06/21/2012 – 2012 and the Uselessness of Compassion

Shinzen Young: Genuine wisdom or ironic Zen nonsense? 

“Compassion is to share the pain without sharing the suffering.” ~Shinzen Young. 

How can one who claims to be a spiritual master be so oblivious of misguided nonsense that escapes from the depths of  their brainpan? And yet, acclaimed and renowned “mindfulness” teacher Shinzen Young seems unaware of the violence of his redefinition-mangling in service of his metaphysical  perspective. In his attempt to fuse “contemplative meditation” techniques of the East with the “scientific method” of the West, Shinzen Young has been lauded for his “innovative interactive, algorithmic approach to mindfulness.” “Mindfulness” refers to the Buddhist contemplative meditation techniques (Vipassanā) where the goal is to focus on the awareness of the mind and body and achieve knowledge of the nature of reality which then I suppose makes one a “Spiritual Master.”

But why do so many “Spiritual Masters” say such ridiculous, incomprehensible bullshit? Has their “mindfulness” meditation experiences left them with so much knowledge about the nature of reality that they can even see how far removed they’ve become from every-day common sense? Run through the above quote once more:

“Compassion is to share the pain without sharing the suffering.” 

What’s the takeaway point of this sentence? Well, the unintended point made by Shinzen reveals the uselessness of compassion, which is commonly described as an emotional response within a person to the misfortune and suffering of another and wanting to do something about it to remove the other’s plight. But to create a situation where one can safely  share one’s pain without sharing the other’s suffering is like having one’s cake and eating it too. Why would anyone want to share another’s suffering “out of compassion” without getting down into the dirty, painful and equality-based business of removing the suffering for everyone? Because nobody in their “right mind” would want to. It is the human design to avoid suffering at all costs, especially if one has enough money – and it takes money – to keep physical suffering at a manageable level.

But nobody, including Shinzen, would want to actually do something about the suffering of others in this world, or literally place their feet in the shoes of someone’s suffering.  Much better to “feel bad” about the plight of human trafficking or hearing about children starving to death in the media. A brief, cheap, momentary emotional investment called “compassion” is enough for most people.

But one doesn’t really “share the pain”  of others through compassion, do they? And this is where Shinzen misses the point. He could have said something more profound by revealing the uselessness of human compassion – where one could place the total amount of that human emotion one side of an equation against the totality of human suffering on the other side and see how effective emotions really are in dealing with the human condition of suffering. Or he could have gotten down into the shit with the misfortunate  others like Mother Teresa - who despite her existential doubts spent her life amid the suffering of others [1] and could only cope with her own metaphysical doubts by linking her own spiritual suffering and the suffering of others with the “suffering of Jesus.” But that doesn’t seem to be any more effective in dealing with the removal of suffering, does it?

Spouting religious and spiritual language and meditative exercises  to deal with human problems has simply never worked. Using human emotions like compassion, pity and sympathy to deal with human problems has simply never, ever worked in stopping the condition of human suffering. What statements like these do is allow the person who comes across them to become beguiled by the implied “wisdom” imparted. But it isn’t “wisdom.” It’s just ironic Zen-Buddhist bullshit.  It’s bullshit because all statements made from the starting point of projecting a religiously philosophical perspective can only fail in providing real insight to humanity. Buddhism has been around for nearly 3000 years and it’s failed in bringing “enlightenment” to the people. It’s ironic because Shinzen obviously believes in the power of compassion without sharing another’s suffering but he simply fails to understand that such a point reveals compassion to be nothing more than an illusion. Then again,  this is quite proper since all metaphysics deal with elevating illusions into meaningless life-long obsessions – while choosing to ignore and excuse real suffering and despair with pious blandishments and feel-good flowerhat philosophies And now you know what really matters to these spiritual shysters. Forget about trying to find a way to lift the peoples of this world out of an endemic of inequality. What is most important to these gurus is within the relation of their own knowledge and information about the nature of reality to others while making a buck. I can only hope against hope that people will wake up and reject that and choose equality for all and make it happen. But first, we have to stop listening and being bewitched by the deceptive spiritual nonsense these gurus love to share so much.

