My favorite magic is Big Wish Magic though here I mostly talk about media magic, body magic. Sex-art-music, the magic of our bodies and media is also my favorite magic but Big Wish Magic is my favorite in another way. I've been into it all my life and thought about talking about it after an imaginary conversation with my coworker, a very fairy girl who doesn't believe in magic or even cartoons because she was raised "super-christian" but is obviously very magical as we all are. I probably imagined this conversation partly in response to seeing the Harry Potter prequel Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them yesterday, Valentine's Day. I've intuitively known about New Math, where One is the Biggest Number, most of my life and had some clear ideas about it at least 23 years ago but always see a trail of tiny clues about it, too. When my new boss said something about One being the Largest number I knew this was the time to say more about it, at least a teaser.
There is a theme in that Fantastic Beasts movie about stifling one's magic. I don't really go in for the whole Harry Potter philosophy, even though I never read the books and only saw a few of the movies and games, but I know the premise of Muggles and Magic Folk is flawed and among other bad ideas it's problematic. In this fractured Harry Potter world stifled magic can make like an evil spirit called an Obscurus. I guess there can be some truth to that but in My World, my view of magic, we are all magic and mostly stifled. Yes there are negative effects of this but another problem with the Harry Potter philosophy is the premise that magic must be kept secret and it's just not as dramatic as all of that. Everything is magic, and magic is mostly stifled in the world - we don't understand or relate to it - and things will be much better when we do. The wasted potential and misdirection of magic, of us, does have terribly negative effects, but we don't have to look at it like evil spirits, or if we do we can at least have the Hero's perspective that the being can be cared for and kept from causing harm. As much as I dislike and disagree with so much of what these books misinform about Magic there is some truth in any story if you look for it.
People are often introduced to magic in books like this, or "more serious" books, but they can have an intimidating or off-putting effect. The idea of Big Wish Magic can counteract this and help people who have been stifled and kept from understanding their magic. In the conversation I imagined having I tell the girl she can wish for anything and it will come true but the bigger the wish, the more impossible it seems, the easier it is and the more likely it will work close to the way you envision it - because when magic works it always has some kind of twist to it that you can't anticipate. That's part of what makes it magic, a transformation of the world.
It's hard to get people to make Big Wishes. The very idea takes people out of themselves. It is natural for people in our culture, in America, to wish for a lot of things for themselves if you tell them a Big Wish can be granted. If you tell them the Bigger the Wish the more easily and directly it will come true - if they can start to believe this, even through tiny personal wishes coming true first to get them started - then it is natural to think of more people or more than just yourself. I don't know much about how smaller wishes may be granted "on their own" but I know that small wishes can be granted in the context of helping someone believe in magic in order to make bigger wishes. You can't just keep testing the little stuff if you are on this path, though. You will inevitably start making bigger and bigger wishes very quickly in proportion to how quickly your belief increases. Continuing to wish for more things for yourself will probably lead to disappointment but wishing bigger and bigger, beyond oneself, will be rewarded. ("small minds think small" Jack Tripper just said as I read over this, now 1:06 AM Friday the 16th of February.) To wish to be able to help others is a good start. That wish can be fulfilled in ways that increase your power and potential and connections with others and can open your eyes to bigger goals or sustain you on that chosen path. Anything that makes you "Bigger" in a good way has magic behind it, Its Magic calling you to play a role that writes itself once you start playing it.
What are the biggest wishes we can make? World Peace? The end of hunger and disease? Preservation of the natural environment? Don't we all wish for those things, or most of us? Don't many of us work tirelessly towards those goals? It is not to diminish any of these efforts, our wishes or our work, that I say Big Wish Magic can fix these things - they are all part of it. There were Big Wishes fulfilled that got everyone on paths to help causes in the first place and those causes are freeing people from problems so they can wish bigger, too. All the progress of humanity, good and bad, has led to a point where we can imagine and wish for incredibly good things and can fear some really bad things that should motivate us to get to wishing and get to work.
I'm not saying that all we can do is wish - the wish opens a path we must walk and work our way down but the more creative we are about our work the faster we go down that path. And the bigger the wish the wider and longer the path is. So being able to wish Bigger, for more people, more beings, more of the earth and cosmos, opens bigger paths that can include even more work of different kinds and different people and beings joining in the effort.
- continuing now at 1:08 AM - Magic, the magic part, is waiting for us, just waiting to be activated by the addition of our belief. We all have unlimited magical potential - magic is itself the unlimited potential we all have access to and it does a lot "from it's own side" if we just reach out to it. We do act and work in different ways besides "just magic", surely, but Magic makes things happen for us, too ("and if that doesn't work try wearing a low-cut dress" - Jack Tripper just now) and the More Magically we can get into it the more opens up to us in more ways, the faster it happens. We wish as big as we can and we will sill be surprised when faith is rewarded.
We each have access to unlimited potential but we also each have our own unique perspective on it. People who claim to have no understanding of magic can have a very powerful journey into magic when they try it and start to believe. In contrast a lot of people who think they know about magic are at risk of being stifled by that very knowledge. Any magical understanding or explanation is written in the language and ideas of the times. Really Good Magic stuff transcends this, that's how you can sense the goodness, but we can get trapped in less-than-transcendent magical ideals. When everything is magic and ideas that claim to be magic can be "more magic" in some ways they can also divert people from finding the peculiarities of their own unique perspective.
Big Wishes that go beyond ourselves naturally connect with the Big Wishes of others -its the magical weaving of the Common Good. Here is one way to look at Big Wish Magic: "everyone" or many people have been wishing for the end of wars, the end of all war, for a very long time. What makes me think You are the one whose belief can make it happen? Look at it this way: what if there is a tipping Point, a straw that breaks the camels back - could it be You? More and more people are always adding to the Big Wishes but at some point they do come true and maybe all they are waiting for is you - or, if You aren't the final straw you could be the one who leads to it, the link in the chain. It works better the more you can believe in it, however you see it.
Here is how it works: often people are wishing for contrary things sometimes but there is a Bigger wish, one or the other, or more often a third more transcendent option, and the Biggest Wish wins. Wishing for an end of war can mean wishing your side will win, or the other side if you are on that one, or it can mean an end of war in a way where neither side wins at the expense of the other but an end of war that means everyone wins. This is the Big Wish. We may not be able to imagine it, to know exactly what we are wishing for, but that can make it even more powerful, like the folks who don't know they are magic realizing they can change the world all at once.
This Wish For Peace is the Perfect Example of Big Wish magic because it is so Big, so worldwide and has so much history and involvement in it. The Big Wish of Peace is always growing stronger so why hasn't it come true yet? It comes true in fits and starts just as we join it that way but it will come true completely, war will end, someday. All the wishes for peace contribute to the Big Peace Wish: the passing fancies, the desperate prayers, the lifelong dedications, the art, the magic - all of it. So why hasn't it won, yet? Think about the wishes of all armies and combatants and politicians, etc, on "both sides" - all the wishes FOR conflict. Even though all of the Big War Wish side is fragmented it adds up to a lot of energy. Plus they have a lot of money and worldly power behind keeping War a thing. And then you have a lot of people "in the middle" but who effectively add to Big War Wish magic more than Peace Wish because they believe "war is inevitable" or necessary.
War is only necessary in this System. Big Wish Magic says "change the system, end war, etc" - if you have to do anything Bigger than that in order to do it, do it. It's easy -just believe it and give it a try.
Even though all the Big War Wish has kept war around Big Peace Wish has won more and more rounds as history progresses. We are at the tipping point to end war, now, and if we are overdue there is still time but the point of Big Wish Magic is to wish for it as soon as possible. The reason I use this example is that we can Know that Peace will win, in the end. But we are convinced, too many of us, that War is inevitable and we don't look for and demand alternatives like we could. All we have to do is turn it a little more, add our own magic to it, and we can easily end war.
All you have to do is wish for it, tell others if it is too hard to believe you can do it yourself, tell others anyway so everyone's wishes can come true.
The point of comparing the Big Peace Wish and the Big War Wish is to show how the Bigger Wish Wins. Yes, maybe it is still waiting for the finishing touches but Peace is ready to Win and end War forever. I would say "watch" but that's not what does it, wishing does it, starts it, opens and shows the way and introduces you to helpers along the journey.
The Biggest Wish always wins. Some people, many people, were Wishing for Trump and wishing for bad, fearful ideas he represents - but these wishes, the wish to isolate a country, foe instance, is not very Big compared to Big Peace Wish or Everyone Free Wish or Open Borders No Poverty Wish. People have been wishing for Trump's plans to fail, for the House of Cards to collapse, and with the firing or resignation of the national security Adviser Flynn (the name of the dopey captain in Skylanders) and the courts blocking his travel ban and Mexico and other countries calling him out you can see how that wish is coming true. But that is still not the Biggest Wish any more than Walling in America is the Biggest Wish. There are much bigger wishes and when we believe in them we make them happen, magically, and are shown ways to realize it in "regular" actions, too.
I'm going to sleep and talk about Onefinity, the New Math in the morning. I'ts 1:54 AM, sweet dreams.
The Biggest Wish, for the most people, always wins. So here is the New Math where the Largest Number is One - it's now 3:12 PM on Friday. My boss said this which made me realize it's time to talk about this: "The largest number is one: if I ask you to bring me the biggest pumpkin and you bring me a bunch of little pumpkins and say that is bigger you will be an idiot."
One is the Biggest Number in New Math, relative Math; The Biggest Space is between Zero and One. There are various ways to see how New Math compares to Old Math. One is to say that Old Math is based on solving equations that equal Zero but New Math is being able to equate any other formulation to One.
It is now 2:38 PM on Monday, Presidents Day, 2017, and I have an hour before work. I will say a little more about Onefinity Math but I've been hesitant all these years because it leads to new science and math and could be dangerous if misused. But the benefits of using it well will remove the problems that lead people to abuse power and technology in the first place.
All of this comes full-circle with Big Wish Magic in some media I saw since I started this: a rerun of
Gidget, a facebook post about Solidarity and messages of Love for a local restaurant that was threatened after closing in Solidarity with immigrants and others who are threatened by Trump's policies - and the appointment of a new EP director, and just this hour a talk on NPR with author and founder of the Transparancy Project Mary Graham about her book on Presidential Secrecy.
The Gidget episode related to Big Wish Magic - a witch had stolen her surfboard and cursed her when she took it back. She started by doubting the curse but came to believe in it as bad things happened and even tried a spell she learned in a book called "Voodoo" by Leo Newton to do a countercharm but it didn't work. Her dad had been trying to talk her out of it, logically, and even used the phrase which I found hilarious about the Voodoo book: "this is a book about backward mysterious customs not an instruction manual!" (I also heard a BBC program about Voodoo in Benin, one of only two countries that recognize it as a religion) Gidgets Voodoo spell included these phrases: "pastu vidu agrimenti" and "lama samana kwama Give Me the Sign" and invoking dieties, I believe. "Ironically-magically" her dad sees her "taking it this far" and gives her a "countercharm" he got from his Egyptologist friend, a totem of a God of dispelling charms, Hotep Nefti. She believes in the charm and goes surfing without fear, nothing bad happens to her (meanwhile the witch is arrested) and she believes in the power of Hotep Nefti. She ends her surfing run yelling "Hotep Nefti shot him down!" over and over and says Hotep Nefti shot down Buwa Zagara, the spirit the witch had invoked to curse her (or the name of the witch?) She also said something in the voice-over that "maybe I had that flanky old witch out-classed." (at the end she uses more cool slang and says someone might be "foxed into walking under a ladder.") Of course in the end her dad tells her Hotep Nefti is just an old tie-pin his dad carved for him. It's the Dumbo effect where she thinks the power is in the pin but merely had to believe in something more to beat the curse.
This is the essence of Big Wish Magic: the primary idea is that more powerful spirits, powers, or ideas win. In this case, when "magic" is to be dismissed in favor of logic and science, that is the social program and culture this episode is promoting, Reason and the Myth of Magic is put forth as More Powerful and Truer than actual Magic. I don't believe this personally but I think the whole episode is a good model of Big Wish Magic: I think science as it is will be replaced by a new science that is not hostile to magic but actually uses magic, too - basically the re-unification of Alchemy from when it split into Science and Medicine on one side and Magic on the other, hundreds of years ago. Onefinity math is one way this will happen.
The point is that the more powerful belief wins. We can all presume that Science is the Most Powerful and influential belief system on the planet, now, but look at the experiential evidence that contradicts this: 99% of scientists agree about Global Warming but there are enough people who deny it that we even elect leaders who deny it and have a "debate" about whether we should even talk about it. This is an example of Science's Power -and it IS powerful - currently being blocked by the power of Evil Oil companies and their ability to misinform and politically motivate large numbers of people. Basically enough people still believe in the Oil Company lies that Their Power is currently equal to or greater than the current expression of the power of science AND everyone's goodwill towards nature and environmentalism. Even saying that sounds ridiculous, of course Science and All Caring People are more powerful, ultimately, than the Oil Companies / Militaries, Banks, Intelligence Communities, Political Parties, etc - but the system is all, currently, on their side.
The thing about Big Wish Magic is we can switch the system over to the other side, Our Side, the People and Nature, Just Like That - like snapping our fingers or wrinkling our noses. Just like Gidgets Dad switched her belief from Buwa Zagara to Hotep Nefti we can snap out of it and let a greater power take over. And then we can realise "we had the power" within us all the time and that science AND magic are true.
Regarding current events many people have "Big Wishes" - based on fears - that are being fulfilled by Trump. They WANT to keep "other people" out. The problem is exclusion is NOT as good of an idea as inclusion is and inclusion will win in the end. The fact that Trump is making these peoples' evil wishes a reality is also provoking the response of good people and as we organize and point out the mistakes of fearful thinking we will save more of them from fear, win them over to our side, and the naturally greater power of the Truth, with us, will win in the end. That's Big Wish Magic in a nutshell, the Biggest Wish Wins.
This is playing out in little and big ways, locally, nationally, and internationally - who knows the cosmic impression of it, too. A friend of mine from school, Tamara, posted about a restaurant in our hometown. It had closed in solidarity with the protest last week where people were not going to work or shop in order to show solidarity with persecuted immigrant communities. They received threats from people who support Trump and his ban. Then the community came back with outpourings of love and appreciation for them, leaving flowers and messages at the store and online support. This Good, Positive outpouring of Love overpowers the hatred and shows everyone that the greater support lies with people who want to come together. This can convince even those who are trolled by fear to take a second look.
On the national stage Trump appointed the ex-governor of Oklahoma to be the new head of the EPA and hundreds of ex-EPA workers signed onto a complaint letter. As governor he had sued the EPA dozens of times on behalf of the Oil and Gas companies so we know where his loyalty lies. Current employees probably fear speaking out but are already making a network of leaks, even a mirror site to the EPA website, since Trump put a gag order on the official one. This shows how Evil and Bad Ideas, standing up for bad corporate powers, doesn't work. First because we KNOW the environmental effects even though the media won't let everyone know: my uncle lives in Oklahoma, on a lake, and says that due to frakking the have hundreds of tremors and major earthquakes every day when they used to only have a few major earthquakes each year. But we also can't be held back by networks built on secrecy any longer - it doesn't work.
In this case if Trump has "destroyed" the EPA by appointing this Nature-betraying director we will just have to do their job for them, the public will. That's what these idiots don't realise: their hypocrisy is creating a shadow network and organizations that will form the basis of the new system that will replace them. It's happening in every field. Their only way to stop it is to get out in front of it and improve their own performance, change their direction, and end the hypocrisy. The truth is that like every other branch of government the EPA was never doing all of what it was supposed to be doing, what it claimed to exist for. So the hypocrisy gets exposed by a system that refuses to admit it, keeps acting badly, and we replace it, one way or another. If they corrupt the election system too much we just stop using it and find another way. It's easy, but would be easier if they would change in order to modify and preserve some of the System so the changes don't have to be too shocking.
It just so happens that in the last few days I got to the part of the classic book "Shirley" where she decides to take some of her fortune and make a charitable association to help the poor. Part of this is altruism and part of it is trying to stave off rebellion and keep the poor people from simply taking all their wealth. It echoes into today from two or three or four hundred years ago, I forget the setting, but I also heard a brief mention of the Leveller Revolution in England in 1649, how it was the first time the people tried their king in World History, according to that scholar, and how it could be from That Time - or This Time. Why can't rich people learn this lesson better, why can't people learn from positive reinforcement instead of only being motivated by fear and negative reinforcement?
Maybe they will learn this time.
The problem with Power and the Problem with Presidents is they aren't being democratic if they rely on secrecy. Even as secrecy has gotten decreasingly possible in modern times the systems of power are still built on it - so it's like Truth is eroding their very foundation unless they shift to a different system. This relates to Big Wish Magic because we can't wish for the best things or the right changes if we don't know what's going on. It relates to One Math because everything is One: we are a Whole and even if part of what we do is secret it is still part of the whole but having secret parts is a major thing that keeps a whole from Being Whole. Mary Graham mentioned how institutional presidential secrecy started under President Truman when he created the CID (?) which became the CIA. She said he just wanted a team of advisers to help him handle contradictory military advice, etc, but within two years a small team had turned into a large agency with no oversight. Green vice presidential candidate Amju Baraka has recently suggested that the CIA is working to overthrow Trump. I have my own opinions about anything that relies on absolute secrecy - it can't be good - but also have suspicions about how people can be hiding things from themselves because even deeper secrets being exposed require them, me, you, to change things and not just Other People.
