening of such information may provide insight into the topic of exploration, without practice within the context of a social situation a person can not hope to begin to practice the methods that will develop the understanding of self that sows greater knowledge of the people around one’s self. But in the interaction over and around the ideas of philosophical understanding, the irony of the situations under examination breed a humor that is steeped in the irony that is life. This is the joke that Socrates points towards; in the portrayal of self in the context of any exchange of the living word and voice, the self that is portrayed is but a version of self. Portrayal is a means of masking and performing a devised identity that is driven by the discontent with that which surrounds humanity; no material item or terrestrially bound consideration plays a single role int he creation of these identities. 

This makes on think of the purpose of irony. Irony may be looked at as a means of disassembling and thereby a means of self preservation due to the fact that an individual that is wrapped in the irony of life may be viewed as enigmatic and a breathing gordian knot. Irony hides the truth that is the self from those unable to see the irony in self knowledge producing knowledge of others around you. The mask that is shown to the public is but a facade that shields the public from the blinding light that is life. It is a means, a lure, for people to be attracted to and to be used as a means of motivation. This motivation is necessary for people to begin to explore the possibilities of their education, their perceptions, their understandings and question them. The provisionality of the forms that people take and the acceptance of the provisionality of the temporal association of human understanding is the premise of the path illuminated by the Socratic dialogues. In the end all things should be questioned, especially if the dogma that is presented as being part of any codex of interaction and truth is to taken into context. 

Another joke of life is that irony conceals only that which a person chooses to conceal from themselves. It is used as a goad that hopes to illuminate a path that increases self knowledge which can lead to the insight and knowledge of others, which is the process of pulling away from more base underpinnings of social interaction. Because it is a joke, there is all the more reason to reconsider the implementation of seriousness in life. 

Life is confounded in seriousness. Life and the path of expanding humanity, though it can be looked at through the lens of seriousness, is not to be taken too seriously for it is the never-ending path. There is no ending to the traversing of philosophical landscapes. For every new answer, the answer that was given dies and moves forward into a new reality that was morphed by the previous discovery.   

Hence the reason why social interaction in the journey of discover is so important; you can’t ask questions of a book written. Books as important as they are in the transmission of theory, context, perceptions, and crude renditions of humanity’s understandings, are only that; crude renditions. They are a version of the dead word, the dead voice. The voice that cannot be questioned. The living voice being that transmission of ideas and understandings that comes from mouth to ear; it is the development and incarnation of what it is to be during the creation and development of relationships. It is the connection of others to themselves through the organic interaction that comes from serious examination of the topic that instigates the social engagement. 

So why have people and academia become so attached to the legitimization of egotistically driven displays of interpretation and understandings? 

Truth. What is this ghost that everyone seems to be chasing through the fog of life? Is it something that has a shelf-life? Is it like granite or any other stone epitaph, meant to stand the test of time and the passing of the ages? Does truth find itself in the same shape and composition as when it was first discovered by each individual that has transmitted a claim to its existence and the form that it inhabits in their mind’s eye? This might begin to explain Nietzsche’s tendency to find alignment to science and the scientific tendency to be non-dogmatic, experimental, and couched in beliefs that are tentative and ephemeral is what that allows the possibility of plural truths and the infinite possibilities. Is this the true form of truth? Or, is this just an extension of Nietzsche’s style and interactional outlook; a personification of his experimental mindset and necessity to test and retest his outlooks and understandings? 

The idea of truth is a matter of relative understanding. Relative in the manner that the truth that is transmitted from one person to another, it is only the truth that is able to be grasped and described by the mind that presents it to others for examination and critique. Truth in the guise that there are all encompassing truths seems to be as unrealistically attached to people as the idea  that there is stability within the world of social interaction. That is to say that it both stability and universal truths are fantasies that haunt the human psyche and humanity’s perception of self and community. Needless to say is the point that even those issues I have found to be relatable to myself in my interactions with the material presented, my own personal truths, they are exactly that; mine. And they are no one else’s. So in the brutality that is the reality of this life on this planet, there is no truth, except for that which a person creates from the context of their own experience conjoined with the social conditioning of their historicity. 