Note

[1] “Now Father—since 49 or 50 this terrible sense of loss—this untold darkness—this loneliness—this continual longing for God—which gives me that pain deep down in my heart.—Darkness is such that I really do not see—neither with my mind nor with my reason.—The place of God in my soul is blank.—There is no God in me.—When the pain of longing is so great—I just long & long for God—and then it is that I feel—He does not want me—He is not there.—Heaven—souls—why these are just words—which mean nothing to me.—My very life seems so contradictory. I help souls—to go where?—Why all this? Where is the soul in my very being? God does not want me.—Sometimes—I just hear my own heart cry out—“My God” and nothing else comes.—The torture and pain I can’t explain.” Letter to Father Joseph Neuner by Mother Teresa.

05/26/2012 – Is the Mind the most powerful thing in the Universe?

“Uhn.. if I could just think… a bit… harder… somethin’s bound to happen!”

Your thoughts create your reality.

Your mind is more powerful than you know.

Are you worried about something right now?

Are you feeling unsure about something these days?

God invites you to change your thinking.

Miracles seldom occur in the lives of those who do not consider them possible.

There could be a miracle waiting for you this minute.

Please make room for it in your thinking. Thanks.

Love, Your Friend….

Neale Donald Walsch

Wow. The mind has been given a lot of credit by philosophers, metaphysicians, science and religion. Not only does the miraculous mind receive credit for moving things in the universe, it has been touted as creating the universe! That sounds nice but seriously, can we really define consciousness in any other terms other than a vampirous abstraction, or as  generative and consuming energetic of substance –  like a flame devouring and evaporating a candle of wax?  But the majestic brilliance of the flickering light lasts only for a moment until it vanishes into the darkness, rubbed out from existence and from memories. But such metaphors must sound too cruel for people like Walsch when referring to something so God-like as the mind, until one realizes that  there is a difference between “God” and “God-like.” I suppose the biggest difference is that “God” is a mind-created fable and  truth-claim about a unseeable object while the mind is something we are all very intimate with, especially its oppressive, deceptive and ingratiating nature which ceaselessly drives us to erect such titanic monumental altars to worship it.  The mind has seemingly deserved all the praise that we have given it, what with all the wonderful things in the world that the mind has given us, like depleted uranium, plastic soup oceans and genetically modified vegetables (and wasn’t the world clamoring for more depleted uranium, plastic in the oceans and genetically modified food?)

If one would find any benefit to blame whoever was responsible for lifting up such a bully to eminence, we could mention the Brahmanas and the ancient Greeks. The Advaita – the orthodox philosophical school of Sanatana Dharma (Hinduism), claims that Brahman is “knowledge” and everything in the visible world, “eternal spiritual body which is full of bliss!”  He is the Supreme Person! A Consciousness of Absolute Truth! The principle Upanishads claim that Brahman is the infinite consciousness. And how did we come to know of this infinite consciousness? From the words handed down from Vedic literature. You know, from stories. But the Vedas will be the first to admit, the Brahman that can be talked about is not the true Brahman.  Talk about having your cake and eating it too!

The Greeks had their stories as well, but I’m not talking about their superhero gods like Hercules, Aphrodite and Apollo. Their conception of the mind as God was just as abstractly absolute as anything  the Brahmanas cooked up. Anaxagoras conceived of a cosmology of where there was nothing but a formless, cosmic soup that existed at the beginning , until a cosmic mind he called, nous placed everything in order.  As Donnie Darko would say, “Deus Ex Machina! Our Lord and savior.” Anaxagoras never said where is “mind” came from, but you gotta admit, it makes for a great story and it even influenced the great Plato and the Neoplatonists, who also conceived a transcendent cosmic mind as being and thought from which all things emanated. The enemies of the Neoplatonists were the Gnostics, who claimed that the physical creation was the inferior and flawed work of an evil creator and a growing post-Judean sect called Christians who worshipped a crucified man as the Son of God, the Logos, the creative principle made flesh.