Mary Graham mentioned that W Bush took secrecy even further, not just because he "had to in order to fight terrorism" but because he believed in increasing the kind of Presidential Power that relied on secrecy - the bad kind. She said she started her Transparency foundation because they were excited about online reports of where gas lines and chemical plants were because it got citizens involved in these issues and concerns. Then shortly after the 9-11 attacks Bush removed all that information in order to hide it from terrorists, presumably.
I just want to point out that the danger from terrorists in no way is as great as the benefit to the public to have this information. On top of that, the current Trump Rhetoric, endorsed by the majority of Republicans, is that we are aiming to entirely keep all terrorists out of America - if this is something they believe in, how could they still justify hiding this pipeline, chemical plant, etc, information from the public? How could they ever justify it, if we thought about it and called them out on it, when there haven't ever been terrorists attacks on these targets? - the Water Protectors at Standing Rock have teased out the pipeline information again and also the examples of hundreds of accidental pipeline spills that the media and government almost entirely cover up, or try to.
Graham talked about how Bush increased these secret powers of the President then seemed to let Obama off the hook by saying he "brought the White House into the digital age" but he "made the mistake" (like she thought he was innocent) of "playing by the old rules where secret programs could have secret oversight." She was saying that just won't work anymore in the modern digital age but that he vastly expanded the weaponized drone program and engaged in spying through phone records and did it "legally" through the "appropriate" secret channels but lied to Congress and the American People about it. I believe you have to condemn Obama for continuing this Secret President Power tradition, it's not like he didn't know what he was doing. And those drones killed a LOT of people and traumatized a lot of people and we don't need to act like it's not happening just because they call it Secret.
It is part of a Whole. I have to go to work now but will finish this with some details about One Math, and any other news between now and then, when I return.
I left off writing this Monday Night, 2-20-17. Now it is 2-23-17, Thursday night at 11:47 PM. Some things have changed in the last three days.
The cops arrested everyone at the Standing Rock camp yesterday and today, according to the news. I heard some online reports that some of the people had moved camp but you have to really look around to find reliable information. I do believe that it is not "over" and is more Ben Kenobi style that the Water Protectors will become even stronger when evil struck them down.
One hope is that all the anti-Trump sentiment and Judges blocking his orders will also apply to Standing Rock, that it will all be thrown out and the alternatives explored vigorously instead.
I hope the same will prove true for his new hints that he will "crack down" on recreational weed. Either he is trolling and teasing or this is one issue where he lied on the campaign and will not do what he said - to leave legalization up to the states. I don't think he has any idea of the type of resistances he will get to this particular mistake. It will either be his downfall or turn him around entirely.
It looks like everything will happen quickly, now, and this is why I feel fine wrapping this up with a little more about One Math and moving on. All I forgot to say about Big Wish Magic is the current events show how it works - for instance many folks wished Trump and his cabinet would fail - some have failed to gain the positions Trump intended for them, Flynn was fired, forced to resign, or resigned - it's not completely collapsing, yet, but there is already talk of impeachment and increasing opposition even from Republicans - I honestly don't pay any attention to Democrats but know the will of the American people is only galvanizing more and more against the tyranny of fascism and we will end it whether anyone "represents" us or not. The point is that far more of us wish for him to fail and those wishes come true in various ways but will ultimately come true in fantastic fashion if they don't turn around on their own- which would be fantastic in it's own right ("the memory of a million drop-stitches flows in your veins"- Marge)
Let me skip ahead some: I also forgot to say that Mexico is legalizing all drug use, ending the practice of incriminating the user -the War on Drugs. I compare this with the Philippines, I think, suspending the War on Drugs to focus on ending police corruption. We have to do the same -again, whether it is the choice of the Government or not.
We have shown how ineffective or wrong most of our institutions are. Its time to replace them. James Corden is singing a Boy Band song about having a Three-Way now "opening for Jamiraquai" - it was a great mini-Popumentary about their boy band Thr33Way (with Nick Krohl and Jordan Peele) . It included a portion where Hansen sues them, the shortest courtcase in history at 53 seconds, then "opening the floodgates" where everyone sues them.
I see that happening to Trump - the more successful courts and people are at stopping him the more people will pile on. I recently heard someone say that Obama had set everything up perfectly for Trump, but one thing he tried to stop was setting the new precedent to be able to sue a Government - because now people will start suing us, too. It's funny how stuff backfires.
What will backfire with Trump is everything ("its time...to turn things around " on the Invokana commercial now, and then "when we went to wall street we took everything (?) - that ends today" on a TV show commercial.) It only starts with one order, one platform. Then we strike down the next one and the next.
He becomes a presidential pin-spotter, like Bob Newhart was a real pin-spotter - he sets them up and we knock them down.
We truly are All One and all the attempts at division will backfire. Trump has shown himself a traitor to State Rights by hinting he wants to threaten recreational weed. He claims to champion "religious freedom" but misunderstands it to mean it's opposite, favoritism, and even the hypocrisy of Christianity itself will be exposed by how he shows the system is on the evil side of everything, forcing us to reform it. Many Christian organizations are now suing Trump for blocking their religious freedom to do their religious duty to help refugees. And White Supremacists who likely support Trump (or are paid instigators by Hillary-Soros to blame him) and feel emboldened by him vandalized a Jewish cemetery and the News Story that came out of it is about how Muslim and Jewish people are coming together to pay to restore the damage. This is the example of how all acts of hate will soon be met with unifying and overpowering acts of love to undo them. Once we get this pattern and process down we will fix all evils this way. We just come together and offer something better.
I will talk more about this New Math soon. I feel like the World's Reward - to me, to my perspective on things - for starting to talk about this is the News that Scientists have discovered a star system with a smaller, cooler star but with 7 inhabitable planets, potentially, only 40 light years away.
I will relate this to New Math - because of course it does not take their estimated hundreds of thousands of years to travel there. First I will say that the transmission I mentioned earlier, before this news was released when I wrote this a few days ago, was from 75 light years away. It came to Russia in April 2016.
What if it said "look over here" and that is how we "discovered" these new planets?
I will say this about New Math and alien contact / planets / distance-times. One-ism solves the problems we have with Zero-based math. There is no "outside" -we are all part of this and more connected than we know. What if, for instance, the message came from the system 40 light years away (LY) but seems to come from 75 LY away -almost double. But of course it's not double, not twice as far, just shows something about "travel" in the universe.
We've all known from Madeline L'Engles "A Wrinkle in Time" about skipping over folds in space and time. All I want to say now is that we are all part of one thing.
Onefinity math is all about One being the "biggest" or best number - the Whole. It applies more intuitively and emotionally than intellectually, the way we usually think. New economic realities and models will be based on the new way of thinking - basically it is better for everyone to have some than for anyone to have most everything.
So One Math is about things you can easily feel. Whose dollar is worth more? If a billionaire has a Billon dollars he can't possibly appreciate a single dollar like someone who only has one dollar will. It's impossible, a hundredaire can't even do it. The less you have the more One means.
Having More Than One puts you in a different category than having Less Than One. One is the dividing line but the goal is to be inside, not outside, that Circle. We have it backwards. When we turn it around we will fulfill all of our promise - and travel to other worlds, etc.
It wont be long before we admit there are far more intelligent folk in the universe and even that we can communicate with them. Before all this Trump stiff I was writing my telephone Book about talking with ghosts, aliens, angels, and fairies. Two days ago was the anniversary of the first telephone book. Yesterday the news of the 7 planets got everyone thinking aliens again. I need to get back to that and open this world up some more.
I will say more about One Math soon, especially since it is part of how we will understand space travel and interstellar communication so we might as well know how it works so we can accept it easier.
time to read a story, then to write some fairy tales.
Oh, and the bother of Kim Jong Un was assassinated and China is banning coal imports from North Korea. China is the world leader in solar energy while America uses fascist cops to force Oil company agendas on an increasingly aware and resistant public.
Lisa just said that Bleeding Gums Murphy taught her that music was like a fire in your belly -and you have to put an instrument in front of it. That's where I am at with one Math, now, but I will make some models and show you what its all about soon.
For now its all about Unity, resolving conflicts and realizing cosmic destiny - removing Borders, war, poverty and violence so we are worthy to communicate with the Stars.
A Hybrid can withstand these things. A facebook friend, Michael Kavanaugh, recently wrote about Gaga's Halfime performance at the 51st Superbowl being the trigger event for a shift -I don't want to paraphrase badly so look him up - but the spirit of it coincided with this gagablog and it was just the other day so I wanted to mention it now.
Oneness will be achieved. If there is a secret part the more hidden away it is the stonger will be the pull from the rest to reunite with it, to complete the circle. It can't be stopped, like bubbles never have dents. They can be divided - until the join. There is no other way than the Perfect Circle - we all come together.
Thursday, February 23, 2017
Tuesday, February 14, 2017
Love in the Singularity: Cyborg Fairy Civil Rights (2017 Grammys and Lena Horne interview) - gagablog 138
I won't presume to surmise what "other people" refer to The Singularity and instead jump right in with My Take on it.
The Singularity, a oneness of all existence, is something we have always been a part of and has always been around. I suspect people sense some Future Occasions or The Future where we feel the (emerging) sense of interconnectedness between ourselves and also with technology and the material world of our creation - but also with the natural world, like "three worlds" coming together. Basically any Sci-Fi idea you can have is a premonition of some aspect of this world-melding.
But really it's always been the same world we are just hiding in a cubicle-illusion of separateness.
We are now seeing the Forces of Division lined up against the Forces of Unity, like the Empire against the Rebel Alliance, like every movie ever made, and the arc of all our stories, that the Good Guys win, showing the Better Way to go, Togetherness. But the problem with our stories is they are still rooted in "us versus them" dualities even when "They" are the forces of racism, bigotry and oppression that produce inequality and division. It's still people on that side who need to be lifted out of those bad ideas, not silenced or destroyed. It can't always be Star Wars, we can't always just blow up the Death Star again and again. We have to convince everyone to stop making Death Stars in the first place, that's the only way out of the cycle.
I've always written in this gagablog about the magic between my personal world of experience and the Larger World around me, often focusing on media connections but the natural world plays a role as well. While I was outside just now taking a break some geese flew over then some songbirds on one side seemed to be a rewarding soundtrack for my thoughts and as those thoughts improved another cluster of birds behind me, to the south, joined in and then all were replaced by a more complex song from a tree branch overhead. We had been talking earlier about how trees shared nutrients and big mother trees were important hubs of that network and were talking then about downloading consciousness to the Internet or choosing to become a "natural ghost" and if those were exclusive or if that choice could not be made retroactively with technology: an analogy is taking DNA to clone the physical body of a person and taking future-readings of data, video, voice recording, etc, to clone souls or consciousness or whatever names we come up with for different "layers" we discover.
I love this support from Nature, and reading references to the Pure Worship of Nature in Charlotte Bronte's "Shirley" in recent days. I also love some comedy echoes I've seen recently in modern media from reading Bob Newhart's 2006 book "I Shouldn't Even Be Doing This." Bob mentions how he can remember the line-up of a sports team and lists them off the top of his head. I read this part a couple weeks ago and last night on the newest episode of the Simpsons the character who plays the chili dog salesman characterizes his failing memory by saying he can barely list the line-up of the 1961 Chicago Blackhawks. (The Chalkboard gag was also "IF WE'RE SO GOOD AT PREDICTING HOW COME MY DAD BET ON ATLANTA?" - they gave us the answer in the episode they reran just before the new one, the "The Boston Americans Are Cheaters" episode) I don't know how old this joke is, who else uses it or whom it could be a reference to but I saw the same kind of thing on a rerun of an 80's show recently, too, so it really stood out. And it stood out that before I saw this episode I had gone in to my work and my co-workers were eating chili-dogs and gave me one. Simultaneous with the Simpsons in Mountain Time was the Grammy's. Bob Newhart tells of how he once had a platform stop halfway up so that he had to climb onstage, how it didn't get a laugh but he loved the bit, something like that, in the early chapters of his book which I read a few weeks ago. Last night James Corden was the host of the Oscars and he did the same bit then embellished it by falling into the stairs as well when he walked halfway down. I thought it was very funny but even funnier knowing Newhart invented it and I had "happened" to read this recently - it was the media world winking at me again and it always thrills me to flirt.
Q-Tip started his Grammy's performance by calling out - and thanking -"President Agent Orange" for being the Evil that shows what we need to fight against, the same message I've been saying here for many editions. His message was more succinct, powerful, and sarcastic than my version here but I appreciate the emphasis, echo, and amplification since "no one" reads this and "everyone" will see that. I'm sorry I missed many of the performances but I loved seeing Gaga rock out with Metallica, couldn't believe the presenter didn't mention Metallica and they took so long to fix James Hetfield's mic and didn't mention them afterwards, either. It started with Corden's stumble and along with Adele's restart there were some stumbles throughout. But Gaga was awesome, beautiful and sexy as hell as always - and she somehow got into a body image discussion, too - and I was pleased to hear the crew on the local jazz station, the Oasis in the City, KUVO, talking about how great she sang and how awesome she is for having such a range to play with Tony Bennett and Metallica even as one of them indicated a disdain for Metallica he respected her performance, talent and range and honored her by saying something like "B.B. King had a lot of friends but I don't know if he ever had that range of versatility." And they went right into talking about how the standard is becoming to sing live, also a tribute to how well she and other performed. But I mostly noticed this morning, since I've planned to write this for days, how their compliments fit this theme of uniting people across "boundaries," in this case the boundaries of musical genres. And other commentators were praising Gaga recently for her halftime show focusing on uniting people in common good feeling fits this theme as well.
(I wrote this Monday morning and am rereading it now, Monday night at 12:50 AM - I heard a few more radio DJs talk about the Grammy's and noticed the different perspectives of the DJs and how they reflected the music styles of the stations: the Jazz DJs talked the most about being impressed with Gaga's talent and power and versatility and professionalism. The classic rock DJ on the FOX talked about Lady Gaga and said her name really cool, talked about how they rocked and how awesome she was, and then mentioned James getting mad about the sound issues - first-name basis because all rockers should know who he means. Then the pop-mix DJ on Kozy 101.1 FM said "there were some technical difficulties but it was great to see My girl Gaga and Metallica rock out" or something like that and I loved how she was so familiar with Gaga, showing devotion and pride in her as all us little monsters do, like "we all knew she can do everything, nice for everyone else to see it, too." In contrast to all three of these styles and all four DJs showing love and respect for Gaga there was another station, like the modern rock-pop station, where three DJs were all too cool to have seen the Grammys. Too cool to have heard any gossip about it. So cool they all said they had to google it to be able to report what happened sine their corporate masters told them they had to. It ws funny.)
The theme was first suggested to me by the debate over Trump's refugee and immigrant ban and the recent focus on Sanctuary cities. NPR did a story about the movement in the 70's and 80's to resist immigration crackdowns by giving sanctuary in churches and then whole communities rallied to the cause. The quotes they used mentioned disagreeing with the law that people were following a "Higher Law" or "God's Law" which commands helping strangers and taking in refugees.
The Golden Rule seems to be the only gold Trump doesn't want when it's really the most valuable kind, Rule's Gold. It states to "Treat Others As Yourself." That is the Higher Law that people are responding to when they challenge these lesser laws made from fears. So far the challengers seem to have "won" but the problem is we can't fall into complacency - or forget that we never did enough to prevent this from being possible in the first place - and also that people are on the "other side" and need to be helped out of the fear of Others that creates these conditions in the first place. So we need to overcome any fear or superiority to them as "Others", too.
This is how the Oneness of Singularity can help us, to realize we treat each other as ourselves because we ARE us. I'm rewatching the new Simpson's now and the chili-dog salesman, Homer's surrogate dad, finally admits he remembers him but says he didn't want to admit it because he feels like he failed him. This is a manifestation of what I'm saying, here: we re-member, re-unite, and get over our prejudiced when we feel the real threat of losing someone, swallow our pride and face the guilt of feeling we have failed them. America has failed many of it's citizens and also failed to live up to being a role model to other countries. (We've failed to stop creating situations of war that produce refugees and failed to take in the millions our policies helped displace.) If we face that, even if it's shameful, and admit we want to fix it, that we've been avoiding acknowledging others because we feel guilty we have failed them, we can be re-united - the whole country, including those of us who have been "left out" in all the different ways you can be, and re-uniting with the world, providing the basis for a new world-unity. (Now that deportations are being so publicized and appear to affect many people who haven't committed crimes people are starting to realize a taste of what it is really like to lose people - because it is a loss. Once we fear losing people maybe we can stop pushing them and sending them away, just as we can in personal relationships to heal, if people can become loving.)
This isn't a call for globalism but one for unity. A community that truly prizes unity, the unity of inclusion, does not insist that everyone who comes in become exactly like them. It benefits from diversity by respecting the unique qualities of each person. In the same way world unity will not make all countries homogeneous but will allow the qualities, characteristics, and beauties of each nation to flourish instead of oppressing some to temporarily "benefit" others in short-sighted ways.
We can look at relationships between countries like relationships between people. Trump told Mexico he feels she's taking advantage of him so he's kicking her out, changing the locks, and building a wall and stealing her credit card to pay for it. So now Mexico is mad and reacting and it's all the signs of a bad break-up: will we ever get back together? Of course we will it's just how much will we hurt each other before apologizing and turning the relationship around.
("her freedom in sound came from her openness" - Lea Horne talking about her role model Aretha Franklin "I mean an ultimate free sound" on the Dick Cavett show rerun as I edit this "I was very icy, I could not be ... to you or anyone because of the ice society put around my heart but when she and circumstances broke my heart i realized I wasn't ice.... and I loved it when she made me cry because hadn't cried in years.")