So back to this idea of truth. If a person comes to me speaking of the truth of one theory or another, whether it is about religion, sociopolitical interactions, intentions, or any other derived understanding, then the truth that they speak of can only be a result of the refined distortion that is their lens of perception. But in knowing this, what does the word itself mean then? Is it something, that like the relative possibilities that are our infinite likelihoods, that is organic and mutative; it is malleable to the will of a person, a people, a political thought pattern. 

Truth is an entity that we as creative entities ourselves, breath life into and parade it for others to see and admire. We test it, much like we test ourselves, to see if the truth that we created is worthy of our continued attention and affection. We swaddle it in our protective arms, attempting to keep it from harm, from the critical dissection that is the scientific method. Truth, if held tight enough, becomes an extension of a person’s past and their nostalgic proclivities. Hence the idea that truth lives beyond the moment of its consideration, inception, birth, and nurturing is a fabrication of human fantasy. That is, the life that we call truth, is no more stable than a mutating growth of fungus. One moment we see it for what it is, decomposition in action, the next it is something to be feared, and the next moment it is a mosaic of the possibilities of life.

Much like the rushing waters of a river, they never are observed as the same exact thing every time that they are taken into view and memory. Yet every time a person sees that river, the image of that first time in seeing it is dredged up and layered overtop of the image before them. This is the reality of what people call truth. At least that is the way I see it, and that is the truth that I present to you. What are your truths? 

When does writing become a job and looses its joy, its luster, that new car smell? 

I feel with the last couple of months, worth of conjecture and rhetoric that I have put to page, I have come to a question the very reason and intention behind why I have chosen to do so. Why is it that any of us put our thoughts down onto paper? Is it for the very fact of communicating some fantasy of permanence to our ideas, or could it be attached to a notion of identity performance? 

When a teacher is let loose upon this earth, who calls forth their name to the masses? What is it that tickles the ears of the masses, grabbing what little of their attention that is available and dragging it out by boot straps and shoe strings to be exposed to the light of day? Do human beings ever know when a teacher, a river flowing of the waters that nourishes the existence of the soul, crosses their collective paths feeding their withering crops back to health?

The teachers that pour forth their knowledge and wisdom are a boon only to those that are awake enough, empty enough to see and be filled by the waters that flow from them. This giving of knowledge was aptly described by Amir as more of a viral infection (i.e., the creation of the teacher inside of every disciple), one that takes seed with little to no knowledge of the host, and blossoms into a calamity beyond measure that changes the composition and attenuation of the lenses of perception of all that drink from this river. The purpose of this is but to pass on the ability of autonomous existence, of self fulfillment, of a freedom from the known, the expected, the pursued. When these realizations are awoken, the vision changed beyond recognition, then the teacher walks away, for the delving and establishment of the roots of the tree that has been sowed, nurtured, and prospered have taken hold and ask not for the water that flows from the stream anymore. Rather it is able to tap into the flow of water that surrounds all of humanity, and nourishes itself without the need of the tributary. From this ability — this spring of wisdom within another, the possibility within every disciple — does the tributary give birth and rise to a new branch of itself. A new spring appears in the woods pouring forth its waters. One river dries up and falls to dirt and dust while another quenches the thirst of the land. This is the issue of decay and the desire for death when all that is able to flow is sopped up and is taken away.

All wells dries up eventually.

Always a river spills its waters ever satiating the thirst of the earth. It flows not from from intention, but from its very nature. Though the water flows seemingly without purpose and yet only a few will ever find their vessels empty, the hollow gourd calling to its bearer, the singing of the emptiness haunting every moment of the carrier’s living moments until it takes the bottle to the river to be filled; the thirst quenched.

“New wine can’t be poured into old bottles.” Knowledge that changes and transforms the human being cannot be contained in a bottle that may be presumed to be of one condition or another. If filled with the surety and knowledge of the life before, these contained waters will provide the answers sought; the possible future that was foreseen will be fulfilled. What if a vessel that is filled with its own ego, its own waters, demands to be filled by a river near by? Will the bottle ever be filled?  Will the bottle empty itself so as to embrace the new potential for fullness? Or, will the bottle demand to be filled again on top of that which is already in its coffers? 