And to this day, there are people who believe that the mind within our holy brains, is the most powerful thing in the universe. Good ol’ New Age. Way to keep the cosmic consciousness home fires burning. From this we gather stories about how the human mind, the “greatest force in the universe,” is evolving into achieving “higher consciousness” and increasing our vibration to the point of becoming one with the cosmic consciousness.  Which is all well and good, but goddamn, where does the love-in end, Neale Donald Walsch? Why do you ask us to “make room in our minds for miracles,” for God’s sake? I understand that some of the books you’ve presented appear rich in wisdom and profound statements and that  you made a fortune with them, but did you ever ask yourself whether the alleged contact with “God” could in any way be verified? Did you ever consider that the words you assumed that came from “God” were actually formed within  a secret compartment  within your mind that in no way was connected to any Divine source? From judging the above quote, I reckon not, because it sounds like you are serious when you suggest that “making room” ” in your thinking for a miraculous intervention from “God.” Somehow, according to the schematic of  Walsch,  ”God” is quite limited – and can only act on the human scene through the thoughts of human beings, but only if we engage in wishful, magical thinking. Again, like Eckhart Tolle, Barbara Hand Clow, Esther Hicks  and many, many others who present consciousness as the most powerful force in the universe, they present claims as truths and don’t seem to realize the difference. To tell people to make room in their thinking for a miracle is capitulation of one’s self-direction. Thus Walsch’s claims are not credible and people need to check themselves for the lack of development of their common sense if they buy into this garbage. And that so many people do buy into this trash should make one question whether consciousness is all that “powerful” after all.

2012/03/07 – 2012 & My Reply to a Buddhist

Buddha taught to achieve inner peace. But at what cost?

I received this comment from a reader and I want to place this as a new blog post because it reflects an argument that I’ve seen many times before from various religious devotees. In my earlier post a reader claimed that I was picking on Buddha for and his followers for no good reason.

Reply from esantipapa

““Enlightenment” is a fraud. It is a deception that assumes to know and understand more than it can. Enlightenment doesn’t fail because you’ve applied it incorrectly, or because you are not worthy of it. People throughout the ages have sought it and it and only a few have dared to claim that they have attained it. It would be one thing if Enlightenment actually changed the world for the better for all of us. We can easily see that is not the case.”

Enlightenment is a personal journey. No two people have the same path to it. And as far as it not changing the world, that’s beyond ridiculous. Those who strive for deeper compassion and kindness (to their fellow humans), as a path to Enlightenment, do great things because of their compassion and kindness. Sneering at individuals who aim for deeper understanding of their fellow human, deeper compassion for all peoples, and greater personal-outward kindness is not praiseworthy or intellectual by any measure. It makes me sad to know you do not see how you are right on the core issue, but wrong on the examples, as you demonstrate here:

“The solutions are all here on Earth, not locked away in some inaccessible region of consciousness but within understanding who we are and choosing how we are going to relate with ourselves and each other.”

That IS essentially the concept expressed by the whole of the Dharma (and it is put so eloquently by you). Why are you arguing against Buddha when you express ideas that are virtually identical to the Dharma? You may want to read more about the current Dalai Lama’s life story, he’s had a much better set of translators than those of antiquity, and uses almost the same language you use here. That our compassion is derived from our sameness, and how we see each other. That we have all the tools we need here in this life to further understand one another if we choose to use them.

 

My reply:

 

You say enlightenment is a “personal journey.” I have to challenge that assertion. Have you gained enlightenment? Do you know someone who has? How would one even verify that someone, or anybody, including Buddha achieved it? All we have are stories of individuals gaining it, but as they say, the proof is in the pudding, and there’s no proof that anything like “enlightenment” or “karma” or “the wheel of reincarnation” exists the way the Buddhists say it does.