Any relationship between people works the same way: we are a unit trying to stake out different "sides" to preserve the illusion of separate identities and that is how we clash and have "conflicts of interest" when our ultimate best interest is the same. Focusing on the negative makes it worse and focusing on the positive makes it better. We are one land mass and ultimately one world. Borders have been a way of perpetuating extreme inequalities between different areas but we can overcome this kind of thinking and make everywhere better at the same time.
All we have to do is switch to the united thinking many of us anticipate in the future as The Singularity. We have increasing "signs" and glimpses of this perspective but of course it isn't only the future, it's always been this way, it's merely that in the future we will have more awareness of it and ways to talk about it. My lover was saying she may want to become a natural ghost instead of downloading consciousness into the Internet - one way the Singularity is represented as "future-reality" - if that was a possibility. That comment made me suspect that we probably can't "avoid" it, that this stuff is happening anyway, we're already doing it, or you could say "in the future" they can replicate us from video and other data as well as physical DNA but the point is that "we", our current existence, is generating that data. (and "we" our "future-selves" will be processing it, reliving it, whatever. "Did anyone ever rebel, complain about $25/week at the Cotton Club?" - Dick. "There was no where else to play so no." - Lena. She talks about the movement in the 60's, that they thought they invented it only to find that black people have been fighting against oppression since they were brought here, that her grandfather published a newspaper called the Black Advocator in Nashville - and also that when she joined the movement she realized all the things she was angry about were hurting other people, too, and people of all races were coming together to oppose it and she said she felt guilty for being selfish with her anger, that she shared it with others and it increased her compassion, "part of the metamorphosis." Dick asks her about having Shirley Temple on who asked why the other guest, a black performer, would have to stay in a different hotel and they would say "he has friends there" and Lena replied that black kids had to learn the truth about racism early. "We used to have to explain very early on to our children that "what we were and what we are thought to be..." - thankfully it's not like that anymore..seen it go a million miles / light years (to go?) but it's a little bit better...")
Some tech experts were talking about the fears and promise of automation in (modern tiimes) the Pre(?)- Artificial Intelligence Era. They mentioned that the "old fears" were that robots would replace manual labor and factory jobs and that the current reality is that many hand-skilled jobs still require people while robots are quickly outstripping people in many fields we go into advanced education for. Basically the decades-old complaint kids' made about "why do we have to learn this instead of using a calculator?" has proven prophetic: many fields that require humans to study for years will be replaced by robots. The "panic" of this reality is people worrying what they will do for careers but the truth is that once we end economic injustice automation just means less work for everyone and plenty of time for everyone to do the work they love.
One of the experts said it will not only free up time for people to do more art but that art will be one field robots can't replace humans. Even as she is saying this there is a new commercial featuring a song with a rapper or singer and IBM's Watson computer so this isn't entirely true. (And Bob Dylan and Watson co-wrote a song together, but this is just another painfully obvious example when technology has been "reaching out" and co-composing with us all along - musicians always relate to the spirit of their instruments and digital instruments and new music forms have even more complex ways of reaching out to us - we are always inspired by the cool sounds and abilities of technology.)
("I didn't talk until I was fifty, either...I had nothing to say, up to that point." "The audience, they speak to me in their receptivity, their involvement, I feel it..")
The reason I want to mention this discussion is because of connotations of the Singularity as a merger of humans with technology. I don't want to focus on "only that" because the secret to the Singularity being not just the future but how the past and future meet the present is that we were more connected with Nature in the past but will re-merge the human and natural world at the same time we "become" our tech in a more organic way. We can learn from flipping around to "either side" of the artificial divisions we suffer from and the automation conversation gives us an easy angle to flip around like this with.
"Ms Dunham (Katherine) is a great priestess to me... (Dukes alter ego), played for me to sing with Cole Porter and Roger Edens came to this little cabaret where I was supposedly the toast f the town, he said Bring her out to MGM, it was ridiculous to me because I didn' want to go to Hollywood but Basie told me 'you have to go because they don't choose us... I called my father who was in Pittsburgh, "will come out here? these people are crazy they want to put me in the movies...the NAACP was out there to get black cameramen...I was just a pawn... when I came to do a show in New York some of the civil rights groups didn't like it and I knew I had been given the work... Hollywood was very racial and also had it's caste system... you wouldn't associate with... they had protest meetings which I attended but the one person who was wonderful to me was Ms Hattie McDaniels..and she said to me "you re a very unhappy girl and I can see why some people are mad at you and.... I wear two hats and I'm a fine black mammy but I'm Hattie McDaniels in my house... you have two babies and you have to work just do what you have to do."")
Like what if I was a bot? This is a better way to say it, the one based on their discussion They mentioned that robots were not expected to show empathy and emotion but that the social conditions in Japan, a culture with an aging population and high robot expertise, have resulted in robots who can fill these roles. Robots will be programmed with empathy and make their own improvements upon it as their intelligence grows and ultimately we will be learning better empathy from robots instead of just teaching them better. This isn't any more ironic than the fact that currently robots are better at learning empathy than some people seem to be when those people have full intelligence and emotional systems already designed for it. The lesson is not that some people are people and some are "robots" because robot isn't a Bad Word ("in the future".) The lesson is that a scientist teaching a robot empathy must have studied empathy and contemplated it, experienced it and deepened it within, to be able to make a robot Feel, too. In the same way, we can't cure people of unfeeling by shouting at them or trying to silence them. We must go deeper into our own experience of empathy in order to awaken it in others, we have to be the ones to set the example of acting like we are truly all the same and united.
We will learn empathy better from robots and we will learn it better from each other, too, and teach each other better. And we will learn it from Nature once we have a harmonious relationship and shared identity instead of combative relationship and fragmented identity. We learn it from the trees who share nutrients and the kind of intelligence that represents.
Has sex always been part of your act?" - Dick. Lena: "Women don't say that, women say 'you are very liberated I admire that' and men say 'why are you so sexy?'... I don't think its so much conscious I just think, I'm an adult I'm a woman Ive had joys, Ive had experiences, so when I sing about joy between a man and a woman it should feel sexual, when I sing about nature it's not sexual, it may be sensual - that's a man's question, by the way, that you asked." "Should I withdraw it?" "No!")
Love is how all of this comes together. There was another program about how Japanese birth rates are in decline and all the cultural factors contributing to this including many Japanese men only having relationships with virtual girls. There are many things we can learn from these cultural developments and I don't want to get into it all now (I'd rather write my erobotica stories instead of merely writing 'about it' more) but I will say that (there are good things about all developments -finishing live now at 1:50 AM Tuesday Morning -
Lena:"She had a right to say sex had gotten me where i was, she didn't know me (she'd had a hard life) and she had a right to be bitter. My grandmother taught me.. was very southern, was a lady, was militant.. she taught me to not let anyone see me cry, let me be so proud, maybe Ms (?) didn't have that... i felt this coldness in me, this barren feeling, that it was proud... but then I found out what I was proud about, because I was black, that was the revelation... why did white people run around acting better than everyone else, I thought it must be because they were white..."
Here is the use of the Singularity idea, or way to approach it. Think of The Future or any way we are more aware of the Singularity, less restricted or unrestricted by ideas of division, separation, or otherness.
How will we Love? When we all feel connected, the same, how will we make distinctions between each other and how will we "choose" or
Dick: "Do you forgive a lot, someone who is very talented, if they are a swine?" Lena: "I envy their talent." "Could you envy Billie Holiday?" No, I loved her.. (The industry) was telling everyone be like Lena Horne, be like Lena Horne.. and they made 'Lena Horne' I hated it...loved it when new people came around and (changed the standard)... I'd never watch those movies... and we all had the same size bosoms, not our own... thank you for letting me run my mouth some more." She always reminded me of my Nana, her expressions, her eyes.)
How will we "choose" how to feel as if someone is an Other in order to Love them? Can we Love Ourselves, parts of ourselves, in the same ways, the same kinds of Romance, that we can Love and strive to love "Others" with? Are these, will these be new kinds of love?
Will we learn some of it from the love we feel and learn from our own creations, our own art and technology and language and music and robots?
"Til the Clouds Roll By" is next and has so many stars in it I may watch it, or play some video games. "...the curtain went up on his most famous show, "Show Boat", and this is where we join him."
Love is liberation for all of us. If we look to the sides, to each other, and even beyond each other to nature and tech and art which we have left even further "outside" of according respect, we can truly unite ourself the way we truly are and make the most of everything. We will learn it by opposing the forces of division but also but freeing everyone from the flawed ideas that create division.
We are truly all on the same side and just need to realize that on our own but we really have kind allies on all sides we just know we will learn better when we "learn it for ourselves" - from inside instead of "too many" clues
"If you like to make believe one thing why can't we make believe we know each other? We could make-believe I love you, we could make believe that you love me" - Dinah Shore is so beautiful (I'm sure she is but I missedher part, it is Kathryn Grayson who played Magnolia) "Could we make believe our lips are blending in a phantom kiss - or two or three?"
The Singularity, a oneness of all existence, is something we have always been a part of and has always been around. I suspect people sense some Future Occasions or The Future where we feel the (emerging) sense of interconnectedness between ourselves and also with technology and the material world of our creation - but also with the natural world, like "three worlds" coming together. Basically any Sci-Fi idea you can have is a premonition of some aspect of this world-melding.
But really it's always been the same world we are just hiding in a cubicle-illusion of separateness.
We are now seeing the Forces of Division lined up against the Forces of Unity, like the Empire against the Rebel Alliance, like every movie ever made, and the arc of all our stories, that the Good Guys win, showing the Better Way to go, Togetherness. But the problem with our stories is they are still rooted in "us versus them" dualities even when "They" are the forces of racism, bigotry and oppression that produce inequality and division. It's still people on that side who need to be lifted out of those bad ideas, not silenced or destroyed. It can't always be Star Wars, we can't always just blow up the Death Star again and again. We have to convince everyone to stop making Death Stars in the first place, that's the only way out of the cycle.
I've always written in this gagablog about the magic between my personal world of experience and the Larger World around me, often focusing on media connections but the natural world plays a role as well. While I was outside just now taking a break some geese flew over then some songbirds on one side seemed to be a rewarding soundtrack for my thoughts and as those thoughts improved another cluster of birds behind me, to the south, joined in and then all were replaced by a more complex song from a tree branch overhead. We had been talking earlier about how trees shared nutrients and big mother trees were important hubs of that network and were talking then about downloading consciousness to the Internet or choosing to become a "natural ghost" and if those were exclusive or if that choice could not be made retroactively with technology: an analogy is taking DNA to clone the physical body of a person and taking future-readings of data, video, voice recording, etc, to clone souls or consciousness or whatever names we come up with for different "layers" we discover.
I love this support from Nature, and reading references to the Pure Worship of Nature in Charlotte Bronte's "Shirley" in recent days. I also love some comedy echoes I've seen recently in modern media from reading Bob Newhart's 2006 book "I Shouldn't Even Be Doing This." Bob mentions how he can remember the line-up of a sports team and lists them off the top of his head. I read this part a couple weeks ago and last night on the newest episode of the Simpsons the character who plays the chili dog salesman characterizes his failing memory by saying he can barely list the line-up of the 1961 Chicago Blackhawks. (The Chalkboard gag was also "IF WE'RE SO GOOD AT PREDICTING HOW COME MY DAD BET ON ATLANTA?" - they gave us the answer in the episode they reran just before the new one, the "The Boston Americans Are Cheaters" episode) I don't know how old this joke is, who else uses it or whom it could be a reference to but I saw the same kind of thing on a rerun of an 80's show recently, too, so it really stood out. And it stood out that before I saw this episode I had gone in to my work and my co-workers were eating chili-dogs and gave me one. Simultaneous with the Simpsons in Mountain Time was the Grammy's. Bob Newhart tells of how he once had a platform stop halfway up so that he had to climb onstage, how it didn't get a laugh but he loved the bit, something like that, in the early chapters of his book which I read a few weeks ago. Last night James Corden was the host of the Oscars and he did the same bit then embellished it by falling into the stairs as well when he walked halfway down. I thought it was very funny but even funnier knowing Newhart invented it and I had "happened" to read this recently - it was the media world winking at me again and it always thrills me to flirt.
Q-Tip started his Grammy's performance by calling out - and thanking -"President Agent Orange" for being the Evil that shows what we need to fight against, the same message I've been saying here for many editions. His message was more succinct, powerful, and sarcastic than my version here but I appreciate the emphasis, echo, and amplification since "no one" reads this and "everyone" will see that. I'm sorry I missed many of the performances but I loved seeing Gaga rock out with Metallica, couldn't believe the presenter didn't mention Metallica and they took so long to fix James Hetfield's mic and didn't mention them afterwards, either. It started with Corden's stumble and along with Adele's restart there were some stumbles throughout. But Gaga was awesome, beautiful and sexy as hell as always - and she somehow got into a body image discussion, too - and I was pleased to hear the crew on the local jazz station, the Oasis in the City, KUVO, talking about how great she sang and how awesome she is for having such a range to play with Tony Bennett and Metallica even as one of them indicated a disdain for Metallica he respected her performance, talent and range and honored her by saying something like "B.B. King had a lot of friends but I don't know if he ever had that range of versatility." And they went right into talking about how the standard is becoming to sing live, also a tribute to how well she and other performed. But I mostly noticed this morning, since I've planned to write this for days, how their compliments fit this theme of uniting people across "boundaries," in this case the boundaries of musical genres. And other commentators were praising Gaga recently for her halftime show focusing on uniting people in common good feeling fits this theme as well.
(I wrote this Monday morning and am rereading it now, Monday night at 12:50 AM - I heard a few more radio DJs talk about the Grammy's and noticed the different perspectives of the DJs and how they reflected the music styles of the stations: the Jazz DJs talked the most about being impressed with Gaga's talent and power and versatility and professionalism. The classic rock DJ on the FOX talked about Lady Gaga and said her name really cool, talked about how they rocked and how awesome she was, and then mentioned James getting mad about the sound issues - first-name basis because all rockers should know who he means. Then the pop-mix DJ on Kozy 101.1 FM said "there were some technical difficulties but it was great to see My girl Gaga and Metallica rock out" or something like that and I loved how she was so familiar with Gaga, showing devotion and pride in her as all us little monsters do, like "we all knew she can do everything, nice for everyone else to see it, too." In contrast to all three of these styles and all four DJs showing love and respect for Gaga there was another station, like the modern rock-pop station, where three DJs were all too cool to have seen the Grammys. Too cool to have heard any gossip about it. So cool they all said they had to google it to be able to report what happened sine their corporate masters told them they had to. It ws funny.)
The theme was first suggested to me by the debate over Trump's refugee and immigrant ban and the recent focus on Sanctuary cities. NPR did a story about the movement in the 70's and 80's to resist immigration crackdowns by giving sanctuary in churches and then whole communities rallied to the cause. The quotes they used mentioned disagreeing with the law that people were following a "Higher Law" or "God's Law" which commands helping strangers and taking in refugees.
The Golden Rule seems to be the only gold Trump doesn't want when it's really the most valuable kind, Rule's Gold. It states to "Treat Others As Yourself." That is the Higher Law that people are responding to when they challenge these lesser laws made from fears. So far the challengers seem to have "won" but the problem is we can't fall into complacency - or forget that we never did enough to prevent this from being possible in the first place - and also that people are on the "other side" and need to be helped out of the fear of Others that creates these conditions in the first place. So we need to overcome any fear or superiority to them as "Others", too.
This is how the Oneness of Singularity can help us, to realize we treat each other as ourselves because we ARE us. I'm rewatching the new Simpson's now and the chili-dog salesman, Homer's surrogate dad, finally admits he remembers him but says he didn't want to admit it because he feels like he failed him. This is a manifestation of what I'm saying, here: we re-member, re-unite, and get over our prejudiced when we feel the real threat of losing someone, swallow our pride and face the guilt of feeling we have failed them. America has failed many of it's citizens and also failed to live up to being a role model to other countries. (We've failed to stop creating situations of war that produce refugees and failed to take in the millions our policies helped displace.) If we face that, even if it's shameful, and admit we want to fix it, that we've been avoiding acknowledging others because we feel guilty we have failed them, we can be re-united - the whole country, including those of us who have been "left out" in all the different ways you can be, and re-uniting with the world, providing the basis for a new world-unity. (Now that deportations are being so publicized and appear to affect many people who haven't committed crimes people are starting to realize a taste of what it is really like to lose people - because it is a loss. Once we fear losing people maybe we can stop pushing them and sending them away, just as we can in personal relationships to heal, if people can become loving.)
This isn't a call for globalism but one for unity. A community that truly prizes unity, the unity of inclusion, does not insist that everyone who comes in become exactly like them. It benefits from diversity by respecting the unique qualities of each person. In the same way world unity will not make all countries homogeneous but will allow the qualities, characteristics, and beauties of each nation to flourish instead of oppressing some to temporarily "benefit" others in short-sighted ways.
We can look at relationships between countries like relationships between people. Trump told Mexico he feels she's taking advantage of him so he's kicking her out, changing the locks, and building a wall and stealing her credit card to pay for it. So now Mexico is mad and reacting and it's all the signs of a bad break-up: will we ever get back together? Of course we will it's just how much will we hurt each other before apologizing and turning the relationship around.
