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Re: Dawkins & Other Commissars- This guy gets it!
Wed, October 18, 2006 - 1:07 AMa very astute review. thanks for posting this. this is what i've been trying to say everytime people cry out that religion is the source of conflict, but i haven't articulated it as well as mr. shockley did here.
as for anarchism and decentralization -- the question is, who stops things from centralizing? and in the very act of stopping, do you become a locus of centralization? this is the conundrum that anarchism has to answer very carefully, or else it becomes a child-like dream. -
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Taking on the commissars
Wed, October 18, 2006 - 10:56 PMSo I'm putting stuff together in my head. Here's the context:
Prof. Victor Davis Hanson at Stanford's Hoover Instution apparently goes about as a major political commissar. He is an avowed Zionist/Islamophobe and his skillset includes interpreting the Peloponnesian war for the neocon mind (Dubya supposedly keeps his book by his bedside, BTW).
So we've all heard how Greek city states (balanced between anarchy & order) took on the mightly (centralized) Persian empire and how the West is West and post-9/11 why it must fuck with the East again & so forth. This is an argument that grows well when tended by opportunistic hands and needs to be chopped up every so often.
The first realization that shreds this argument is that the West ended up adopting a mutated version of Zoroastrianism. The historian Toynbee considers Z'ism as the original tradition in which the progression of time was seen as linear. In contrast, the Greek tradition was similiar to the Hindu one in that it held time to be cyclic. As an aside, note how the Christian tradition symbolically refers to its Zoroastrian roots using the Magi.
Also, projecting the present back to past to show that the West kicks ass is pretty stupid. Greece was under the Ottomans for something like four centuries. So what the hell had happened to its indomitable Western spirit then?
Anyway, hardcore communist commissars and their softcore capitalist equivalents have an essential, but secondary role as justifiers of power.
But note how Samizdat did away with the former... -
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Re: Taking on the commissars
Thu, October 26, 2006 - 9:03 PMintriguing points. western propaganda hasn't worked on me for quite some time, and in learning to think for myself here, i also don't buy other propaganda from other sources either. it's very difficult, because outside of my immediate experience, everything is hearsay. i analyze patterns in the hearsay as well as analyze it for tremors of deception and manipulative agendas, so i try to garner some sense of things outside of me immediate sphere. conduits of information are so often filtered by funding concerns, it adds a very thick later on top of what's really going on. i suspect that most people everywhere have a similar sense of dissociation with those in power, a sense of being witnesses of history, watching other people make decisions that might end up causing their death. this pyramid schemes aren't achieving the efficiency of communication and response they once did when we lived as hunter/gatherers, though i suppose there are times when they do.
"The historian Toynbee considers Z'ism as the original tradition in which the progression of time was seen as linear. In contrast, the Greek tradition was similiar to the Hindu one in that it held time to be cyclic."
time is an interesting thing that i think we don't fully understand yet. einstein got us closer, but there's something about it that is illusory, like we attribute this arrow or race track with something because our brains need to. if we had no sense of time, would time exist? i think this is an interesting direction, to consider how a culture's sense of time is related to how they make a living, their priorities, etc. not sure if a cyclic model is much better than the linear arrow.
you know, i think at least in considering american attitudes about time, i would say time is money, but i'd also say that as a result of the shortened sense of history many americans have, that there's a sense of an open horizon, new territory, a chance for growth, that affects the foreign policy of the nation. almost adolescent. though before anyone thinks i pick on america more than other places, believe me i have other critiques for them! like, how could you NOT have learned from your long history!
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Re: Taking on the commissars
Thu, October 26, 2006 - 9:04 PM"if we had no sense of time, would time exist? "
sorry, this is a silly, lazy thought. of course the phenomena our brains associate with time would continue. -
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Re: Taking on the commissars
Thu, October 26, 2006 - 10:49 PMDepends. The physical time's arrow is entropy.
Our subjective sense of time is a bunch of associations.
That's why linear subjective time has the potential to crate a lot of trouble. Avigdor Lieberman "came home" to Israel for the first time! What nonsense!
With circular time, I guess you'd know that you're also tied to a future that you don't know (but gods may) that may also be a past. So your emphasis would be on understanding the clockwork- the immutable laws or dharma.
Maybe it'd keep you from making too much trouble.
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Re: Taking on the commissars
Thu, October 26, 2006 - 11:14 PMi subscribe to a kind of immediatism, where one's consequences are present in the moment, and your ability to empathize and predict the effects of your actions guide your decisions. i don't think we need much hocus pocus to be moral, just honesty, good will, and a reasonable amount of self-care.
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Re: Dawkins & Other Commissars- This guy gets it!