Is it a sin to make such a demand upon that which acts in accordance to its nature? IS to understand sin, should Sin be imagined as being those situations in which the individuate has missed the mark; they have failed at accomplishing the desire that propelled the individual into action in the first place? Is it a sin to be empty, to scream for the waters that will give rise to new seedlings, to new forests, to new realities? Or is this righteousness?  Emptiness in the idea that a person, in order to learn, must be lacking in presumption, arrogance, ego; the idea that a person knows their circumstances, they know what is there, lying about them and in knowing this they are also realizing of what they lack and what sings to them in their dreams. 

Water. Drip. Water. Ripple. Drip. 

Teachers only flows to and fills those that are empty and require their gourd to be filled. Everything else the water rushes past and over. Consuming, teasing, yet never filling.

A full bottle can never be filled by the flowing waters of a rushing river.  

Much like a hand grasping the sands of a beach; the harder one tries to hold on the faster the grains slip between the fingers. The minuscule particles of sand are indicative of the existence of humanity; of the multitude of grains of sand, there lie a multiplicity of individual grains while yet the dunes of a beach are a product of the culmination that is the sands gathering together. In the greater whole a person finds the many, while the coalescence of the many shows the whole. 

When looking at the idea of creating a world that can be brought together under the premise and idea of unity, it makes me wonder if that hope is truly attainable. Can the lines that have divided humanity from each other — the states, the races, the religions, the ideals and ideologies, class and sociocultural lines, politico-economic structures — can they ever be erased from the memory of this race so as to afford the upcoming generations the opportunity that they need to address the needs of the planet, not just the race? This is a point that I find that was left unaddressed, the fact that when it comes to creating this supposed unified world, the only issue of unity that seemed to be addressed in CWG was that of human beings being unified and reconnected to other human beings. What happened to everything else that shares this planet with us? Where is the ideas for their continued equal access to opportunity? 

This is not to say that the idea of creating a unified world government after the corrupted structure that is the united states seemed a bit fantastical. The very fact that the piece open up with praises for former President George W. Bush seemed even more ludicrous. But that is just my own personal opinion of his attempt on the “New World Order” and the suffering and sorrow that has been perpetuated by such arrogance. On the other hand this is not about critiquing the book nor this former president and the policies of the government at the time. 

This is really about the feasibility of that dream of bringing the entirety of humanity under a single and unified umbrella of communal leadership and stewardship. This is not to say that I believe it is unfeasible; on the contrary I do think it is an obtainable goal. It is just that in the scope of typified human understanding of time in its linear configuration, it appears to become this inescapable denial of hope. This is because of ego and arrogance. The ego of people seeking the power perceived to be necessary to accomplish such feats tends to cloud the vision of those that could be pure in both their intentions and aspirations. In this fogged state the ego leads the Mind down the road that leads to arrogance. This is the arrogance that is derived from the fear of being wrong, of losing what has been hard fought to gain, of the disappointment that comes from not meeting the lofty aspirations that led these people down the path that has led to their ultimate corruption. These conditions that precipitate disappointment are very similar to those that produce the greed that has plagued our planet for thousands of years.  

Our egos screams in our collective ears the notion that the individual can be the only person that can accomplish the unattainable, that the individual is the first and then the foremost in determining the needs of the many, not just the needs of the self. This is the same ego that goads the heart and mind into line with the idea of accumulation to the point of hoarding. Accumulating that which is not needed for the opportunities that satiate the most heart felt of desires. This is where the ego destroys equality. And, much like CWG points out, this is not equality as would most people misbelieve it to be; the robotic sense of equality, the cookie-cutter sense of reality and perception of the universe. Rather this is a sense of equitable access to the resources necessary to allow for the opportunities for people to thrive, to blossom, to grow into the best incarnation of themselves for themselves and their community. These are the times where food, shelter, and safety from adverse, predatory entities are just the start needed to help create the base needed for an equitable distribution of opportunity. 