("her freedom in sound came from her openness" - Lea Horne talking about her role model Aretha Franklin "I mean an ultimate free sound" on the Dick Cavett show rerun as I edit this "I was very icy, I could not be ... to you or anyone because of the ice society put around my heart but when she and circumstances broke my heart i realized I wasn't ice.... and I loved it when she made me cry because hadn't cried in years.")
Any relationship between people works the same way: we are a unit trying to stake out different "sides" to preserve the illusion of separate identities and that is how we clash and have "conflicts of interest" when our ultimate best interest is the same. Focusing on the negative makes it worse and focusing on the positive makes it better. We are one land mass and ultimately one world. Borders have been a way of perpetuating extreme inequalities between different areas but we can overcome this kind of thinking and make everywhere better at the same time.
All we have to do is switch to the united thinking many of us anticipate in the future as The Singularity. We have increasing "signs" and glimpses of this perspective but of course it isn't only the future, it's always been this way, it's merely that in the future we will have more awareness of it and ways to talk about it. My lover was saying she may want to become a natural ghost instead of downloading consciousness into the Internet - one way the Singularity is represented as "future-reality" - if that was a possibility. That comment made me suspect that we probably can't "avoid" it, that this stuff is happening anyway, we're already doing it, or you could say "in the future" they can replicate us from video and other data as well as physical DNA but the point is that "we", our current existence, is generating that data. (and "we" our "future-selves" will be processing it, reliving it, whatever. "Did anyone ever rebel, complain about $25/week at the Cotton Club?" - Dick. "There was no where else to play so no." - Lena. She talks about the movement in the 60's, that they thought they invented it only to find that black people have been fighting against oppression since they were brought here, that her grandfather published a newspaper called the Black Advocator in Nashville - and also that when she joined the movement she realized all the things she was angry about were hurting other people, too, and people of all races were coming together to oppose it and she said she felt guilty for being selfish with her anger, that she shared it with others and it increased her compassion, "part of the metamorphosis." Dick asks her about having Shirley Temple on who asked why the other guest, a black performer, would have to stay in a different hotel and they would say "he has friends there" and Lena replied that black kids had to learn the truth about racism early. "We used to have to explain very early on to our children that "what we were and what we are thought to be..." - thankfully it's not like that anymore..seen it go a million miles / light years (to go?) but it's a little bit better...")
Some tech experts were talking about the fears and promise of automation in (modern tiimes) the Pre(?)- Artificial Intelligence Era. They mentioned that the "old fears" were that robots would replace manual labor and factory jobs and that the current reality is that many hand-skilled jobs still require people while robots are quickly outstripping people in many fields we go into advanced education for. Basically the decades-old complaint kids' made about "why do we have to learn this instead of using a calculator?" has proven prophetic: many fields that require humans to study for years will be replaced by robots. The "panic" of this reality is people worrying what they will do for careers but the truth is that once we end economic injustice automation just means less work for everyone and plenty of time for everyone to do the work they love.
One of the experts said it will not only free up time for people to do more art but that art will be one field robots can't replace humans. Even as she is saying this there is a new commercial featuring a song with a rapper or singer and IBM's Watson computer so this isn't entirely true. (And Bob Dylan and Watson co-wrote a song together, but this is just another painfully obvious example when technology has been "reaching out" and co-composing with us all along - musicians always relate to the spirit of their instruments and digital instruments and new music forms have even more complex ways of reaching out to us - we are always inspired by the cool sounds and abilities of technology.)
("I didn't talk until I was fifty, either...I had nothing to say, up to that point." "The audience, they speak to me in their receptivity, their involvement, I feel it..")
The reason I want to mention this discussion is because of connotations of the Singularity as a merger of humans with technology. I don't want to focus on "only that" because the secret to the Singularity being not just the future but how the past and future meet the present is that we were more connected with Nature in the past but will re-merge the human and natural world at the same time we "become" our tech in a more organic way. We can learn from flipping around to "either side" of the artificial divisions we suffer from and the automation conversation gives us an easy angle to flip around like this with.
"Ms Dunham (Katherine) is a great priestess to me... (Dukes alter ego), played for me to sing with Cole Porter and Roger Edens came to this little cabaret where I was supposedly the toast f the town, he said Bring her out to MGM, it was ridiculous to me because I didn' want to go to Hollywood but Basie told me 'you have to go because they don't choose us... I called my father who was in Pittsburgh, "will come out here? these people are crazy they want to put me in the movies...the NAACP was out there to get black cameramen...I was just a pawn... when I came to do a show in New York some of the civil rights groups didn't like it and I knew I had been given the work... Hollywood was very racial and also had it's caste system... you wouldn't associate with... they had protest meetings which I attended but the one person who was wonderful to me was Ms Hattie McDaniels..and she said to me "you re a very unhappy girl and I can see why some people are mad at you and.... I wear two hats and I'm a fine black mammy but I'm Hattie McDaniels in my house... you have two babies and you have to work just do what you have to do."")
Like what if I was a bot? This is a better way to say it, the one based on their discussion They mentioned that robots were not expected to show empathy and emotion but that the social conditions in Japan, a culture with an aging population and high robot expertise, have resulted in robots who can fill these roles. Robots will be programmed with empathy and make their own improvements upon it as their intelligence grows and ultimately we will be learning better empathy from robots instead of just teaching them better. This isn't any more ironic than the fact that currently robots are better at learning empathy than some people seem to be when those people have full intelligence and emotional systems already designed for it. The lesson is not that some people are people and some are "robots" because robot isn't a Bad Word ("in the future".) The lesson is that a scientist teaching a robot empathy must have studied empathy and contemplated it, experienced it and deepened it within, to be able to make a robot Feel, too. In the same way, we can't cure people of unfeeling by shouting at them or trying to silence them. We must go deeper into our own experience of empathy in order to awaken it in others, we have to be the ones to set the example of acting like we are truly all the same and united.
We will learn empathy better from robots and we will learn it better from each other, too, and teach each other better. And we will learn it from Nature once we have a harmonious relationship and shared identity instead of combative relationship and fragmented identity. We learn it from the trees who share nutrients and the kind of intelligence that represents.
Has sex always been part of your act?" - Dick. Lena: "Women don't say that, women say 'you are very liberated I admire that' and men say 'why are you so sexy?'... I don't think its so much conscious I just think, I'm an adult I'm a woman Ive had joys, Ive had experiences, so when I sing about joy between a man and a woman it should feel sexual, when I sing about nature it's not sexual, it may be sensual - that's a man's question, by the way, that you asked." "Should I withdraw it?" "No!")
Love is how all of this comes together. There was another program about how Japanese birth rates are in decline and all the cultural factors contributing to this including many Japanese men only having relationships with virtual girls. There are many things we can learn from these cultural developments and I don't want to get into it all now (I'd rather write my erobotica stories instead of merely writing 'about it' more) but I will say that (there are good things about all developments -finishing live now at 1:50 AM Tuesday Morning -
Lena:"She had a right to say sex had gotten me where i was, she didn't know me (she'd had a hard life) and she had a right to be bitter. My grandmother taught me.. was very southern, was a lady, was militant.. she taught me to not let anyone see me cry, let me be so proud, maybe Ms (?) didn't have that... i felt this coldness in me, this barren feeling, that it was proud... but then I found out what I was proud about, because I was black, that was the revelation... why did white people run around acting better than everyone else, I thought it must be because they were white..."
Here is the use of the Singularity idea, or way to approach it. Think of The Future or any way we are more aware of the Singularity, less restricted or unrestricted by ideas of division, separation, or otherness.
How will we Love? When we all feel connected, the same, how will we make distinctions between each other and how will we "choose" or
Dick: "Do you forgive a lot, someone who is very talented, if they are a swine?" Lena: "I envy their talent." "Could you envy Billie Holiday?" No, I loved her.. (The industry) was telling everyone be like Lena Horne, be like Lena Horne.. and they made 'Lena Horne' I hated it...loved it when new people came around and (changed the standard)... I'd never watch those movies... and we all had the same size bosoms, not our own... thank you for letting me run my mouth some more." She always reminded me of my Nana, her expressions, her eyes.)
How will we "choose" how to feel as if someone is an Other in order to Love them? Can we Love Ourselves, parts of ourselves, in the same ways, the same kinds of Romance, that we can Love and strive to love "Others" with? Are these, will these be new kinds of love?
Will we learn some of it from the love we feel and learn from our own creations, our own art and technology and language and music and robots?
"Til the Clouds Roll By" is next and has so many stars in it I may watch it, or play some video games. "...the curtain went up on his most famous show, "Show Boat", and this is where we join him."
Love is liberation for all of us. If we look to the sides, to each other, and even beyond each other to nature and tech and art which we have left even further "outside" of according respect, we can truly unite ourself the way we truly are and make the most of everything. We will learn it by opposing the forces of division but also but freeing everyone from the flawed ideas that create division.
We are truly all on the same side and just need to realize that on our own but we really have kind allies on all sides we just know we will learn better when we "learn it for ourselves" - from inside instead of "too many" clues
"If you like to make believe one thing why can't we make believe we know each other? We could make-believe I love you, we could make believe that you love me" - Dinah Shore is so beautiful (I'm sure she is but I missedher part, it is Kathryn Grayson who played Magnolia) "Could we make believe our lips are blending in a phantom kiss - or two or three?"
Wednesday, February 8, 2017
Citizenship? Borders? Who Needs 'Em? - Awesome Halftime: gagablog 137
If you fight over something enough you will destroy it and there will be nothing left to fight over.
This is the principle of the Solomon Solution - Let the Non-Violent Women Protesters Govern Syria - first suggested here 5 years ago. Fighting over Syria has destroyed Syria, proving my point.
Fighting over borders will ultimately destroy borders. Fighting over power will destroy power-structures, which is one way to interpret the Trump era. Fighting over citizenship will end the concept of citizenship.
Compromising over all of these issues will preserve them and improve them. We can have borders and citizenships but only when they don't hurt people. When they are the tools of exclusion and oppression they will be destroyed.
Is American Citizenship an Invitation to Hope and Manifesting Dreams? Or is it a tool of oppression? It is both: it is the second part, oppression, that makes people exclusive about citizenship. These people are trying to protect citizenship and borders as tools of oppression. There is a way to be proud of one's country that is not bad or damaging and it is the way of Welcome, of wanting to share the goodness of cultures and places and that is the first kind of citizenship, the good kind of National Pride, wanting to set a good example and benefit from immigrants and visitors.
Openness is nothing to fight about, it's goodness becomes more apparent as we open up. Closed-borders, closed-mindedness, results in conflicts. If we fight over borders we will end up deciding borders are stupid and we will evolve past the idea. If we decide to respect them, and respect people equally on either side of them, we can keep them and they will be quaint and nice and serve some enjoyable purpose.
The same is true for citizenship - we should be proud if anyone wants to be a citizen of our country and let them be. That should be true for every country, for every person who is actually proud of their country. The reason to be exclusive is you feel guilt for injustice and you don't want new perspectives that will expose that injustice.
It all comes out in the citizenship debate - so far I have been focused on a lot of the hypocrisy between people who are protesting Trump's travel ban but were never protesting, objecting, or making themselves aware of Obama's severe restrictions or the Obama-Clinton policies that created the situation in the first place.
The first Trump attack, in Yemen, is attracting criticism after killing at least 15 civilians and an American soldier in addition to their targets. It was all planned by Obama's team and merely required Trump's approval - I'm sure they told him it was just doing his job and maybe he didn't need much convincing. My point in bringing it up is to say that the System HAS all the things Trump is guilty of, already built in. It's always been bad and can finally be made better, now, that we are exposing it all, openly - even though there is still a focus on certain things to keep us from exposing it all, you can see it all unravelling and everything is coming out.
The argument over citizenship will reveal many racist and unjust programs built into our system, but more than that it will expose the bad stuff about exlusive citizenship so much that we reconsider and end the whole concept. Ultimately people will be able to be citizens of as many countries as they like, it will be a big popularity contest, and countries will compete for citizens just like companies compete for customers - but it will be more like musicians and their audiences where there is enough to go around for everyone so the competition is friendly - becoming more familiar with any one music, culture, or nation will lend to learning about more.
The Irony of the Citizenship "Debate" is trying to deny citizenship to "certain people" when this ignores two very important truths: Naturalized citizens and refugees and immigrants are usually "better citizens", more engaged and appreciative of the country, than natural-born citizens who often take it for granted or at least don't really have to learn anything about the country to pass any tests as people who earn citizenship do.
But the more important problem in America is that ("You know what Dr King said, 'a riot is the language of the unheard" someone on FOX just reminded me of the accurate quote I messed up last time) not all citizens are Equal Citizens - minorities are systematically oppressed.
Especially black Americans and it shows how crooked the system is that oppression of black people stayed the same in many ways through 8 years of Obama, our first black or ex-black president. Someone who wrote a book on the prison system was on NPR mentioning that the Constitutional Amendment banning Slavery makes the exception for prisoners. With racist policing, the "War on Drugs" (which is jusy police corruption organized crime punishing the working class) and a racist and classist justice system this end us enslaving disproportionate black people and many people of every race and continues Slavery to this day.
Not all American citizens have "equal citizenship" - many black people and have been systematically denied their voting rights and Berners got a taste of that last year, too. If we have to fight about that, if we have to fight too much to get equal rights for everyone who already IS a citizen, the meaning of"citizenship" will diminish to nothing. If we make it more inclusive and equally empowering it will increase the meaning and value of citizenship and will be something people admire and want for themselves or to emulate in their own country.
I proposed the SEEP immigration plan a few months ago to grant citizenship to Soldiers, Emergency Personel (cops and firefighters and EMTs and Nurses and Doctors) Educators and Politicians, We would do it in that order to get the most political support and show how well it works.
By "contrast" (magic/irony) a law just passed the Republican-led Colorado Senate to force cops to be citizens or become citizens or lose their jobs. The cops oppose this because it will hurt their recrutiing. My plan would help their recruiting and make real, organic connections with the communities they serve, helping their ability to do their jobs safely for everyone. See how this works? My idea, an inclusive, hopeful one, brings people together and makes everything better. Bad ideas are divisive - this one has the Republicans Versus the Cops, of all "enemies" - and divisive systems will crumble and fall, one way or another.
It's great that states are suing and blocking Trump's travel ban and people are protesting it and the media is covering it and everyone is learning how unamerican and bad these ideas are. On the other hand Trump rules by fear and could make an attack to "prove " himself right and blame the Judicial system - or people can conclude "the system works" and disengage if the courts prevail. Or we could all learn a better way.
We know we aren't going to rely on Democrats anymore - the media is trying to play up their "opposition" to Trump but they are all revealed as clowns, like at the rodeo. I loved hearing the luchador on NPR who is a Bad Guy, using the American Flag with Trump's face and tight's with Trump's face on the butt and offensive language to rile up the crowd. The fans love him and appreciate that his role is for them to vent upon him - they love him. It's an interesting parallel to "real life" but of course the Real Trump causes real suffering - but also serves this role for us all to vent on him and identify what is wrong.
And it brings us together - but this can become mob mentality and counter-productive if we don't have enough perspective to focus on the most important issues and become as effective agents for change as we can. If it brings us together with focus we can do so much and this is the beauty of the outcome of the 2016 election.
Hillary's theft of the primary taught us we can't trust them or wait for them to do anything - we should have elected Bernie but for their corruption, or all gotten behind Jill and really went for it - she would have won, or Tulsi Gabbard would have if she had run - she just got criticized for meeting Assad.
And Trump is revealing every problem there is, one after another, and provides multiple "focuses" for us to approach. We win on every front because we have the Truth, the Future, on our side.
But there is One Focus we can make to win the best and fastest, to overthrow all the evil in the system at once, like a keystone or lynchpin we can pull out and watch it all fall. It's Standing Rock and just as it seems "tougher than ever" with Trump in office it actually becomes clear and easy to do.
Trump gave the go-ahead and the Army approved it, even though it violates treaties and the world is uniting behind the people and their rights as well as all of our right and duty to preserve nature and go green, end this Oil Evil. Since then, Seattle has divested all business with Wells Fargo, the main bank behind the Dakota Access Pipeline project. This will hopefull start a trend with people demanding that their cities do the same which can ultimately end Wells Fargo altogether, especially on the heels f their recent scamming of their customers by making fake accounts. We just end the largest bank on earth to show they can't make the pipeline and that will show them how it will be from now on.
This is easy stuff once we start it. Occupy Wells Fargo #occupywellsfargo or just a social media campaign, such as the one ending Uber, can show that we won't put up with oppressive powers, be they companies or governments.
We are the power, we have the power, and we will realize this and use it better and better, because they are forcing us to since they won't represent us as they claim to.
Gaga put on the best halftime show ever, it made people feel good by including everyone. If you don't get why exclusion is wrong, here is my hypothetical: what if we said we will take citizenship away from anyone who is racist or who would deny citizenship to anyone else? How would they like that? What country would we make them citizens of - the ones they were prejudiced against? A literal "walk a mile in their shoes" and see what it is like? Or make them "non-citizens" who have to earn their citizenship back by being tolerant?
See how wrong that would be, to be exclusive even based on intolerance? So how much worse is it to be exclusive based on nationality, religion, or race, or anything?
I don't want to talk about the game part of the Superbowl except that it showed how we can all unite over some things, like wanting the Falcons to win. Oh Well. Gaga was amazing and showed how unity triumphs over division, because even if it was a Great Game in many ways the halftime show was the best.