Fri, October 27, 2006 - 9:12 AMthis is a skew to dawkins that doesn't always make sense to me. being an ethologist, surely dawkins sees religious tribalism as just one species of tribalism among many, yet virtually all of his critical attention is placed on religion. i could presuppose his reply, and that would be that religion itself is antithetical to science, and science is our best shot of making sense of the patterns of nature. and i think he has a point there. certainly the human race has accrued a lot of information about the natural world since any of the holy books were written, and not to integrate that knowledge or allow it to overturn these ancient texts is leaning backward in a dangerous way, and won't be tenable at all for too much longer. i suppose as an evolutionist it is most vital for dawkins to speak against religious forms of tribalism and delusion.
i would usually being to suggest that a white british privileged person like dawkins might also wish to detract attention from the sources of his privilege, but i'm not sure i can make that case about him. it's worth consideration though. he has certainly been very outspoken against the war in iraq and the invasion. but wow, imagine if he were to move on to a kind of ethological study of corporate hegemony or tribalism in politics and ecomonics... i'm not going to hold my breath. my impression from his works is that he feels that capitalist economy we now virtually all live inside is a natural result of interacting self-caring algorithms, resulting in a kind of game theoretical way in where we are. this gets tricky, because on the one hand we may use evolutionary biology to understand what has come about and why, but on the other hand, we may attempt to use it to justify a system which happens to benefit ourselves. tricky business.
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Re: Dawkins & Other Commissars- This guy gets it!
Fri, October 27, 2006 - 9:57 AMDawkins as part of a Wried article "The New Atheism"
www.wired.com/wired/archi...atheism.html
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Re: Dawkins & Other Commissars- This guy gets it!
Fri, October 27, 2006 - 1:41 PMI think it's too bad that the producers of the BBC special decided to name it "The Root of All Evil" because people tend to latch on to that and he has said himself that he doesn't think it's the root of all evil, no one thing can be the root of ALL evil..This is just the thing that is what he's focussing on.
I think it makes sense that he doesn't encompass all of these other parameters because he is responding directly to the attack on evolution by the "Intelligent design" movement. Evolution is his favored field and to find it having to fight for validity in this day and age is ridiculous.
I think it's a step in promoting clear thinking that can then spread outwards in regards to other social paradigms and governmental structures.
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Re: Dawkins & Other Commissars- This guy gets it!
Fri, October 27, 2006 - 2:01 PMdawkins is working on another program focusing on irrationality in non-religious areas, claims of telepathy, trying to make quantum mechanics into hokum, etc. should be interesting. -
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Unsu...
Re: Dawkins & Other Commissars- This guy gets it!
Fri, October 27, 2006 - 2:08 PMI look forward to seeing what Dawkins says about that. I posted (somewhere around here) an article about the impossibility of vampires and ghosts. One of the scientists interviewed remarked that Americans were especially gullible about such supernatural things. I'm not sure why that is.
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Re: Dawkins & Other Commissars- This guy gets it!
Fri, October 27, 2006 - 3:55 PMooh I'd love to hear him rip "What the Bleep Do We Know?" apart. That would be so satisfying. So many of my friends mention that ridiculous "messages from water" section as something that really affected them and it's so frustrating.
I'd highly suggest watching the TEDtalks of Dawkins and his presentation on the strangeness of science:
tedblog.typepad.com/tedblog/...kins.html
Much more inspiring than the pseudoscience mumbo jumbo of "what the bleep". -
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Re: Dawkins & Other Commissars- This guy gets it!
Fri, October 27, 2006 - 11:14 PMright on as always, meli. the "water artist" fellow was offered $1M to reproduce his efforts with independent observation, and conveniently bowed out. as you are probably aware, the facelift nightmare scheister JZ knight, who supposedly channels "Ramtha" in the film is actually the propaganda hub -- or schizoid meme fountain, whatever you want to call her -- behind the movie. suposedly several members of the production staff are members of the Ramtha cabal, the same new age carnival barkers who sell "enlightenment in 8 days."
www.ramtha.com/
photoshop + facelift + channeling + enlightenment in 8 days + ca$h = walking anus
still waiting for a reasoned response to "what the bleep." won't someone make a damn documentary blowing that hypersubjectivity shit out of the water please? -
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Re: Dawkins & Other Commissars- This guy gets it!
Fri, October 27, 2006 - 11:22 PMoops, sorry, not sure actually the emoto turned down the $1M, just that Randi wanted to offer it:
"A UK homeopath named Liz Miller fancies that she has discovered why the BBC tests of that quackery were negative. She writes:
I think you will be amazed at the pictures on www.mercola.com/2002/may/8/prayer.htm. They show that as in homeopathy, water can take on energy from our thoughts. This proves that in the BBC program on homeopathy, Mr. Randi's thoughts could have influenced the outcome.