Whether or not this can be done through a large and all encompassing one world government I am unsure of. This is because of my own history and understanding of what people in power are capable of and how the power linked to such positions tend to lead to a corrosive disfigurement of the palace that humanity has been attempting to build for millennia. Yet there is always the hope, it is just no available in the life times on one or two generations. Mutations take time, unlike the debilitating affects of infection. Where infections cripple the body and all of its symbiotic systems and interconnectedness, mutations create a progressive version of that which has been mutated. Mutations take generations, but that is only in the minds of the short lived flesh cars that is humanity. In the eyes of the universe, it is but a blinking of the eye. 

I find that anyone that has nothing better to do than to tear down another person’s perceptions and understandings of their surroundings and the material that they may be engaging with is a person that may need to do some deeper self reflection. I find it interesting that with such a presumptuous group of youth claiming that through their raw analysis of texts that they have some how seen the holy grail in their ability to read into and interpret other people’s works. This is not to say that these people are not keen in their perceptions, yet I do find that such cruel and arrogant critiques that are based only on academic understandings and are lacking in any real life experience are shallow at best; superficial. And they are really only done so as to have something to point out to their friends in order to make themselves feel important. That being only available to them through the process of stepping on someone else. 

If that is the case, then you may not have really read Heidegger. You just think you have. But then again may be you have, but what you way not have done is read Heidegger in the context of Soho, Munemori, Mushashi, Tsunemoto Lao Tzu, Kanzen, Foucault, Gramsci, Krishnamurti, Nadeau, O’sensei, or the numerous other philosophical perceptions and view points. 

Before a person becomes overly critical of other people’s works, one should look in the mirror. If you are unable to examine yourself in this same sort of critically based dissection, then you should rethink what it is you are doing. 

This is just another example of someone thinking that they know something about something, when in reality they no jack shit. The more disturbing part about this is the fact that if one were to have a conversation with this person, this person would profess that are quiet versed in Nietzsche and Heidegger, when in reality they are like the rest of us; grasping at straws and don’t really know shit. 

Arrogance and edification are not the same as being authentic, knowledgable or wise. Time only gives people those particular abilities and access to those wells. Reading a book doesn’t. 

I would recommend reading Miyomoto Mushashi’s Book of Five Rings. To read about a theory does not make one an expert in its ways, on must practice, practice, practice. 

What has happened to our cities, our centers of state and culture? In the days of history, we as people and as members of humanity, we congregated in the cities, for they were the symbol of everything great that humanity can create. It was the art, the architecture, the very fact that within the wall of the city people some how were able to live together. Yet, now, cities have become the beacon as to why people are seen as not being able to live together. Why is that? 

Community is a very interesting concept, especially coming from one, such as myself, that are really derived not from community, but from the American pursuit of self. At least that was so to some regard in my case. For as the nuclear families self-destructed, that first anchor of community also gave way to the crashing waves of the tumultuous changes in history. With this break from family, was this a break from family values, or is this a break from the strangulation of tradition? This is not to say that what Al Pacino’s character was pointing at is not the case and not the dreams of so many people; to have a city, a community, that is more focused on the connections to their neighbors rather than those things that are laid out only to divide and fragment a community. But is tradition that tenuous gauze that connects a community together, or is it the violent hands that are stretched around the necks of those that are deemed out side the norm, deviant? 

His statement about palaces and the historical reference of the first mayor of Athens, the creator of the democratic ideal, seem to hark back to this pervasive American attachment to their past and is yet another example of how Americans are constantly attempting to give the golden ages of what little history there is here in this country some luster and shine. In the process of this pursuit people look past the bloodshed, the disregard, the hate, the contempt, and some may even argue the general lack of any humane qualities that were displayed, performed and conveniently forgotten about that produced the fantasies that people are nostalgic about and are trapped by their image. Why would I want to go back to a past that was never mine, is not part of the identity that I have built for myself out of the shrapnel and debris left from the holocaust that was  the conquering of North America? Why should I want to attach myself to the whole sale slaughter of untold peoples in the name of God? 