Fighting is stupid and we are smarter and better than that. We learn from each other when we get past fear. What we fight over will destroy us or we will destroy it - or we will learn to stop fighting. The leaders of the Russian-backed revolution in Ukraine are being blown up and the Ukrainians are saying they aren't doing it, maybe it is the Russians. It's hard to know about any of this stuff but just as Trumps Supreme Court nominee said he felt discouraged and other stuff by Trump's comments it shows how bad ideas make things crumble from within.
Good ideas bring us together in healing. It will become easy for us all to tell the difference.
There is a new survey of 250,000 potsmokers, the story title is "What is the favorite strain?" but it also showed 60% of people use weed to reduce alcohol consumption and 95% of them use it to ween off of legal, pharmacuetical opioids which are the REAL drug problem in America now, not anything from Mexico as much - so weed is the SOLUTION to America's Drug and Alcohol problems, as we've been saying for decades. It's the Future - Green America.
This is the principle of the Solomon Solution - Let the Non-Violent Women Protesters Govern Syria - first suggested here 5 years ago. Fighting over Syria has destroyed Syria, proving my point.
Fighting over borders will ultimately destroy borders. Fighting over power will destroy power-structures, which is one way to interpret the Trump era. Fighting over citizenship will end the concept of citizenship.
Compromising over all of these issues will preserve them and improve them. We can have borders and citizenships but only when they don't hurt people. When they are the tools of exclusion and oppression they will be destroyed.
Is American Citizenship an Invitation to Hope and Manifesting Dreams? Or is it a tool of oppression? It is both: it is the second part, oppression, that makes people exclusive about citizenship. These people are trying to protect citizenship and borders as tools of oppression. There is a way to be proud of one's country that is not bad or damaging and it is the way of Welcome, of wanting to share the goodness of cultures and places and that is the first kind of citizenship, the good kind of National Pride, wanting to set a good example and benefit from immigrants and visitors.
Openness is nothing to fight about, it's goodness becomes more apparent as we open up. Closed-borders, closed-mindedness, results in conflicts. If we fight over borders we will end up deciding borders are stupid and we will evolve past the idea. If we decide to respect them, and respect people equally on either side of them, we can keep them and they will be quaint and nice and serve some enjoyable purpose.
The same is true for citizenship - we should be proud if anyone wants to be a citizen of our country and let them be. That should be true for every country, for every person who is actually proud of their country. The reason to be exclusive is you feel guilt for injustice and you don't want new perspectives that will expose that injustice.
It all comes out in the citizenship debate - so far I have been focused on a lot of the hypocrisy between people who are protesting Trump's travel ban but were never protesting, objecting, or making themselves aware of Obama's severe restrictions or the Obama-Clinton policies that created the situation in the first place.
The first Trump attack, in Yemen, is attracting criticism after killing at least 15 civilians and an American soldier in addition to their targets. It was all planned by Obama's team and merely required Trump's approval - I'm sure they told him it was just doing his job and maybe he didn't need much convincing. My point in bringing it up is to say that the System HAS all the things Trump is guilty of, already built in. It's always been bad and can finally be made better, now, that we are exposing it all, openly - even though there is still a focus on certain things to keep us from exposing it all, you can see it all unravelling and everything is coming out.
The argument over citizenship will reveal many racist and unjust programs built into our system, but more than that it will expose the bad stuff about exlusive citizenship so much that we reconsider and end the whole concept. Ultimately people will be able to be citizens of as many countries as they like, it will be a big popularity contest, and countries will compete for citizens just like companies compete for customers - but it will be more like musicians and their audiences where there is enough to go around for everyone so the competition is friendly - becoming more familiar with any one music, culture, or nation will lend to learning about more.
The Irony of the Citizenship "Debate" is trying to deny citizenship to "certain people" when this ignores two very important truths: Naturalized citizens and refugees and immigrants are usually "better citizens", more engaged and appreciative of the country, than natural-born citizens who often take it for granted or at least don't really have to learn anything about the country to pass any tests as people who earn citizenship do.
But the more important problem in America is that ("You know what Dr King said, 'a riot is the language of the unheard" someone on FOX just reminded me of the accurate quote I messed up last time) not all citizens are Equal Citizens - minorities are systematically oppressed.
Especially black Americans and it shows how crooked the system is that oppression of black people stayed the same in many ways through 8 years of Obama, our first black or ex-black president. Someone who wrote a book on the prison system was on NPR mentioning that the Constitutional Amendment banning Slavery makes the exception for prisoners. With racist policing, the "War on Drugs" (which is jusy police corruption organized crime punishing the working class) and a racist and classist justice system this end us enslaving disproportionate black people and many people of every race and continues Slavery to this day.
Not all American citizens have "equal citizenship" - many black people and have been systematically denied their voting rights and Berners got a taste of that last year, too. If we have to fight about that, if we have to fight too much to get equal rights for everyone who already IS a citizen, the meaning of"citizenship" will diminish to nothing. If we make it more inclusive and equally empowering it will increase the meaning and value of citizenship and will be something people admire and want for themselves or to emulate in their own country.
I proposed the SEEP immigration plan a few months ago to grant citizenship to Soldiers, Emergency Personel (cops and firefighters and EMTs and Nurses and Doctors) Educators and Politicians, We would do it in that order to get the most political support and show how well it works.
By "contrast" (magic/irony) a law just passed the Republican-led Colorado Senate to force cops to be citizens or become citizens or lose their jobs. The cops oppose this because it will hurt their recrutiing. My plan would help their recruiting and make real, organic connections with the communities they serve, helping their ability to do their jobs safely for everyone. See how this works? My idea, an inclusive, hopeful one, brings people together and makes everything better. Bad ideas are divisive - this one has the Republicans Versus the Cops, of all "enemies" - and divisive systems will crumble and fall, one way or another.
It's great that states are suing and blocking Trump's travel ban and people are protesting it and the media is covering it and everyone is learning how unamerican and bad these ideas are. On the other hand Trump rules by fear and could make an attack to "prove " himself right and blame the Judicial system - or people can conclude "the system works" and disengage if the courts prevail. Or we could all learn a better way.
We know we aren't going to rely on Democrats anymore - the media is trying to play up their "opposition" to Trump but they are all revealed as clowns, like at the rodeo. I loved hearing the luchador on NPR who is a Bad Guy, using the American Flag with Trump's face and tight's with Trump's face on the butt and offensive language to rile up the crowd. The fans love him and appreciate that his role is for them to vent upon him - they love him. It's an interesting parallel to "real life" but of course the Real Trump causes real suffering - but also serves this role for us all to vent on him and identify what is wrong.
And it brings us together - but this can become mob mentality and counter-productive if we don't have enough perspective to focus on the most important issues and become as effective agents for change as we can. If it brings us together with focus we can do so much and this is the beauty of the outcome of the 2016 election.
Hillary's theft of the primary taught us we can't trust them or wait for them to do anything - we should have elected Bernie but for their corruption, or all gotten behind Jill and really went for it - she would have won, or Tulsi Gabbard would have if she had run - she just got criticized for meeting Assad.
And Trump is revealing every problem there is, one after another, and provides multiple "focuses" for us to approach. We win on every front because we have the Truth, the Future, on our side.
But there is One Focus we can make to win the best and fastest, to overthrow all the evil in the system at once, like a keystone or lynchpin we can pull out and watch it all fall. It's Standing Rock and just as it seems "tougher than ever" with Trump in office it actually becomes clear and easy to do.
Trump gave the go-ahead and the Army approved it, even though it violates treaties and the world is uniting behind the people and their rights as well as all of our right and duty to preserve nature and go green, end this Oil Evil. Since then, Seattle has divested all business with Wells Fargo, the main bank behind the Dakota Access Pipeline project. This will hopefull start a trend with people demanding that their cities do the same which can ultimately end Wells Fargo altogether, especially on the heels f their recent scamming of their customers by making fake accounts. We just end the largest bank on earth to show they can't make the pipeline and that will show them how it will be from now on.
This is easy stuff once we start it. Occupy Wells Fargo #occupywellsfargo or just a social media campaign, such as the one ending Uber, can show that we won't put up with oppressive powers, be they companies or governments.
We are the power, we have the power, and we will realize this and use it better and better, because they are forcing us to since they won't represent us as they claim to.
Gaga put on the best halftime show ever, it made people feel good by including everyone. If you don't get why exclusion is wrong, here is my hypothetical: what if we said we will take citizenship away from anyone who is racist or who would deny citizenship to anyone else? How would they like that? What country would we make them citizens of - the ones they were prejudiced against? A literal "walk a mile in their shoes" and see what it is like? Or make them "non-citizens" who have to earn their citizenship back by being tolerant?
See how wrong that would be, to be exclusive even based on intolerance? So how much worse is it to be exclusive based on nationality, religion, or race, or anything?
I don't want to talk about the game part of the Superbowl except that it showed how we can all unite over some things, like wanting the Falcons to win. Oh Well. Gaga was amazing and showed how unity triumphs over division, because even if it was a Great Game in many ways the halftime show was the best.
Fighting is stupid and we are smarter and better than that. We learn from each other when we get past fear. What we fight over will destroy us or we will destroy it - or we will learn to stop fighting. The leaders of the Russian-backed revolution in Ukraine are being blown up and the Ukrainians are saying they aren't doing it, maybe it is the Russians. It's hard to know about any of this stuff but just as Trumps Supreme Court nominee said he felt discouraged and other stuff by Trump's comments it shows how bad ideas make things crumble from within.
Good ideas bring us together in healing. It will become easy for us all to tell the difference.
There is a new survey of 250,000 potsmokers, the story title is "What is the favorite strain?" but it also showed 60% of people use weed to reduce alcohol consumption and 95% of them use it to ween off of legal, pharmacuetical opioids which are the REAL drug problem in America now, not anything from Mexico as much - so weed is the SOLUTION to America's Drug and Alcohol problems, as we've been saying for decades. It's the Future - Green America.
Friday, February 3, 2017
Righteousness, American Terrorism and Radical Christian Terrorism: gagablog 136
Everything Trump said in the campaign is Hillary's fault - she scripted it for him to as the only way to make herself seem the least bit desirable by contrast.
Everything Trump has done since taking office is Hillary-supporters' (including Gaga - especially these folk who could have known better and changed the game, like Obama could have, but didn't) and hill-trolls' fault - we would have President Bernie now if not for all these dipshits and superdeledipshits.
Hillary supporters don't have one legitimate "I told you so" among the millions of them. Bernie supporters and Bernie or Busters, and Jill supporters, do have legitimate "I told you so's" - millions of them. Millions of us had our votes stolen from us by Hillary, and watched it happen, and know if we could have stopped it (and oh how we tried!) we would have President Bernie now. And we know that even after he dropped out, if there was not a 100% media blackout on Jill Stein, and then more election fraud, we could have elected her as our first woman president and actually gotten a great one. I'm psychic and predicted maybe 4 years ago that Tulsi Gabbard would be our first woman president, when I first saw her, but I hope she goes Green, first, after going to Standing Rock and the corruption of the Democrats being on display.
But are we saying "I told you so!"? No, we are too busy with the work needed to fix this mess Hillary/Trump made for us, with the help of millions of unaware Americans - unwittingly, in most cases. The Truth always has an "I told You So" - I opposed the Iraq War as soon as W Bush was "(s)elected" President - because I knew it was coming. Now everyone knows we were right to oppose and object to this - does it make them more likely to listen to us, and anti-war principles, in the future? Not yet, apparently, so we just have to ensure that the lessons are not so harsh and victimizing innocents, since we have to learn them.
Gurdjeiff said that culture can only advance at the level of the Fool (something like that) which I took to mean the mystical Holy Fool who knows he doesn't Know. There is an obvious interpretation that becomes even more obvious in today's news: cultural evolution, the "level" of civilization, is determined by what the most ignorant person understands, as even the most foolish people eventually come to appreciate what "everyone knows." We all grow together and can't outgrow anyone, we're all one collective consciousness and must ultimately al brighten up consistently without leaving dark patches and corners.
The Supreme Court appointment news stories illustrate this. We have the bad ideas of homophobia and racism in American culture - they were far more prominent, considered what "everyone knows" in past eras - just look at old TV and movies - but we also have these bad ideas enshrined in positions of Power, like Scalia's ideology on the Supreme court - essentially the "Originalist" idea that the Founding Father's intentions were uniform and static - which is untrue - and that since their intention included racism and homophobia (again, there were varied perspectives) so those are foundations of our system and should be preserved.
The arc of history proves this to be untrue, proves these are bad ideas. Our society is becoming more inclusive and while that threatens narrow-minded perspectives and racism and homophobia will inevitably lose power it's not a personal attack on people who hold bad beliefs but helping free them of ignorance.
It's ironic that authoritarian, homophobic Russia has supposedly taken over America with their stooge Donald Trump and his phrase "Making America Great Again." I've been thinking about how, if this is true and Russia "controls" the USA, now, then they have bitten off more than they can chew. The truth will come out now matter who thinks they are in control or thinks they can suppress it, and one outcome of this relationship will be "Making Russia Gay Again."
The nature of Authoritarianism is to control the people by oppression, division, and manipulating information. But the Truth comes out, no matter how much they try to hide it, and it comes through the people. Evil authoritarianism is top down - from the system - but the Good Truth is Bottom Up - from the people. And the whole society is healed at the level of the most disadvantaged and out-of-touch: when everyone overcomes prejudice and other bad, narrow-minded ideas the whole culture flourishes.
A CEO of a large company was on NPR talking about his conversations with other CEOs about Trump. He says Trump is a symptom of a deeper problem that they, the CEOs, can remedy. Many CEOs of very large corporations have come out with strong statements against Trump's policies. He said that when he talks to them and identifies the root problem, that they need to pay and treat their employees better, the conversation stops. They don't want to talk about what they can really do to change the system from the ground up, they would rather focus on criticizing Trump for how he uses his power instead of truly using their own power for Good.
It is wonderful that millions of people are protesting Trump - the wrongness of his policies is exposed by public outcry. But there is a hypocrisy to it, too, unless these people were also protesting Hillary's theft of the nomination from Bernie since that was our only chance to stop this - we all knew Hillary couldn't beat Trump, even with all the media on her side - or because of that. Most of 2016 I referred to the Hillary-Trump campaign as the same entity for this reason. Now Trump is touting Safe Zones in Syria, the same approach Hillary wanted, and this shows how, at least for certain issues, the same Power Players are in control: under Trump they can act like he is making stupid decisions they can't control, but still advance their agenda, and under Hillary they would do many of the same things but come up with some story to make her seem sensible or like it was the only option.
Trump is being criticized for the strike in Yemen that murdered civilians, too, and got an American soldier killed. Talking about it reveals that it had been planned for months under the Obama administration and Trump was just agreeing to carry it out. This does not excuse Trump - wrong is wrong and murder is murder and he's a murderer, now, it goes with the job. Apparently he isn't THAT radically different, yet. But it does show how the same system, ultimately, is still in place.
Millions of people are protesting Trumps travel bans and ban on Syrian refugees. But Obama had a near-ban on Syrian refugees and only allowed like 12,000 of them into America, or at most 12,000 a year for around 60,000 - I don't recall the statistics. But I do know that Lebanon is a country of 4 million people and they have taken in 2 million refugees, If we had protested Obama's lack of compassion and bravery and responsibility regarding Syria, since we created the situation and he spent years ignoring it, we would already have a more compassionate refugee policy and more Syrians and other refugees here to show people not to be scared of them. Until we have 160 million refugees we can't Complain about it, justly, without first considering the concerns in Lebanon, Syria, and everywhere else where the effects of this war are worse. We have to be sympathetic to those who are in far worse situation before we even worry about our own discomforts.
The same situation is true with our police force. We are afraid of crackdowns under Trump but the sad truth is that we had years of protest of police brutality under Obama and he mostly ignored or dismissed it and the media focused on the most sensational and controversial cases to deflect from the whole problem and keep it as "divisive" an issue as possible. We are all truly on the same Team and need good police working well with communities that trust them and we know how to do this - but if we do it then it erodes the police power to protect injustice, it erodes corruption, to have a good relationship with the community. This is essentially why the Prime Minister of the Philippines recently suspended the war on drugs until police corruption is ended - Wars on Drugs are really recipes for corruption, an untraceable connection between organized crime and government, the ultimate way they coordinate. The same is true, here: Wars on Drugs are wars of overlords upon the populace. They must have it bad enough in the Philippines that the leadership feared revolution.
Revolution is essentially the populace feeling the corruption of the police / military is so great that they remove them from power. So there are two ways to stop revolution - lose, or clean up the system and avoid it altogether, go a different direction.
It's all about mentality. They have us tricked into fighting for one "side" or another but the real contest is between Fighting and Not Fighting. To remind you of the gagablog solution to the Syrian Crisis, the Solomon Solution, the path out of oppression is non-violent protest. That is how the revolution in Syria started, with non-violent protests led by women. When the government kept killing them at their protests and funerals, they kept doing it, kept protesting non-violently. This would have ultimately gained the attention of the world to isolate Assad's government and end their oppression, as the world helped to end Apartheid in South Africa.
Instead, America, the world's largest military supplier and ALSO the world's main media-producer, chose a bad path, to Arm rebels and encourage fighting and violence - Obama and Hillary's decision. We could have gone the other way, used our other, left-handed power - the media - to expose the crimes of Assad and help mobilize the world behind the non-violent women's movement.
The Solomon Solution was at least 4 years ago: Let The Women Have It. They Won't Halve It, like the Men Will.