I answered her: "Unfortunately for this theory, (a) I was not present when the BBC tests were done, and (b) I was not even aware that they were being done." Then I looked at that site she'd touted. Amazing.
Try this on for credibility: A Dr. Masaru Emoto, who boasts certification from the Open International University of Alternative Medicine (???), has made remarkable discoveries about "the concept of micro cluster water." Floating along in his muddy stream of awareness, Dr. Emoto began to study the effect of altering water by various factors of "vibration" and "consciousness." These words are immensely popular with quacks, though they've no notion what they mean. Are you ready? He studied water that had been altered by music — healing music, classical music, heavy metal music, and so forth.
And he has "crystalline pictures" that reveal how water responds to these influences! As he says, this begins to reveal that water is alive, that it is conscious, and that it responds to applied force by a rearrangement of its inner crystalline properties. Wow! Ah, but that only got him started. It gets better.
Inspired by these revelations, he decided to study the impact of human consciousness on water and its crystalline order. Dr. Emoto believes he has demonstrated that human thoughts and emotions can alter the molecular structure of water. Now, for the first time, he says, there is physical evidence that the power of our thoughts can change the world within and around us.
We can see the distinct difference, for example, between crystals formed under the influence of the word, "prayer," and nasty hard rock music. How can we doubt?
Dr. Emoto found that water that had been consciously altered by the simple imprinting of a "word of intent," would change. Water that was imprinted by "love," "gratitude," and "appreciation," responded by the development of complex crystals — essentially "snowflake" crystals obtained by evaporation and cooling — and an excellent effect was produced by combining the words "love" and "gratitude," as any fool can plainly see in the illustration. But water that was mistreated by negative intentions became disordered and lost its magnificent patterning. In fact, it often took on grotesque forms of resonance, he says.
Then he really got into the swing of pseudoscience, simplifying matters by just writing words — in any language, of course — on pieces of paper and taping them to a clear glass container to see if anything happened. Positive words like "love" and "thank you" produced beautiful and delicate crystalline patterns, we're told. He tried "You Make Me Sick. I Will Kill You" and he observed distorted, frightening, muddied patterns. We show here the pattern produced by this last phrase. He even experimented with names like "Gandhi," "Mother Teresa," and "Hitler," and the same kind of results occurred. Wow, again!
And, not to our surprise, Dr. Emoto discovered that the water crystals dutifully form up in response to different ethnic versions of the languages impressed upon them. Here's the expression "thank you" in both Japanese and English. You can see the distinct variations, can't you?
Well, if that didn't convince you that Dr. Emoto might not have both oars in the water, try this, a quotation from him in answer to his thoughts on what the crystals are: "I came to the realization that these crystals are spirits." Okay. Where's the door?
Let's spend a moment to wonder about how such a view can be brought about. Dr. Emoto might very well believe that he's doing science. But he's not. He does no double-blind procedures, for one thing, which dooms these amateur efforts, right from the beginning. If he were to be blind to which words were being used to influence the water crystals, his search through the results looking for confirmation, would be inconclusive. I'll risk the JREF million-dollar prize on that statement. If Dr. Emoto wants to win the prize, let him agree to perform his tests in a double-blind fashion, and I predict he'll get fuzzy results that prove nothing."
www.randi.org/jr/052303.html
www.hado.net/index2.html -
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Re: Dawkins & Other Commissars- This guy gets it!
Fri, October 27, 2006 - 11:27 PMOkay, I wrote Dr. Emoto this letter and sent it a minute ago:
"Are you aware that the James Randi Educational Foundation will offer Dr. Emoto $1,000,000 to perform his water crystal experiments under independent observation? I cannot speak for the Randi Foundation, but here’s a link to their “One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge”:
www.randi.org/research/index.html
Please let me know if you decide to move forward with this challenge! It could be a serious advancement for science and for our understanding of the effects of our mindstates on matter.
Thank you,
Jeff Harmon"
i will let you all know if i receive a response, or hear of more news. don't hold your breath. -
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Unsu...
Re: Dawkins & Other Commissars- This guy gets it!
Sat, October 28, 2006 - 12:04 AMLOL!! Good on ya! Think you'll get a cut?
funny.
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straying off the OT even more....
Sat, October 28, 2006 - 2:01 AMDude, I'm so down with Randi. I just discovered him yesterday. There's some good stuff on Youtube and google video. He's hilarious.