If people as a whole strove to gain a “deeper understanding of their fellow human, deeper compassion for all peoples, and greater personal-outward kindness” through the application of Buddhist principles and that resulted in a far more sane and rational world, then that would be an entirely different thing. But the Buddha attached a spurious metaphysical component that ended up creating a void where self and the material world is negated. I understand that in principle the Buddhist is to follow the Middle Path, but metaphysical fence-sitting has not brought about a better world for everyone.

Buddha’s starting point within attaining enlightenment has been so ineffective in dealing with the world because the criterion, the foundation, is suspect. Instead of establishing a world based on egalitarian terms, the focus was placed on eliminating anguish and suffering, which are not causes, but the effects or symptoms of the poisonous relationships between people. Did Buddha, as a member of the royalty, denounce or taught that such a social order was beneficial or detrimental to proper relationships within the world? I doubt that he did. Instead, the Buddha focused on meditation and mental stratagems in removing self from the world, which he considered an illusion, anyway. Look at India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, China, Thailand; all the countries that have followed Buddhism to one extent or another. The people who live there have caught hell for a long time. Karma must be something that is defective, because it allegedly is supposed to equalize the human experience towards good and proper ethical relationships. Yet unspeakable poverty, injustice and exploitation exists in conditions that are worse than ever. How would the Buddha explain that?

I do not “sneer” at people who are interested in making this world a better place for everyone – such a goal is what I’ve always been about. People like myself have been diverted and mislead by religious, spiritual and metaphysical principles that have proven to be ineffective, dubious and actually harmful to our cause. Following religious principles and chasing after gurus and special Ascended Masters has made us into dumbasses that has allowed the elites to be able to run slipshod over us for so long. You don’t see them worrying about samsara or dharma, do you? Their lineage continues and continues as if karma only rewarded their efforts to dominate, exploit and destroy.

It takes action to change the world, not sitting on your ass under a bodhi tree until you are an ass-ending master so you can teach others how to ass-end.into their minds. I mean, it just hasn’t worked. Achieving inner peace at the cost of separating one’s self from the world is only separation. This practice has obviously been a defective, impractical and self-interested approach to the problems it alleges to “solve.” And don’t bring the Dalai Lama into this. He is completely irrelevant in the affairs of the world while he sits in a saffron robe placing guru-seekers’ heads in the clouds all day. I mean, don’t equate what I am saying as a personal attack on your belief system. Take it for what it is, facing the truth, as I have faced – that all religious systems lead to one point: deception. We don’t need God, Buddha or the Dalai Lama to tell us the proper way to relate to people. We don’t need meditative states or following gurus or attaining an enlightened state to realize that suffering in this world can be stopped. We only need to release our desire to chase after things we can’t verify and embrace the common sense of universal equality. If the Buddha had spoken about that, I’d be all over it As it is, we have to let it go, because what Buddha represents has not been worthy of following, as the world has entertained the Buddhist perspective for centuries and it has failed completely.

2012/03/06 – 2012 & the Fraud of Buddha’s “Enlightenment”

Meh. He meant well.

“Well, this has been an interesting site. Thanks for helping me find some sanity in some of the rather bullcrappish stuff I have followed over the past decade. I know I have bought and read all of the books mentioned of all of the authors so far and I am broke, unemployed, ready to lose my home, so you figure, who is enlightened by all of this?” – kkorth

Indeed, all the Eckhart Tolle’s and the Neal David Walsch’s of the world pump out their discredited New Age spirituality fictions while passing them off as “truths” and selling them for big bucks to people like you and me, who knew something is terribly wrong with the world and was forever looking for a way to deal with it. As we both have learned, kkorth, reading and applying these principles peddled by the New Age community doesn’t work. It may work for the 1% who write, market and sell this fluffy flowerhat metaphysics, but for the other 99% all we get is a lump of coal in our stocking.