And, again, this is not to say that the words spoken about the boy in the coffin, the fact that he was innocent, a soul requesting not his violent demise, and the fact that the community should be made up of those that are focused not on the perpetuation of hierarchally based sociopolitical paradigms, rather on the fact that ultimately every person is more or less the same; we will all live, breath, eat, shit, fuck, and eventually die. All of us. Yet, it would seem that no matter how many times a child has died in the arms of their community and no matter how many times those same arms plead for the understanding that all are connected and all are intrinsically linked, those same arms are the ones that drew the lines deeper into the sand that signified the lines of demarcation between one group or another. These are the same hands that because of the public’s whole-sale purchasing of their lack of ability to change the environment and circumstances also participated in the murder of all of those children, their loss, their abduction. Much as an executioner likes to remove themselves from the death they are sided with committing on the side of righteous law, so are member of the community liken to remove themselves from their participation in the deaths of their youth, their neighbors, their country-people, their fellow inhabitants of this planet. 

Until every person can begin to actively take responsibility for their actions (and lack of action being a form of action unto itself) then humanity is a failure. Yet in failure, human beings tend to learn the most, but why must our mistakes weigh so heavily upon our souls? That is because at the core of every person, they know their responsibility in the turmoil that continues to plague this world. They just choose to disguise the awareness of their own realizations in the clothes for things like the law, the callings of God, in the robes of the church, in the colors of a flag or behind the printings of a document like the constitution. All of that are nothing but illusions and a small sample of the number of ways how we fragment ourselves at the bequest of our communities based in the nonsense that is tradition. 

Funny thing about tradition is it is a tool that attempts to teach a new and removed generation with the sacred text and ideals of a long dead past. If a person attaches themselves to a tradition that has the history of being used to bludgeon other people’s into submission, to get them to forfeit their beliefs, understandings, and perceptions, then how viable is that tradition really? How can you save the lives of the innocent with a weapon wielded by the “wicked”?

When we look out into the world that we inhabit sorrow, destruction, anguish, and fear seem to abound. The fears that drive people into the actions that create such despair are inheritances from our ancestors. An inheritance that is force fed to the upcoming generations under the guise that it is for their good, and because of their naivety and lack of experience we cloak it in the distortion that our experiences have taught the older generation the means and ways to avoid the tragedies that have befallen them before. Yet in this arrogance and perverted sense of disillusionment the older generation only sows the seeds for the cycle to continue in a new and innocent generation. 

We cloud our recognition of the guilt wrapped realization of the damage that we are doing to the children that we have been blessed with the stewardship of through our feeble attempts to change a corrupt system via the system that we hope to change. Where does this not make any fucking sense? This is like the ideas spouted by the local communists that came to our Thursday lunches a few weeks ago pounding the idea that there needs to be revolution in the political thoughts and understandings of this country. YET, it was espoused that it must be conducted in the context of the system that has created the inequalities in the first place, and must be done within the architecture of the cultural conditioning that has put humanity on this path to annihilation. Am I the only one that sees that this doesn’t make any fucking sense? 

If a car is fundamentally flawed in its design and the carrying out of said design in its construction, does reformation of those flaws in the context of the original design actually produce the removal of those “defects’? It is like if you amputate a disfigured limb from a person, does the amputation and subsequent attachment of a prosthesis make the person any less handicap in the eyes of the public? No matter how it is dressed up, sewn up, changed, reconfigured, or any other means of articulating that a change from the status quo is performed, isn’t it still the status quo? 

Let me step back from this for a second. Most people would believe that a leopard can never change its spots, and that a person can never teach an old dog new tricks. The reason this is said is because even in the light of such euphemisms, these little catch all phrases of wonder and seemingly mythical derivation, there still lies truth at their core. This is not to say that change is impossible for either the individual/individuate or the community, rather that changing the shallow and superficial attributes of a person or a society doesn’t produce real change, it only changes the emperor’s clothes. 

Change comes in the form of new incarnations that are allowed to flourish and thrive outside of the pollution that is humanity’s social conditioning. Change comes from rebirth, not revolution. A rebirth that is couched in the reality that is psychic along with physical mutation and metamorphosis. The question now becomes, can a person ever be reborn in such a way that produces the much needed change, or is even the notion of that possibility just a fantastical creation of the human desire and implied need for a future filled with possibilities? Is this the cruel joke that is hope? Can the cycle ever be broken, or is it time to hit the reset button? 