I'm sure Emoto knows about it, but I didn't and it's great to know that Randi challenged him. And yes, I'm very familiar with that Ramtha insanity...::puke:: It was seriously disheartening to come into contact with so many people who I have high opinions of having fallen into the "what the bleep" trap. Not only was it bad science...or not even science...it was a BAD MOVIE.
I found more personal enlightenment ( it's a placeholder for a better description of the experience) and alignment of the different pieces of my worldview in "I heart Huckabees" than that mess. Seriously.
On another note or at least the flipside of such woo woo chicanery:
I've been listening to earlier shows with Dawkins, ones with his colleagues about the origins of life, the real nitty gritty stuff that I remember from biology class but even more fascinating (it was pretty fascinating then, too...) and this other on revenge--which was totally great. It's nice to hear him actually not having to try to convince people of this one thing, but talking amongst peers and learning and responding in kind. All the stuff that's making the news these days makes him seem a little fanatical and maybe he is at the moment, but it's just nice to hear a satisfying scientific discussion.
they're realplayer files:
richarddawkins.net/audio/in..._life.ram
richarddawkins.net/audio/di...venge.ram
so great.
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emoto
Sat, October 28, 2006 - 2:10 AMWhat I especially love is Emoto's decision on what is beautiful and what is ugly. The perfectly symmetrical water crystals are good and one's that are not symmetrical and intricate are bad. Maybe I've watched too many of those oil projections the hippies used to used but I kind of like the ones that are supposed to be ugly. -
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Re: emoto
Sat, October 28, 2006 - 3:12 AMthe escape route of purity creates rigid aesthetic standard. it's so ugly!
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Re: emoto
Sat, October 28, 2006 - 4:26 AMI'm scared by the fact that I understood that sentence. -
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This is the maximum depth. Additional responses will not be threaded.
back to political commissars?
Sat, October 28, 2006 - 8:23 AMJeff- Thanks for responding.
But we've really gone off into Dawkins. Without having read any of his stuff in entirety, I'd still say that I'm weary of all-encompassing insights generated by a grant-funded contemporary visionary. The original link took him to task for forcing his theories on the situation in Palestine.
But let's talk about why knowledge gets marginalized? Perhaps you could bring in your perspective from feminist studies.
From my vantage point the Hoover Tower is obscured by a tree, but that's the perch from where the commissariat (including luminaries Dr. Rice & Prof. Hanson) have been reigning over the adacemic ecosystem.
Has the academic left surrendered to the Commissariat? Should I learn ancient Greek to translate Thucydides and argue that the Peloponnesian war was maybe not a confrontation between the West & the East? And how does one convince a basically literate person that the so-called West has adopted an Eastern religion?
I know that there's a lot of noise to be dealt with as well. One needs to deal with wasted minds such as contrarian druggies, conspiracy theorists and other schizophrenics and escapists.
But how does get the word get out? -
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Re: back to political commissars?
Sat, October 28, 2006 - 1:17 PMi wish i were an historian, but i'm not. people like howard zinn and edward said among many others have the knowledge to look at history from different vantage points, not just the "history-makers," the wealthy people who like to think they are the real ones in a world of phantoms. i don't think there's any trick, except that alternative views of east-west relations need to be spoken out; it's a mindshare war, in part. there are many ways that knowledge gets marginalized, and it's important to know them: certainly funders of media distribution are the main bottlenecks. but we are living in a time of more democratized media as well.
one unfortunately consequence of this that i didn't see coming is the opposite of what i had hoped: now, more and more info and vantage points is also creating a kind of info-paranoia, or infonoia, where people throw up there hands and say, "there are so many viewpoints, and everyone has an agenda, so i can't trust anyone." know what i mean? i think in this context, i have what seems like shallow advice -- radicals need to create info portals that LOOK REALLY NICE. good branding goes a long way in this world, as does good graphic design. it draws people into tribal iconography and a sense of reliability.
i wish i had more advice on how to combat lies. but speaking out, looking smart, keeping your cool, and having endurance is all i can come up with right now.
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Re: back to political commissars?
Sat, October 28, 2006 - 1:19 PM"Should I learn ancient Greek to translate Thucydides and argue that the Peloponnesian war was maybe not a confrontation between the West & the East?"
i know someone capable of casting a different light on this. since it's influential, i might ask him to consider speaking out against the mainstream interpretation sitting by Dubya's bed.
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This is the maximum depth. Additional responses will not be threaded.
Re: emoto
Sat, October 28, 2006 - 1:19 PMglad that i'm not coming off as a babbling schizo at least to some people! ; )
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Re: emoto
Sat, October 28, 2006 - 11:27 PM> the escape route of purity creates rigid aesthetic standard. it's so ugly!
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabi_sabi
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