There’s a very good reason it all works this way. We all have been led astray by the assumptions made by philosophers, theologians and spiritualists that there is something “out there” that 1) has our best interests at heart and 2) gives meaning to our suffering. Human suffering is the out-flowing of the singular human condition of necessity. Nobody would ever survive infancy without the aid from others. This condition of needing/requiring aid from others can only come from the network of relationships that are formed by all things in this world. Thus everything that necessity demands is Here. On Earth. The “Power of Now” has nothing to do with anything essential to anything as it is only a refurbished, retooled religious philosophical abstraction created by people like Tolle in the guise of offering a “truth,” who probably mean well, but as we have seen, this doesn’t give anyone any lasting benefit at all.

“Enlightenment” is a fraud. It is a deception that assumes to know and understand more than it can. Enlightenment doesn’t fail because you’ve applied it incorrectly, or because you are not worthy of it. People throughout the ages have sought it and it and only a few have dared to claim that they have attained it. It would be one thing if Enlightenment actually changed the world for the better for all of us. We can easily see that is not the case.

For example, “enlightenment” has long been associated with the doctrines and legends of the Buddha. The fundamental core of the doctrines of the Buddha is the claim that provides an understanding and methodology that allows a person to end “suffering.” But for the Buddha, this cessation of suffering had been personal and it had to include a denial of the physical Here-ness while insisting that there was mental realm of inner peace that transcended suffering (and hence, necessity). This is the fatal flaw of all metaphysics, Eastern and Western. For it is within the relationship-networks of humanity, poisoned by self-interest and the seeking of overpowering others that are the causes of suffering. There is no need for any reaching out to the metaphysical. The solutions are all here on Earth, not locked away in some inaccessible region of consciousness but within understanding who we are and choosing how we are going to relate with ourselves and each other. Yes, the Buddha was correct in a sense that desires and cravings are instrumental in the suffering of human beings, but that arises not because existence is suffering, but because have not learned from what we have all seen, accepted and allowed within ourselves that is reflected in out in the world. Buddha missed the Equality Equation, the universal point that is the key to appropriate self-government and democracy. The application of universal equality alone will end human suffering. People will call this “communism” and “utopia,” but these people have not lost everything yet. Only those with nothing to lose will consider the elegant proposition of political and economic equality. And one doesn’t need ‘the Power of Now” or a Buddha to get there.

 

 

2011/01/14 – The Shame of India’s Child Labor

It is estimated by sources who measure such things, that there between 12  - 50 million child workers in India, the highest number of underage workers in the world.  Children are used in factories,construction, farms and domestic work. While the Indian legislature apparently has laws against child labor, it is seemingly loathe to use them. The children the laws are supposed to protect, still work from sunup to sundown for 20 cents.

In Calcutta, West Bengal Chief Buddhadeb Bhattachayra has said,

“We can’t ask them to stop work because that will affect their families’ source of income.”

What the Minister is asking us to do is look at the practicality of child labor. But this politico is not without heart about the needs of the children being robbed of their childhood.

“We have decided to make them study while at work.”

Great  idea. Even though Indian law forbids child labor, this nutjob thinks it’s a “neat idea” to make the children study while at work. I can see little Siddartham, now. Exhausted from undernourishment and toiling all day in the fields picking cotton and then having to sit down on a rock somewhere to study ought to work out superbly.

In an Equal Money system, this perversion of rationality that allows abuse and exploitation of children will be forbidden, and politicians like Bhattachayra will be locked up for treatment of his apparent mental illness.

2011/01/04 – How Do I Know God doesn’t Exist?

How do I KNOW there is no God? What can one really say about God that doesn’t wholly center on Belief, you know, that thing that people want so desperately to be “true” without any evidence to support such an acceptance of a religious statement.

What we CAN say about God is that it is an idea that people hold within their minds. That’s why no single idea of God is the same, even within the factions of the major organized religions.