Now this week was supposed to be a time of relaxation and me stepping away from my homework obligations. This is a time for a bit of play, the mental relaxation that some people may group into the idea by Heidegger as “idle chat.” But in my play time, real thinking never ceases to continue in the background of my mind like some download on your laptop. Even when I am playing a video game or on the road at work, it is still churning in the background. It is just that the necessity of the moment requires my body and minds to be more closely aligned in the unity that creates mental, emotional, and physical unison. During all of this I am constantly thinking about this idea of identity that has been created notion of geographic location and attachment. The nation and nationstate identity. Is it just a realization and performance of a geographically attached sense of self and community, or is it something much more; a devise of human interaction deeply rooted to the human necessity for binocular vision and dichotomous delineations of understanding? 

Ok, now I can see your face as I wrote that last line. Shit, even as it spewed forth from mind to keyboard, I thought, “where the fuck did this come from?” So let me give you the run down. I am a scifi geek. I feel like i live in a perpetual sense of awe to the possibilities of human kind. I associate this to the hope that all of us feels. An ability to completely live in the moment with a peripheral awareness and understanding of what the possibilities of my actions are in the actions that produce them to the trajectory that may be the result of those actions. This is not to say that I, at one time or another, have not gotten caught up in what my past is to me and how it has helped lay the foundations of the moment and all of it’s organic abilities to continue the momentum that is living life. 

So, this week, as a form of mental vacation since I have grown a bit weary of dissecting that which we have read and I am more interested in that which is around me, I went out and bought a “fun” book to read. A scifi novel. Something that has peeked my interest and calls to my desire and curiosity. And it happened to be a book linked to the lore of a video game that I have been beta testing on for the last year. The game is about war (which is funny since that was what I was trained to do at a young age in the military) and about corporate political machinations interfering with the political paradigms of nation states. The basic idea, from a macrocosmic level is that it is a group of competing identities via’ing for social recognition and the abatement of the feeling we have tagged as ‘loneliness’ and ‘isolation.’ As persons in the context of the lore, the novel, and the game(s) that I play, as one learns more and proves themselves more, they are able to escape the bounds of the human flesh car and become immortal. So in this happening they are isolated further from humanity by their choices to go beyond that which is traditionally defined as being “human.” The ability to see and live in the sea of multitudes; the washing currents of the infinite made of the finite.

Looking at this model in scale, isn’t this the interaction of most people? Isn’t this the small reflecting the whole while the whole reflects the individuates? 

Every time I look out, I end up seeing the reflecting pool that points back towards myself. And, this is both as a person, an individuate that is in the moment of dealing with this particular historicity and the facticity of this moment, and as a refection of everything that is humanity. Or at least a possible incarnation that exists in the moment that anyone person or entity may have the opportunity to engage and mix with. Infinitely large and infinitely small. A cloud of possibilities enveloping the reality as we, humans, have grown to “know” it, see it, and play to the rhythm of it.

All this from a novel. A book that I found the questions of our ontological existence and understanding hidden amongst the 400 or so pages of fantasy and dreams of a virtual existence running parallel to the fantasies and dreams of humanity’s on contrived “reality.” If only the breath of people could be able to breath in the universe in such ways. 

The funny thing is that we all could, and we all can. People choose not to because of the tremendous weight and responsibility that comes with that kind of breathe of vision. Read Frank Herbert’s Dune and you too could see the problems with such prescience, such unbridled awareness of everything that comes to us. The us being a focal point of contextualization and understanding, but a lens that is only one of an infinite number of possible lens. 

In the context of this book and game that I have spoken of, we all are made from the dust of stars, an incredible collection of the cosmos focused into this limited and finite extension of the universe. And at the point of death we all return to the dust from which we were all born. Dust in and Dust out. The infinite in the finite, with the finite being a reflection of the infinite possibilities of the infinite expanse. 

Heidegger:

Authenticity - to pay attention and listen to the voice of consciousness that leads a person to be reflective in the context of the “due unto to others as you would have them due unto you.” This may be attached to the creation of guilt and that emotion’s ability to create the mental image that motivates people to engage and take ownership of their personal actions and the consequences of those actions within the context of their community and social circles. 

Understanding - the examination of the context and purpose of a person’s life in ontological needs for greater and deeper understandings.