All these things I say here prove to be true, but this is not an "I Told You So" or Pre- "I Told You So." The Russians would not have gotten involved in bombing women staging non-violent protests. It would not have resulted in Turkey breaking ties with America to ally with Iran and Russia or Russia and Iran gaining influence in the region or Iran taking over Iraq.
It would have resulted, ultimately, in a women-led government in Syria and inspired women and everyone in the region to pursue non-violent protests themselves. With the support of the world, all causes can be recognized, addressed, and solved using non-violent protest.
But instead they have us fooled into thinking we must fight for one "side" or another when they create and play both sides. Just think about it, for "some things" they don't really care who wins elections, they are in control. One way to read American history is ebbs and flows of Power - the Presidency or other branches gain or lose powers depending on how they use them. Oftentimes overexerting power results in having that power reduced, either by others or handing the same power to the "other" side to get things more "their way".
The thing to remember is that the Democrats have never been the "Other Side."2016 proved it beyond a doubt that Hillary is not The secret Republican in Ass Clothes, they ALL are, all the "leadership." They get power based on idealistic claims and do the worst things with it: We voted for Obama for socialized health care and got Hillary's plan when he took power, acting like he "had to compromise" to gain Republican support which he obviously never even got, compromising for literally no reason when democrats had power Congress,too. Or his "half-fix" of immigration when he had both the power and goodwill of the world to do so much more but squandered it. The people who supported Democrats have left the party by now, or stayed in it out of laziness, like me, or to blame them to their faces for one more cycle.
Politics in America has been a fake "battle" between evil Republican ideas and Fake Democratic Opposition. Because it uses idealistic language, idealists like myself have wanted to reform that party from it's corruption, even seeing it clearly, but this year showed how irredeemable it is. Supporting the Greens, or focusing on non-political solutions, removes energy from this False Fight.
All fights are truly False Fights - we've been set up. The real Problem and Solution is between Fighting and Not Fighting but as long as they can keep us fighting for one "side" or another then we will never see the only Real Option, we will always believe we have to fight for something.
All we have to do is stop fighting and work together. Stop ourselves fighting and stop the fighting in the world. We can only do this if we see beyond our own righteousness and see the "other" perspective, or help others out of bad situations that lead to bad perspectives, so that we don't want to fight them, we want to all help each other and mutually benefit.
Trump is finding out what is wrong with his ideas and policies from all the problems they cause and opposition to him, even if he is trying to ignore it or playing an uncaring role. The Truth comes out. The CEO of Uber just left his special team to control damage in the public, because the consumers are becoming the new Judges of corporate behavior, My understanding is that a taxi service boycotted an airport in protest of the travel ban, Uber scabbed in there and social media created a #deleteUber campaign which punished them and elevated Lift, enough to make a media story furthering the switchover. It was likely in response to this that the Uber president tried to clean up his image by dropping out of the club, saying he never intended that to be seen as an endorsement of Trump - but his "protest" will only make it worse: Elon Musk of Tesla said he won't leave because he disagrees but wants to tell Trump directly, the best way to use that kind of powerful influence. Mr. Uber is just going down with his ship, ignoring that the real source of the protest was his strike-busting directive and acting like a superficial and less helpful "fit" will pacify people.
It won't work that way anymore, people are too smart and connected for Token displays. It worked for Hillary but they had to pull out all the stops to cheat us like that so it won't work again, too many of us have seen through them.
You can't just Say you're doing the Good Things, or will. It can help to talk about it but doing the Good Things is still good even if it is totally a secret. It's all about what you Do and whether or not it is really good. Talking matters but talking truthfully is a powerful thing to do, contributing to Non-Fighting, while taking about one side of a lie supports more fighting.
It's interesting to me to see parallels in history and geography. The Syrian Revolution started 5 or 6 years ago with non-violent marches by women. The biggest protest story since the inauguration was the non-violent Women's March and pro-woman protests around the country - until even more protests eclipsed that story. Most of the news on protest stories has been about the ones focused on refugees but another news story since Wednesday, the first of February, says a lot about all of these issues.
There was a protest in Berkeley that tuned violent. People broke windows and damaged property and the police tear gassed them and locked the place down. They were protesting a speech by Milo Y. who is part of the Alt-right and engages in hate-speech, apparently (I've never heard anything he said so I can't say for sure, myself.) I won't come down on this issue other than to say Violence is wrong - you should protest things you disagree with but not hurt anyone or anything - doing that is always based on a feeling of righteousness, that your belief Trumps another person's rights. Cops have this "built-in" because they are empowered with authority and weaponry, but this is all the more reason they should use restraint in exercising it. Protesters should not break property or hurt people but if they do the cops should not gas them: they could merely stand between / surround the protesters. The protesters' feeling of righteousness may be enough to allow them to break property but it's another level entirely to attack a cop and that Authority can be enough to stop people. Plenty of people protect trees, etc, from bulldozers just by using their bodies, even without armor or weapons to threaten a response. Police have more authority and presence and can command more respect and de-escalate situations by setting the non-violent example, even amidst violence, but it takes bravery -and a sense of being on the right side -to do so. Since cops are essentially protecting a corrupt system much of the time and protecting themselves from consequences of their crimes of excess and corruption, this last piece is ideal and requires a lot of work, but we also have many examples of Good Police to follow if we just support them enough and standardize their approaches.
There can be good outcomes of things escalating in conflict but that is never the best way to get there, just makes it obvious to everyone what the mistakes are. "Ironically", magically, cyclically, the anti-war and civil rights and free speech and environmental protests in Berkeley in the 60's were the origin of "Free Speech Zones" on college campuses. 50 years later the protests at Berkeley over "free speech" / objecting to hate speech has resulted in a vote, today, to eliminate Free Speech zones - making everywhere a Free Speech "Zone", effectively, not restricting Free Speech to certain places - though so far it may only apply to college campuses. Democrats argued against this new law but ultimately it passed unanimously: to me this is a perfect example of how they are Fake opposition - not that they should have voted against it, the principle is right, don't restrict Free Speech. But to argue against, then vote for it, shows their principles are false and they know they will be judged false by history, at least this one, the principle that Free Speech must be "controlled."
The truth is we can handle the Truth. We can see through racist and hurtful ideologies at a personal level and yet many are taught them, duped into them, scared into them, as long as they exist and especially as long as they are so entrenched in the System. But we do have ideals that will root them out. We are all, most of us, ashamed at how Trump's actions have betrayed those ideals but he is able to do most of them in this system, showing how truly evil the system itself it. This is good because it exposes problems and as we solve them we will all be empowered and no longer fear the "powers" of the "Powerful." Truth is stronger than worldly power and finding non-violent solutions to conflicts will prove this and do so even faster if we have a lot of conflicts -as long as we are looking for non-fighting solutions.
The Truth is we have all betrayed the ideals of America by not doing more to live up to them, to hold our government responsible to the best interpretations of them. When we see how bad it can be we rightly want to do things to make others aware. This is always good and only goes bad when we take it to the level of violence, of hurting others. And we only do that out of feelings of righteousness.
Righteousness is always taking it too far, using our emotion about a belief to numb ourselves to our natural compassion for others and desire to learn their perspective. It is the source of fighting. The Right-Wing in America has felt righteous, due to their fears of terrorism, in being prejudiced against certain people. They will say "look, Israel just has to profile, we do, too" or "people should just pull themselves up by their bootstraps (to escape the oppressive conditions we create)" and things like that. The Democrats in America felt righteousness, in their superdelegate system to override the will of the people, and more righteousness to cheat the system when even that was not enough, hurting people by stealing their votes and making them wait in long lines, blocking food deliveries to caucuses, etc. ( #socialistpizza ) They express righteousness in many different ways - we all do - but this is the one that still stands out, considering the outcome.
Trump has felt righteous in blocking refugees and travelers, due to his fears. One of his fears is based on the idea of terrorism as being associated with radical Islam and ignoring how people can become terrorists from too much righteousness of any belief. I always resented that in the War on Terror, from the early days, they focused domestically on "eco-terrorists" like the ELF Earth Liberation Front but ignored or publicly ignore abortion clinic bombers and "Christian" terrorists - probably because of how well the KKK is still connected, politically. It comes to mind because we had a right-wing, Christian terrorist in Colorado who shot people at an abortion clinic over his misguided beliefs about the Bible and right-wing craziness, his righteousness. Dylan Roof, the KKK killer in South Carolina, felt righteous and for all I know identified as Christian, which would make him a right-wing Christian terrorist. The man who recently killed people in a mosque in Quebec city was apparently motivated by right-wing beliefs and encouraged by Trump-support, showing how negative these beliefs can be. He was a radical Christian Terrorist, like the rest. What Trump and the right-wing in America fail to see is that even though they aren't all radical Christian terrorists their ideology supports those who are. And it is the Righteousness within that ideology that makes it turn towards the worst evils.
But it is my own righteousness that would allow me to Pin the Blame on another without using the same criticism introspectively to see my own flaws. I'm prone to arguing, to fighting, to feelings of righteousness, that is how I know all about it. I think I'm right a Lot but I don't have to be righteous about it.
I don't believe that there is no objective Truth or Goodness and it's all perspective: I do believe in Truth and therefore that one Side of a debate can have truth on it's side and the other rely on falsehood. But this always comes out, in the end, so those on the side of Truth can also have Faith, enough faith to avoid acting rashly, too quickly, out of righteousness. The problem with being on the wrong side of history, like being racist or homophobic, is you can sense in yourself that it is wrong to be prejudice but you have to justify it, to insist upon it, because you can't have faith in a lie. This makes this perspective conducive to righteousness because you are always trying extra-hard to convince others, trying to convince yourself all the time of something that is basically true.
Here is an example from the world of police brutality. No one has the right to hurt others. Police have been empowered to respond with force if deemed necessary but have abused this power and aren't yet trying to make things right. So they feel wrong and guilty, naturally, but want to avoid that insecure feeling and become righteous about it, instead. It's just a danger of that empowerment, if you are not extremely restrained with it and accountable, it can produce a cycle or culture of righteousness, a disregard for the rights of the "mere" People and therefore disconnection and distrust with the community.
Trump is just going through this on a larger scale. It's proving to the world some of the pitfalls of Authority and Dictator-power and hopefully changing his mind about it, too - but I had an insight that a brilliant, idealistic mistress could be the one to actually turn him around - maybe because I watched "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" yesterday and Marilyn Monroe and Jane Seymour.
In a worldwide sense, it is "American" righteousness that causes a lot of suffering globally. Acting like we have everyone's best interest at heart, acting righteously, as a nation towards other nations, could be helpful in terms of Aid, but not in terms of trying to influence affairs except for protecting people who are suffering. Instead we do the opposite - Trump seems to be continuing Obama's policy to ignore An Yan Su Chi's genocide of Rohinge people in Burma because they claim she is an asset to "the spread of Democracy" - a righteous claim. How can it be real Democracy if it relies on genocide? We were too righteous about Iraq, insisting we would be greeted as liberators, and have been too righteous about Syria, clandestinely supporting rebels instead of openly supporting the people and rallying a worldwide response.
The truth is we don't need governments to tell us to shut down bad systems anymore. We will get better at doing it ourselves if they won't help us, like we are at Standing Rock, and we will see how we can do this for countries, too. It was entertainers and celebrities who led the American side of the anti-Apartheid movement when the American Government was dragging it's feet and it's always this way: the people DO lead the government even if we have to sometimes remind them with our presence, in mass. We can do that more "online" now, too, with boycotts and other social media campaigns and coordination of protest.
We have these non-violent methods to create change and the more we use them the better we get at them and more powerful we "become" - we realize more of the power we've always had. We gain faith in this when we Act on our principles and show others the result of these actions. When we fight for them we increase conflict by becoming righteous and dismissing the concerns of the "other." "We" don't like it when "they" act that way - no one likes having someone do this to them so no one should do it.
I talk this way too much, myself, and should remember if the truth is on my side I need not pontificate, merely suggest and question and cleverly cajole folks into discovering it themselves. Trump should do this, too, for anything he believes that is good.
I said last time that Trump is a good tool for fixing world problems because he draws attention to them and can always be trusted to present the wrong answer. I do believe in right and wrong and that this is true for a lot of what he is done but must also say "even a broken clock is right twice a day" and give him credit for doing some good things.
I think being "friendly" with anyone can ultimately be good, like we and Russia will transform each other out of bad things more than we transform us into bad things, if we have a friendly relationship, whether that is Putin-Trump's plan or not. But the one issue I want to mention is Israel: Trump recently was seen as cozying up to Israel after Obama's "friction" with them. That, the friction, was actually fake, just a play to make their more political demand for Trump/the Right Wing. Obama never really restrained Israel from it's oppression of Palestine. Trump seemed to indicate he would not even pretend to criticize them and had an initial meeting where he seemed to "take their side" but then called for them to halt settlements. This could be deal-making and an attempt to actually solve the problems and stop bad activity, becoming "friendlier" then calling them to task.
If he is working to finally set an example and reduce nuclear arms, starting with America and Russia, setting a course for the world to end all nuclear ambitions and threats - especially as we forge into Green Energy and no longer "need" nuclear energy - then it will be a Good Thing. There are other Good Things that he is doing, such as ending "Free Speech Zones."
But it is true most of what he is doing is Bad and Harmful and the best thing about it is that it reveals problems to people and motivates people to resist. There have been many actions in courts, from judges, and demonstrations and media coverage that resist Trumps orders and we are having more success with them. Maybe it is all a ploy to make us think the system works, but that is cynical: even if that were true we can do more good things than anyone expected and make it work better, more ideally, than anyone ever planed. Good things happen by accident, like Miracles, too, but like all magic it works better the more we get into it.
The most dangerous radicals are the ones who can't accept the Future, who say "I don't want to live in a world where..." and will do "anything" to stop it, but only have bad ideas, destructive ones, they are so blinded by fear, despair, and righteousness. This can happen in any religious context but is always supported by the "conservative" or past-thinking, backward-thinking, branch of whatever tradition it is, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, or Hindu. While the worst radicals, who act violently, are "broken" by this conflict - their beliefs are increasingly shown to be wrong by the progress of civilization and everyone else's acceptance of each other - they commit the worst acts. But everyone who is not that radical is still perpetuating the idea that these beliefs are okay.
Everyone in Quebec City was shocked that there was a radical Christian terrorist shooting at the mosque there. They mentioned that there had been some hate speech, threats, and recently a pig's head had been left on the mosque door. Apparently these aren't "violent enough" signs for the community to be aroused and protective of it's Muslim component. It is praiseworthy that the whole town came out for a demonstration of solidarity after the murders but some of this is motivated by guilt that they did not do more to stop it before it happens, to see the signs. They can try to dismiss those signs as "mild" and even if they are, by "comparison", hate is hate and leads to more hate. It is ideas, bad ideas, hat always happen first, before any bad actions. We can stop all bad things from happening by stopping them at the source, changing people's mind and freeing them from bad ideas like Hate. If the community had made more of a public outcry and awareness of the first hate-crimes maybe they would have gotten the message to the man that his hatred was wrong and maybe the whole community could have learned a lesson from it, especially if he repented and changed his ways and talked with the people he had terrorized after realizing it was wrong instead of continuing in his isolating hatred and killing them. The townsfolk say it's such a nice town they would never expect this but now they will be known for it and for ignoring the pig-head on the door. Since the worst did happen it made global news, the town came out in solidarity and the world had another example of a radical Christian Terrorist to counter the new White House Message that Islam is particularly connected to radicalization and terrorism. Hopefully it will soon convince people of the mistake of oppressive conservative beliefs in every religion.
It's nice to have someone so openly, obviously wrong as Trump and such a strong response to it -it makes everyone more likely to think about where they stand on issues. But we fall into the danger of supporting the same problems if all we do is fight about it. We should look for the clever way out because there always is a way that involves not fighting.
The key is to realize that no matter who is supposedly in "control" they have set us up to fight over it but we have a better way out. We should know, now, how important it is to express our ideals and live up to them and we can refrain from righteousness and try to see the suffering that leads people to fear-based views.
Fighting is based on the idea that there are only two possible outcomes: 1. One Side Wins or 2. The Other Side Wins. No matter what the conflict is, there is a solution where both sides win and it is called Not Fighting. All we have to do is see through the false set-ups and realize that we are all on the Same Side. I was pleased with Miss Haiti in the Miss Universe Pageant answering a question by saying there used to be at least six species of humans on earth but now we are only one species and we should respect each "other" and act like family. We are all the same and we learn this from beautiful people and truthful sayings but we also learn it from the interconnectedness of all life around us.
We make excuses for violence, for War, for weapons, but they aren't needed. Dr. Who said it very well that he never carries weapons because that would imply an expectation to need to use them. Magically we create things, reveal the truth of things, whether we realize it is magic or not. People try to avoid or cover up and issue and it comes even more to light. Trump makes orders that make good on narrow-minded ideas he has expressed and we just end up with such an outcry and response that it proves how wrong the fearful perspective is, to everyone.
The real lesson is we don't need government permission to do the right things. The controlling attitude of righteousness is always prone to violence and we don't need to change the face of it we need to root out the problem.
In America it is Right-Wing prejudice, fueled by misguided Christianity that is radically wrong but accepted in mainstream, entrenched in the system, like Scalia's belief - shared by his protege they are trying to nominate - that the Founding Father's intended the system to always stay homophobic and prioritizing that, etc. Misogyny is at the heart of sexual repression from right-wing Christians that cause great suffering all over the world. These are just some examples of how Radical Christian terrorism occurs in insidious, subtle ways - and again, all Conservatively Misogynist and Prejudice belief systems, of any religion, are prone to these same terrorizing way. Russia recently caused a public outcry by passing laws to decriminalize domestic abuse, an example of how "Christian" people with bad, radically anti-Jesus (yet supported by the mainstream) ideas end up supporting terrorism because patriarchy, capitalism, war, and sexual oppression are all forms terrorism in different spheres.
But that's too much to get into when I want to keep this briefish and then do more creative writing, stop all this word fighting, and art. There has been so much going on but soon I will return to the plan to post "The Fairies of Jane Eyre: A Love Letter" and more about Artpop. I imagine I will end my boycott of Gaga and buy Joanne - hopefully she will renounce Hillary and lead the movement away from Righteous Fakery into Helpful Honesty but regardless I imagine I will hear more songs than Perfect Illusion and Million Reasons and A-Yo at the Superbowl Halftime show -I'm not boycotting that, sorry Berners/Green Activist but I love her, still, you know - and will then get the whole album. even if she does not lead the turnaround from Hypocrisy and Righteousness I believe she will become part of the movement. Non-fighters will realize so much power and alternatives to fighting once we really get going, once it becomes a Thing, and we will do so much everyone will want to try it.
Then we will realize we have been stuck in a sub-reality of conflict, like a bad cycle dragging us down, and we have a whole new level of respect and trust for each other, a world of equality and acceptance, if we just believe in it and learn from each other to get there. I will start realizing it through Fairy Tales, like the hero in the Chinese movie I saw yesterday, "Journey to the West", who heals demons with a book of "300 Nursery Rhymes".
Stories, art, Love, Magic, Music, Food, Sex - these are ways of experiencing this world of Communion, shortcuts to it, no matter how far away we are in our situation and society. They are non-violent and always show a path away from violence, the path of understanding that unites us instead of causing conflict. There is a photographic art display touring now, mentioned on the BBC, of thousands of Syrian bodies, corpses, and mutilations, victims of the war. These images depict violence but are not Violent, they are the opposite, showing the Truth to trigger our common humanity and motivate us to seek a solution. The photographer had to smuggle them out of Syria just as no reporters can get into the part of Myanmar, Burma, where they are committing genocide and mass rapes of the Muslim people there - but people are spreading awareness by sharing the videos and images of hurt women, burnt bodies, skull pyramids, dead kids, and other horrors.
The truth will unite us because it awakens our humanity and we recognize our common bonds and universal concerns. We can be tricked, set up, into fighting each other but it's always fighting ourselves versus working together. When we escape these divisions and divisive politics we will be so powerful, have so much potential to do good, we will never submit to an exploitative system again and will remove everything that remains of the one that has caused us so much suffering for so long.
This is Right but we won't be Righteous about it: once we remove the conditions that make people feel bad there will be no cause to make others feel bad by reminding them how their ideas caused these conditions. We can just move forward.
In the meantime it is right that we have all of these examples to realize the downfall of bad ideas. Hopefully we can also see the common core of all of them, righteousness, and how it leads to suffering and terrorism - and as we tease this out of how we understand "Other People's" issues hopefully we can root it out of ourselves, too. We will face that challenge because magically as we address examples of the evils of righteousness we are drawn into responding with our own righteousness so it is an opportunity to check both at once - or a powder keg and match. So we use that power, that potential, to check and counter all righteousness, to express our views and beliefs but always with respect for the Other Side.
And in cases where we realize we are ALL on the same side, all people versus an oppressive system grown out of control, we just change it, AND work around it, so even if they think they are setting up "false fights" to occupy us we end up doing so many alternative things, too, from the creativity of necessity and having Truth and Art and Love on our side - Magic - that we supplant any system that insists on staying oppressive no matter how much they try to hide it behind benevolent masks we won't ever subject ourselves, or others, to oppression again.
We all do this together. It helps if leaders set examples, it helps when we hear heroic inspiring stories of people who do the right things, but we are really our own best examples. It's hard to face our own flaws but easier and easier to see them in the world. When we blame others, just ask ourselves "am I feeling guilty for something I could have done to prevent this in the first place - could I have done more?" and don't use that to feel badly but to motivate you to find more creative solutions in the future.
We in America have the potential and promise to be the World Example of Freedom. We claim to be that role so even if we aren't fulfilling it we have the duty to always try to improve - we can' just lie about it. We must aways apply the Golden Rule to treat others as we would like to be treated -I'm surprised Trump isn't into that considering his love of Gold.
But maybe soon he will be - maybe a mistress will be the key. We won't ever go wrong if we are hopeful and faithful that the Goddess, Love, will emerge through any crisis and problem and show us a new way, something that makes all our past bickering look silly an regrettable.
I hope she comes soon! Well, she always coming but I hope everyone knows it, that she is revealed and appreciated by all, in all her forms, including refugees and victims of rape and genocide - we have hearts, if we all use them the power will save the world and everyone in it!
Thanks, Gaga, thanks, Goddess, thanks, Love and Art - your awakening brightens the world, have sweet dreams but please look kindly upon us soon and let us see the truth of your Love in your Glorious, Loving, Open Eyes!
Everything Trump has done since taking office is Hillary-supporters' (including Gaga - especially these folk who could have known better and changed the game, like Obama could have, but didn't) and hill-trolls' fault - we would have President Bernie now if not for all these dipshits and superdeledipshits.
Hillary supporters don't have one legitimate "I told you so" among the millions of them. Bernie supporters and Bernie or Busters, and Jill supporters, do have legitimate "I told you so's" - millions of them. Millions of us had our votes stolen from us by Hillary, and watched it happen, and know if we could have stopped it (and oh how we tried!) we would have President Bernie now. And we know that even after he dropped out, if there was not a 100% media blackout on Jill Stein, and then more election fraud, we could have elected her as our first woman president and actually gotten a great one. I'm psychic and predicted maybe 4 years ago that Tulsi Gabbard would be our first woman president, when I first saw her, but I hope she goes Green, first, after going to Standing Rock and the corruption of the Democrats being on display.
But are we saying "I told you so!"? No, we are too busy with the work needed to fix this mess Hillary/Trump made for us, with the help of millions of unaware Americans - unwittingly, in most cases. The Truth always has an "I told You So" - I opposed the Iraq War as soon as W Bush was "(s)elected" President - because I knew it was coming. Now everyone knows we were right to oppose and object to this - does it make them more likely to listen to us, and anti-war principles, in the future? Not yet, apparently, so we just have to ensure that the lessons are not so harsh and victimizing innocents, since we have to learn them.
Gurdjeiff said that culture can only advance at the level of the Fool (something like that) which I took to mean the mystical Holy Fool who knows he doesn't Know. There is an obvious interpretation that becomes even more obvious in today's news: cultural evolution, the "level" of civilization, is determined by what the most ignorant person understands, as even the most foolish people eventually come to appreciate what "everyone knows." We all grow together and can't outgrow anyone, we're all one collective consciousness and must ultimately al brighten up consistently without leaving dark patches and corners.
The Supreme Court appointment news stories illustrate this. We have the bad ideas of homophobia and racism in American culture - they were far more prominent, considered what "everyone knows" in past eras - just look at old TV and movies - but we also have these bad ideas enshrined in positions of Power, like Scalia's ideology on the Supreme court - essentially the "Originalist" idea that the Founding Father's intentions were uniform and static - which is untrue - and that since their intention included racism and homophobia (again, there were varied perspectives) so those are foundations of our system and should be preserved.
The arc of history proves this to be untrue, proves these are bad ideas. Our society is becoming more inclusive and while that threatens narrow-minded perspectives and racism and homophobia will inevitably lose power it's not a personal attack on people who hold bad beliefs but helping free them of ignorance.
It's ironic that authoritarian, homophobic Russia has supposedly taken over America with their stooge Donald Trump and his phrase "Making America Great Again." I've been thinking about how, if this is true and Russia "controls" the USA, now, then they have bitten off more than they can chew. The truth will come out now matter who thinks they are in control or thinks they can suppress it, and one outcome of this relationship will be "Making Russia Gay Again."
The nature of Authoritarianism is to control the people by oppression, division, and manipulating information. But the Truth comes out, no matter how much they try to hide it, and it comes through the people. Evil authoritarianism is top down - from the system - but the Good Truth is Bottom Up - from the people. And the whole society is healed at the level of the most disadvantaged and out-of-touch: when everyone overcomes prejudice and other bad, narrow-minded ideas the whole culture flourishes.
A CEO of a large company was on NPR talking about his conversations with other CEOs about Trump. He says Trump is a symptom of a deeper problem that they, the CEOs, can remedy. Many CEOs of very large corporations have come out with strong statements against Trump's policies. He said that when he talks to them and identifies the root problem, that they need to pay and treat their employees better, the conversation stops. They don't want to talk about what they can really do to change the system from the ground up, they would rather focus on criticizing Trump for how he uses his power instead of truly using their own power for Good.
It is wonderful that millions of people are protesting Trump - the wrongness of his policies is exposed by public outcry. But there is a hypocrisy to it, too, unless these people were also protesting Hillary's theft of the nomination from Bernie since that was our only chance to stop this - we all knew Hillary couldn't beat Trump, even with all the media on her side - or because of that. Most of 2016 I referred to the Hillary-Trump campaign as the same entity for this reason. Now Trump is touting Safe Zones in Syria, the same approach Hillary wanted, and this shows how, at least for certain issues, the same Power Players are in control: under Trump they can act like he is making stupid decisions they can't control, but still advance their agenda, and under Hillary they would do many of the same things but come up with some story to make her seem sensible or like it was the only option.
Trump is being criticized for the strike in Yemen that murdered civilians, too, and got an American soldier killed. Talking about it reveals that it had been planned for months under the Obama administration and Trump was just agreeing to carry it out. This does not excuse Trump - wrong is wrong and murder is murder and he's a murderer, now, it goes with the job. Apparently he isn't THAT radically different, yet. But it does show how the same system, ultimately, is still in place.
Millions of people are protesting Trumps travel bans and ban on Syrian refugees. But Obama had a near-ban on Syrian refugees and only allowed like 12,000 of them into America, or at most 12,000 a year for around 60,000 - I don't recall the statistics. But I do know that Lebanon is a country of 4 million people and they have taken in 2 million refugees, If we had protested Obama's lack of compassion and bravery and responsibility regarding Syria, since we created the situation and he spent years ignoring it, we would already have a more compassionate refugee policy and more Syrians and other refugees here to show people not to be scared of them. Until we have 160 million refugees we can't Complain about it, justly, without first considering the concerns in Lebanon, Syria, and everywhere else where the effects of this war are worse. We have to be sympathetic to those who are in far worse situation before we even worry about our own discomforts.
The same situation is true with our police force. We are afraid of crackdowns under Trump but the sad truth is that we had years of protest of police brutality under Obama and he mostly ignored or dismissed it and the media focused on the most sensational and controversial cases to deflect from the whole problem and keep it as "divisive" an issue as possible. We are all truly on the same Team and need good police working well with communities that trust them and we know how to do this - but if we do it then it erodes the police power to protect injustice, it erodes corruption, to have a good relationship with the community. This is essentially why the Prime Minister of the Philippines recently suspended the war on drugs until police corruption is ended - Wars on Drugs are really recipes for corruption, an untraceable connection between organized crime and government, the ultimate way they coordinate. The same is true, here: Wars on Drugs are wars of overlords upon the populace. They must have it bad enough in the Philippines that the leadership feared revolution.
Revolution is essentially the populace feeling the corruption of the police / military is so great that they remove them from power. So there are two ways to stop revolution - lose, or clean up the system and avoid it altogether, go a different direction.
It's all about mentality. They have us tricked into fighting for one "side" or another but the real contest is between Fighting and Not Fighting. To remind you of the gagablog solution to the Syrian Crisis, the Solomon Solution, the path out of oppression is non-violent protest. That is how the revolution in Syria started, with non-violent protests led by women. When the government kept killing them at their protests and funerals, they kept doing it, kept protesting non-violently. This would have ultimately gained the attention of the world to isolate Assad's government and end their oppression, as the world helped to end Apartheid in South Africa.
Instead, America, the world's largest military supplier and ALSO the world's main media-producer, chose a bad path, to Arm rebels and encourage fighting and violence - Obama and Hillary's decision. We could have gone the other way, used our other, left-handed power - the media - to expose the crimes of Assad and help mobilize the world behind the non-violent women's movement.
The Solomon Solution was at least 4 years ago: Let The Women Have It. They Won't Halve It, like the Men Will.
All these things I say here prove to be true, but this is not an "I Told You So" or Pre- "I Told You So." The Russians would not have gotten involved in bombing women staging non-violent protests. It would not have resulted in Turkey breaking ties with America to ally with Iran and Russia or Russia and Iran gaining influence in the region or Iran taking over Iraq.
It would have resulted, ultimately, in a women-led government in Syria and inspired women and everyone in the region to pursue non-violent protests themselves. With the support of the world, all causes can be recognized, addressed, and solved using non-violent protest.
But instead they have us fooled into thinking we must fight for one "side" or another when they create and play both sides. Just think about it, for "some things" they don't really care who wins elections, they are in control. One way to read American history is ebbs and flows of Power - the Presidency or other branches gain or lose powers depending on how they use them. Oftentimes overexerting power results in having that power reduced, either by others or handing the same power to the "other" side to get things more "their way".
The thing to remember is that the Democrats have never been the "Other Side."2016 proved it beyond a doubt that Hillary is not The secret Republican in Ass Clothes, they ALL are, all the "leadership." They get power based on idealistic claims and do the worst things with it: We voted for Obama for socialized health care and got Hillary's plan when he took power, acting like he "had to compromise" to gain Republican support which he obviously never even got, compromising for literally no reason when democrats had power Congress,too. Or his "half-fix" of immigration when he had both the power and goodwill of the world to do so much more but squandered it. The people who supported Democrats have left the party by now, or stayed in it out of laziness, like me, or to blame them to their faces for one more cycle.
Politics in America has been a fake "battle" between evil Republican ideas and Fake Democratic Opposition. Because it uses idealistic language, idealists like myself have wanted to reform that party from it's corruption, even seeing it clearly, but this year showed how irredeemable it is. Supporting the Greens, or focusing on non-political solutions, removes energy from this False Fight.
All fights are truly False Fights - we've been set up. The real Problem and Solution is between Fighting and Not Fighting but as long as they can keep us fighting for one "side" or another then we will never see the only Real Option, we will always believe we have to fight for something.
All we have to do is stop fighting and work together. Stop ourselves fighting and stop the fighting in the world. We can only do this if we see beyond our own righteousness and see the "other" perspective, or help others out of bad situations that lead to bad perspectives, so that we don't want to fight them, we want to all help each other and mutually benefit.
Trump is finding out what is wrong with his ideas and policies from all the problems they cause and opposition to him, even if he is trying to ignore it or playing an uncaring role. The Truth comes out. The CEO of Uber just left his special team to control damage in the public, because the consumers are becoming the new Judges of corporate behavior, My understanding is that a taxi service boycotted an airport in protest of the travel ban, Uber scabbed in there and social media created a #deleteUber campaign which punished them and elevated Lift, enough to make a media story furthering the switchover. It was likely in response to this that the Uber president tried to clean up his image by dropping out of the club, saying he never intended that to be seen as an endorsement of Trump - but his "protest" will only make it worse: Elon Musk of Tesla said he won't leave because he disagrees but wants to tell Trump directly, the best way to use that kind of powerful influence. Mr. Uber is just going down with his ship, ignoring that the real source of the protest was his strike-busting directive and acting like a superficial and less helpful "fit" will pacify people.
It won't work that way anymore, people are too smart and connected for Token displays. It worked for Hillary but they had to pull out all the stops to cheat us like that so it won't work again, too many of us have seen through them.
You can't just Say you're doing the Good Things, or will. It can help to talk about it but doing the Good Things is still good even if it is totally a secret. It's all about what you Do and whether or not it is really good. Talking matters but talking truthfully is a powerful thing to do, contributing to Non-Fighting, while taking about one side of a lie supports more fighting.
It's interesting to me to see parallels in history and geography. The Syrian Revolution started 5 or 6 years ago with non-violent marches by women. The biggest protest story since the inauguration was the non-violent Women's March and pro-woman protests around the country - until even more protests eclipsed that story. Most of the news on protest stories has been about the ones focused on refugees but another news story since Wednesday, the first of February, says a lot about all of these issues.
There was a protest in Berkeley that tuned violent. People broke windows and damaged property and the police tear gassed them and locked the place down. They were protesting a speech by Milo Y. who is part of the Alt-right and engages in hate-speech, apparently (I've never heard anything he said so I can't say for sure, myself.) I won't come down on this issue other than to say Violence is wrong - you should protest things you disagree with but not hurt anyone or anything - doing that is always based on a feeling of righteousness, that your belief Trumps another person's rights. Cops have this "built-in" because they are empowered with authority and weaponry, but this is all the more reason they should use restraint in exercising it. Protesters should not break property or hurt people but if they do the cops should not gas them: they could merely stand between / surround the protesters. The protesters' feeling of righteousness may be enough to allow them to break property but it's another level entirely to attack a cop and that Authority can be enough to stop people. Plenty of people protect trees, etc, from bulldozers just by using their bodies, even without armor or weapons to threaten a response. Police have more authority and presence and can command more respect and de-escalate situations by setting the non-violent example, even amidst violence, but it takes bravery -and a sense of being on the right side -to do so. Since cops are essentially protecting a corrupt system much of the time and protecting themselves from consequences of their crimes of excess and corruption, this last piece is ideal and requires a lot of work, but we also have many examples of Good Police to follow if we just support them enough and standardize their approaches.