Inauthenticity - the idea of being carried away by the wave of the herd mentality and the intoxication of it’s poison, historicity - the relative placement of an individual in the context of a culture and the point in it’s historical life. Facticity, falleness (the falling into the rote-ness of action in response to the environment and circumstance), the idle chatter as being the inconsequential discursive interactions that fills the space between two people during an interaction. True speech being the act of communicating while in the process of developing connections and the communication of understanding. This helps in the development of real thinking and the ability to exist within the context of it’s performance.

So in the process of all this defining thought and categorization of humanity’s surrounding environments, what are we all doing? Are we living in the most authentic way humanly possible, meaning quiet simply are we being human? The greater majority of most people’s lives, Heidegger describes, are lived in the state of automated unconsciousness to our actions and communal interactions that the results of narrows the perception of the reality that people live within. The reality is, that though humanity may contain the ability see the infinite in the singular and vice versa, we rarely pull pack and examine the context of our lives, ourselves, in relation to the totality of our actions. The focus on the chain of completed actions and tasks for the satisfaction of some statistical enumeration and quantification of those actions for a spread sheet like calculated perception of reality. 

All of this shit, is just one person’s perception on the “how’s” of life. A strained attempt in the description of what some may call the infinite essence of human life. The same life walked from birth to grave, from dust to dust with our fingers interlaced with the hand of death. And because of this love affair that all people have with death (for it is something that each person holds in common to all the others), it will be the lover that constantly places it’s shadow on the perceptions of every human being’s existence. It is the prevailing tint to the development of value and purpose. The idea of it only fades into the back of person’s mind with what may be arguably the most clever tool devised by this obscenely inquisitive primate that is humanity; language.

At the tip of every person’s tongue lies this gift of universal creation. Language is an interesting tool that humanity has devised; it carves the infinite into surmise-able portions that apportion the universe around us into digestible chunks. It is the knife to which humanity shapes their understanding of their purpose in the context of their placement in history and cultural evolutionary cycles. People do this to their reality; their social, familial, and communal groups, much like the manner to which Amir cuts up the philosophical concepts that plague this class. These are other peoples ideas clashing against the shimmering bubble like barrier that defines our universe that is our “created” perception and construction of the rules and laws of our relative realities. This makes me think about CWG this week. We, in the context of the infinite being the finite which are the individuations of the all-encompassing reality that we see dancing in or out of tune with our emotional weather fronts of moods and swings, create the very “self” that we define to be our authentic selves. And this is done by the very words that a person chooses to bring into association to themselves (and this is done in the context of Heidegger’s historicity which determines the particular pattern of falleness that an individual performs). But, what one person understands as being “authentic” changes with the times that the choices in its (authenticity’s) shapes and points of recognition are determined and transmitted to the self and the public. It is fluid to the particular individuation of the universe’s perceptions and its incarnation. Once again, “everything is relative” and how do we here, in the historicity that we inhabit now? 

So what does it mean to be authentic? 

I mean, look at the dribbling listing of shit that just came before this last question of ourselves and the reality that we operate within, what does this mean to you if anything? To be authentic, would it be easier to know it (authenticity) if I knew what is was not? Does a person, in order to recognize its surroundings, its environment, and know the pathways to traverse the moment as it comes rushing at them, nee to look at it in the dichotomous and binocular? The creation of one seems to naturally precipitate the birth of its polar opposite, or is that just another creation of the clever human mind? 

Well shit, if it is in the realm of definition, it must be a creation of the human mind, much like the creation of this need of purpose and the presumption of future possibilities that Heidegger describes. That is the tip of the sword that cuts and creates the new from the dissection of the whole. It is the curse and the blessing of humankind. 

I mean, really, I don’t get them.The sense of entitlement, the raw arrogance, the distain for face to face communication, the inability to communicate at all. 

This is not to say that I fear for the upcoming generations, they are who they are and there is the hope that they’ll grow out of it. That is even if that is possible. This is in a sense not a judgement of their outlooks or philosophies, for there is nothing to be judged. Literally there seems to be nothing of substance there. At least within the context of the glass that they are attempting to fill with everything that is external, that is material, that are fashionable, attainable, tangible; all the physical accruements that this consumer based society has to offer.

Yet the glass still lyes empty of substance, that is there is even a glass there at all.