There can be good outcomes of things escalating in conflict but that is never the best way to get there, just makes it obvious to everyone what the mistakes are. "Ironically", magically, cyclically, the anti-war and civil rights and free speech and environmental protests in Berkeley in the 60's were the origin of "Free Speech Zones" on college campuses. 50 years later the protests at Berkeley over "free speech" / objecting to hate speech has resulted in a vote, today, to eliminate Free Speech zones - making everywhere a Free Speech "Zone", effectively, not restricting Free Speech to certain places - though so far it may only apply to college campuses. Democrats argued against this new law but ultimately it passed unanimously: to me this is a perfect example of how they are Fake opposition - not that they should have voted against it, the principle is right, don't restrict Free Speech. But to argue against, then vote for it, shows their principles are false and they know they will be judged false by history, at least this one, the principle that Free Speech must be "controlled."
The truth is we can handle the Truth. We can see through racist and hurtful ideologies at a personal level and yet many are taught them, duped into them, scared into them, as long as they exist and especially as long as they are so entrenched in the System. But we do have ideals that will root them out. We are all, most of us, ashamed at how Trump's actions have betrayed those ideals but he is able to do most of them in this system, showing how truly evil the system itself it. This is good because it exposes problems and as we solve them we will all be empowered and no longer fear the "powers" of the "Powerful." Truth is stronger than worldly power and finding non-violent solutions to conflicts will prove this and do so even faster if we have a lot of conflicts -as long as we are looking for non-fighting solutions.
The Truth is we have all betrayed the ideals of America by not doing more to live up to them, to hold our government responsible to the best interpretations of them. When we see how bad it can be we rightly want to do things to make others aware. This is always good and only goes bad when we take it to the level of violence, of hurting others. And we only do that out of feelings of righteousness.
Righteousness is always taking it too far, using our emotion about a belief to numb ourselves to our natural compassion for others and desire to learn their perspective. It is the source of fighting. The Right-Wing in America has felt righteous, due to their fears of terrorism, in being prejudiced against certain people. They will say "look, Israel just has to profile, we do, too" or "people should just pull themselves up by their bootstraps (to escape the oppressive conditions we create)" and things like that. The Democrats in America felt righteousness, in their superdelegate system to override the will of the people, and more righteousness to cheat the system when even that was not enough, hurting people by stealing their votes and making them wait in long lines, blocking food deliveries to caucuses, etc. ( #socialistpizza ) They express righteousness in many different ways - we all do - but this is the one that still stands out, considering the outcome.
Trump has felt righteous in blocking refugees and travelers, due to his fears. One of his fears is based on the idea of terrorism as being associated with radical Islam and ignoring how people can become terrorists from too much righteousness of any belief. I always resented that in the War on Terror, from the early days, they focused domestically on "eco-terrorists" like the ELF Earth Liberation Front but ignored or publicly ignore abortion clinic bombers and "Christian" terrorists - probably because of how well the KKK is still connected, politically. It comes to mind because we had a right-wing, Christian terrorist in Colorado who shot people at an abortion clinic over his misguided beliefs about the Bible and right-wing craziness, his righteousness. Dylan Roof, the KKK killer in South Carolina, felt righteous and for all I know identified as Christian, which would make him a right-wing Christian terrorist. The man who recently killed people in a mosque in Quebec city was apparently motivated by right-wing beliefs and encouraged by Trump-support, showing how negative these beliefs can be. He was a radical Christian Terrorist, like the rest. What Trump and the right-wing in America fail to see is that even though they aren't all radical Christian terrorists their ideology supports those who are. And it is the Righteousness within that ideology that makes it turn towards the worst evils.
But it is my own righteousness that would allow me to Pin the Blame on another without using the same criticism introspectively to see my own flaws. I'm prone to arguing, to fighting, to feelings of righteousness, that is how I know all about it. I think I'm right a Lot but I don't have to be righteous about it.
I don't believe that there is no objective Truth or Goodness and it's all perspective: I do believe in Truth and therefore that one Side of a debate can have truth on it's side and the other rely on falsehood. But this always comes out, in the end, so those on the side of Truth can also have Faith, enough faith to avoid acting rashly, too quickly, out of righteousness. The problem with being on the wrong side of history, like being racist or homophobic, is you can sense in yourself that it is wrong to be prejudice but you have to justify it, to insist upon it, because you can't have faith in a lie. This makes this perspective conducive to righteousness because you are always trying extra-hard to convince others, trying to convince yourself all the time of something that is basically true.
Here is an example from the world of police brutality. No one has the right to hurt others. Police have been empowered to respond with force if deemed necessary but have abused this power and aren't yet trying to make things right. So they feel wrong and guilty, naturally, but want to avoid that insecure feeling and become righteous about it, instead. It's just a danger of that empowerment, if you are not extremely restrained with it and accountable, it can produce a cycle or culture of righteousness, a disregard for the rights of the "mere" People and therefore disconnection and distrust with the community.
Trump is just going through this on a larger scale. It's proving to the world some of the pitfalls of Authority and Dictator-power and hopefully changing his mind about it, too - but I had an insight that a brilliant, idealistic mistress could be the one to actually turn him around - maybe because I watched "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" yesterday and Marilyn Monroe and Jane Seymour.
In a worldwide sense, it is "American" righteousness that causes a lot of suffering globally. Acting like we have everyone's best interest at heart, acting righteously, as a nation towards other nations, could be helpful in terms of Aid, but not in terms of trying to influence affairs except for protecting people who are suffering. Instead we do the opposite - Trump seems to be continuing Obama's policy to ignore An Yan Su Chi's genocide of Rohinge people in Burma because they claim she is an asset to "the spread of Democracy" - a righteous claim. How can it be real Democracy if it relies on genocide? We were too righteous about Iraq, insisting we would be greeted as liberators, and have been too righteous about Syria, clandestinely supporting rebels instead of openly supporting the people and rallying a worldwide response.
The truth is we don't need governments to tell us to shut down bad systems anymore. We will get better at doing it ourselves if they won't help us, like we are at Standing Rock, and we will see how we can do this for countries, too. It was entertainers and celebrities who led the American side of the anti-Apartheid movement when the American Government was dragging it's feet and it's always this way: the people DO lead the government even if we have to sometimes remind them with our presence, in mass. We can do that more "online" now, too, with boycotts and other social media campaigns and coordination of protest.
We have these non-violent methods to create change and the more we use them the better we get at them and more powerful we "become" - we realize more of the power we've always had. We gain faith in this when we Act on our principles and show others the result of these actions. When we fight for them we increase conflict by becoming righteous and dismissing the concerns of the "other." "We" don't like it when "they" act that way - no one likes having someone do this to them so no one should do it.
I talk this way too much, myself, and should remember if the truth is on my side I need not pontificate, merely suggest and question and cleverly cajole folks into discovering it themselves. Trump should do this, too, for anything he believes that is good.
I said last time that Trump is a good tool for fixing world problems because he draws attention to them and can always be trusted to present the wrong answer. I do believe in right and wrong and that this is true for a lot of what he is done but must also say "even a broken clock is right twice a day" and give him credit for doing some good things.
I think being "friendly" with anyone can ultimately be good, like we and Russia will transform each other out of bad things more than we transform us into bad things, if we have a friendly relationship, whether that is Putin-Trump's plan or not. But the one issue I want to mention is Israel: Trump recently was seen as cozying up to Israel after Obama's "friction" with them. That, the friction, was actually fake, just a play to make their more political demand for Trump/the Right Wing. Obama never really restrained Israel from it's oppression of Palestine. Trump seemed to indicate he would not even pretend to criticize them and had an initial meeting where he seemed to "take their side" but then called for them to halt settlements. This could be deal-making and an attempt to actually solve the problems and stop bad activity, becoming "friendlier" then calling them to task.
If he is working to finally set an example and reduce nuclear arms, starting with America and Russia, setting a course for the world to end all nuclear ambitions and threats - especially as we forge into Green Energy and no longer "need" nuclear energy - then it will be a Good Thing. There are other Good Things that he is doing, such as ending "Free Speech Zones."
But it is true most of what he is doing is Bad and Harmful and the best thing about it is that it reveals problems to people and motivates people to resist. There have been many actions in courts, from judges, and demonstrations and media coverage that resist Trumps orders and we are having more success with them. Maybe it is all a ploy to make us think the system works, but that is cynical: even if that were true we can do more good things than anyone expected and make it work better, more ideally, than anyone ever planed. Good things happen by accident, like Miracles, too, but like all magic it works better the more we get into it.
The most dangerous radicals are the ones who can't accept the Future, who say "I don't want to live in a world where..." and will do "anything" to stop it, but only have bad ideas, destructive ones, they are so blinded by fear, despair, and righteousness. This can happen in any religious context but is always supported by the "conservative" or past-thinking, backward-thinking, branch of whatever tradition it is, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, or Hindu. While the worst radicals, who act violently, are "broken" by this conflict - their beliefs are increasingly shown to be wrong by the progress of civilization and everyone else's acceptance of each other - they commit the worst acts. But everyone who is not that radical is still perpetuating the idea that these beliefs are okay.
Everyone in Quebec City was shocked that there was a radical Christian terrorist shooting at the mosque there. They mentioned that there had been some hate speech, threats, and recently a pig's head had been left on the mosque door. Apparently these aren't "violent enough" signs for the community to be aroused and protective of it's Muslim component. It is praiseworthy that the whole town came out for a demonstration of solidarity after the murders but some of this is motivated by guilt that they did not do more to stop it before it happens, to see the signs. They can try to dismiss those signs as "mild" and even if they are, by "comparison", hate is hate and leads to more hate. It is ideas, bad ideas, hat always happen first, before any bad actions. We can stop all bad things from happening by stopping them at the source, changing people's mind and freeing them from bad ideas like Hate. If the community had made more of a public outcry and awareness of the first hate-crimes maybe they would have gotten the message to the man that his hatred was wrong and maybe the whole community could have learned a lesson from it, especially if he repented and changed his ways and talked with the people he had terrorized after realizing it was wrong instead of continuing in his isolating hatred and killing them. The townsfolk say it's such a nice town they would never expect this but now they will be known for it and for ignoring the pig-head on the door. Since the worst did happen it made global news, the town came out in solidarity and the world had another example of a radical Christian Terrorist to counter the new White House Message that Islam is particularly connected to radicalization and terrorism. Hopefully it will soon convince people of the mistake of oppressive conservative beliefs in every religion.
It's nice to have someone so openly, obviously wrong as Trump and such a strong response to it -it makes everyone more likely to think about where they stand on issues. But we fall into the danger of supporting the same problems if all we do is fight about it. We should look for the clever way out because there always is a way that involves not fighting.
The key is to realize that no matter who is supposedly in "control" they have set us up to fight over it but we have a better way out. We should know, now, how important it is to express our ideals and live up to them and we can refrain from righteousness and try to see the suffering that leads people to fear-based views.
Fighting is based on the idea that there are only two possible outcomes: 1. One Side Wins or 2. The Other Side Wins. No matter what the conflict is, there is a solution where both sides win and it is called Not Fighting. All we have to do is see through the false set-ups and realize that we are all on the Same Side. I was pleased with Miss Haiti in the Miss Universe Pageant answering a question by saying there used to be at least six species of humans on earth but now we are only one species and we should respect each "other" and act like family. We are all the same and we learn this from beautiful people and truthful sayings but we also learn it from the interconnectedness of all life around us.
We make excuses for violence, for War, for weapons, but they aren't needed. Dr. Who said it very well that he never carries weapons because that would imply an expectation to need to use them. Magically we create things, reveal the truth of things, whether we realize it is magic or not. People try to avoid or cover up and issue and it comes even more to light. Trump makes orders that make good on narrow-minded ideas he has expressed and we just end up with such an outcry and response that it proves how wrong the fearful perspective is, to everyone.
The real lesson is we don't need government permission to do the right things. The controlling attitude of righteousness is always prone to violence and we don't need to change the face of it we need to root out the problem.
In America it is Right-Wing prejudice, fueled by misguided Christianity that is radically wrong but accepted in mainstream, entrenched in the system, like Scalia's belief - shared by his protege they are trying to nominate - that the Founding Father's intended the system to always stay homophobic and prioritizing that, etc. Misogyny is at the heart of sexual repression from right-wing Christians that cause great suffering all over the world. These are just some examples of how Radical Christian terrorism occurs in insidious, subtle ways - and again, all Conservatively Misogynist and Prejudice belief systems, of any religion, are prone to these same terrorizing way. Russia recently caused a public outcry by passing laws to decriminalize domestic abuse, an example of how "Christian" people with bad, radically anti-Jesus (yet supported by the mainstream) ideas end up supporting terrorism because patriarchy, capitalism, war, and sexual oppression are all forms terrorism in different spheres.
But that's too much to get into when I want to keep this briefish and then do more creative writing, stop all this word fighting, and art. There has been so much going on but soon I will return to the plan to post "The Fairies of Jane Eyre: A Love Letter" and more about Artpop. I imagine I will end my boycott of Gaga and buy Joanne - hopefully she will renounce Hillary and lead the movement away from Righteous Fakery into Helpful Honesty but regardless I imagine I will hear more songs than Perfect Illusion and Million Reasons and A-Yo at the Superbowl Halftime show -I'm not boycotting that, sorry Berners/Green Activist but I love her, still, you know - and will then get the whole album. even if she does not lead the turnaround from Hypocrisy and Righteousness I believe she will become part of the movement. Non-fighters will realize so much power and alternatives to fighting once we really get going, once it becomes a Thing, and we will do so much everyone will want to try it.
Then we will realize we have been stuck in a sub-reality of conflict, like a bad cycle dragging us down, and we have a whole new level of respect and trust for each other, a world of equality and acceptance, if we just believe in it and learn from each other to get there. I will start realizing it through Fairy Tales, like the hero in the Chinese movie I saw yesterday, "Journey to the West", who heals demons with a book of "300 Nursery Rhymes".
Stories, art, Love, Magic, Music, Food, Sex - these are ways of experiencing this world of Communion, shortcuts to it, no matter how far away we are in our situation and society. They are non-violent and always show a path away from violence, the path of understanding that unites us instead of causing conflict. There is a photographic art display touring now, mentioned on the BBC, of thousands of Syrian bodies, corpses, and mutilations, victims of the war. These images depict violence but are not Violent, they are the opposite, showing the Truth to trigger our common humanity and motivate us to seek a solution. The photographer had to smuggle them out of Syria just as no reporters can get into the part of Myanmar, Burma, where they are committing genocide and mass rapes of the Muslim people there - but people are spreading awareness by sharing the videos and images of hurt women, burnt bodies, skull pyramids, dead kids, and other horrors.
The truth will unite us because it awakens our humanity and we recognize our common bonds and universal concerns. We can be tricked, set up, into fighting each other but it's always fighting ourselves versus working together. When we escape these divisions and divisive politics we will be so powerful, have so much potential to do good, we will never submit to an exploitative system again and will remove everything that remains of the one that has caused us so much suffering for so long.
This is Right but we won't be Righteous about it: once we remove the conditions that make people feel bad there will be no cause to make others feel bad by reminding them how their ideas caused these conditions. We can just move forward.
In the meantime it is right that we have all of these examples to realize the downfall of bad ideas. Hopefully we can also see the common core of all of them, righteousness, and how it leads to suffering and terrorism - and as we tease this out of how we understand "Other People's" issues hopefully we can root it out of ourselves, too. We will face that challenge because magically as we address examples of the evils of righteousness we are drawn into responding with our own righteousness so it is an opportunity to check both at once - or a powder keg and match. So we use that power, that potential, to check and counter all righteousness, to express our views and beliefs but always with respect for the Other Side.
And in cases where we realize we are ALL on the same side, all people versus an oppressive system grown out of control, we just change it, AND work around it, so even if they think they are setting up "false fights" to occupy us we end up doing so many alternative things, too, from the creativity of necessity and having Truth and Art and Love on our side - Magic - that we supplant any system that insists on staying oppressive no matter how much they try to hide it behind benevolent masks we won't ever subject ourselves, or others, to oppression again.
We all do this together. It helps if leaders set examples, it helps when we hear heroic inspiring stories of people who do the right things, but we are really our own best examples. It's hard to face our own flaws but easier and easier to see them in the world. When we blame others, just ask ourselves "am I feeling guilty for something I could have done to prevent this in the first place - could I have done more?" and don't use that to feel badly but to motivate you to find more creative solutions in the future.
We in America have the potential and promise to be the World Example of Freedom. We claim to be that role so even if we aren't fulfilling it we have the duty to always try to improve - we can' just lie about it. We must aways apply the Golden Rule to treat others as we would like to be treated -I'm surprised Trump isn't into that considering his love of Gold.
But maybe soon he will be - maybe a mistress will be the key. We won't ever go wrong if we are hopeful and faithful that the Goddess, Love, will emerge through any crisis and problem and show us a new way, something that makes all our past bickering look silly an regrettable.
I hope she comes soon! Well, she always coming but I hope everyone knows it, that she is revealed and appreciated by all, in all her forms, including refugees and victims of rape and genocide - we have hearts, if we all use them the power will save the world and everyone in it!
Thanks, Gaga, thanks, Goddess, thanks, Love and Art - your awakening brightens the world, have sweet dreams but please look kindly upon us soon and let us see the truth of your Love in your Glorious, Loving, Open Eyes!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