All we can do is make statements of acceptance of what we think God may be, which is only the internalization of the constellation of human desires and fears. Without religious indoctrination, there is no path to reach a God. One would never conceive such a thing as a God on one’s own. God is always communicated from one person to another, almost always from men.

My personal conception of God is that He must be able to visibly create in that world. God must be obviously visible so one isn’t fooled into wish-fulfillment or deceptive ‘tall tales.” The only God that I see which fulfills my requirements is money, for money brings life to those who have it, and without money, one is left outside the circle of life and is dammed to die. Yes, God is an inanimate creation of human beings that accounts for the wealth, poverty, good and evil in the world. I don’t ask where we came from because that question is what religion, philosophy and science has used to dominate and brainwash people into various categories of cretinization. Nobody knows and it is irrelevant because there is a system to deal with that revolves upon money and the coldness of the human heart that has produced all the ideas of God and the manifested suffering in the world. Time to dispense with such nonsense. God has failed to serve us.

 

2010/10/28 – Is Giving Up the Mind the Same as Giving Up the Self?

The critics of Desteni uniformly hold the opinion that the Desteni group engages in a program that brainwashes people through “cultish” activities and “thought reform.”  The specifics concerning the nature of  these so-called forbidden rituals are never enumerated, and they don’t really have to be, seeing how Desteni critics hide underground in the dank caves of their anonymous cowardice, which speaks volumes on the excruciating and resonant fear Desteni evokes within their weak, pathetic minds. They are so appalled by what they see as manipulation and “equal money scams,” that they find it permissible and honorable to engage in deceptive dissembling and smears against Desteni on You Tube, fringe message boards and most hilariously on the Rick Ross Cult Infotainment Forum. Check out the thread on Desteni there if you want a first-hand account how paranoia, spitefulness, mendacity and wishful thinking can turn people into raging maniacs. It only gets interesting when they periodically turn on each other in seeing who’s the biggest and baddest Cult Oppressor of them all. A theater for sick minds banding together for the love of a common purpose. Sounds an awful like a “cult” to me, but I digress.

Hands down, the most vociferous of the smear campaigns by the Desteni critics is that they fear the group has designs on others to “give up the mind,” presumably so that Desteni can turn them into baby-eating zombies-bots or something. It’s a smear made by superstitious and fearful people against a group who is making too much noise about the state of the world and the need for Equality as the solution. Faithful readers of the P:SH Blog are already familiar with the incredible task of establishing Equality against the incoming tide of opposition by people who have no intention of establishing an equal money system. They would rather see the world destroyed and everyone in it through their own greed and ego, than give up their ideas about their precious money and their overpowering desire to be right, and these are the real points behind all of their accusations.

Those who hold the opinion that science can rationally explain everything worth explaining, will treat any view that questions the wonderful and holy aspect of the mind’s role in the life of human beings as the most damning of heresies. These positivists say Desteni wants people to give up the mind, which they translate into meaning, “to give up the self.”

 

The Philosophy of the Mind

Does giving up the mind really amount to the same thing as giving up the self? Does consciousness exist independently of the body or is it dependent? Obviously, for those who equate being with consciousness, the idea of “stopping the mind,” is the same as suicide. The Philosophy of the Mind has batted this question back and forth down through the ages with no clear-cut result. On the opposing sides of the issue are the materialists, who believe everything is physical (including consciousness), and the Idealists, who believe reality is both apprehended by consciousness and is consciousness at the same time. Both East and West have held the latter point of view for centuries. The Hindu god Brahma (or his aspect Vishnu), mentally dreamed an illusory existence into being. In the West, the ancient Greeks held the opinion that existence was subject to a Divine Plan initiated by a Divine Mind. Plato claimed that the physical reality was an imperfect copy of the ultimate reality within a transcendent realm of Forms, or “Ideas.”

The German Idealists like Kant, Leibniz and Hegel, helped form Idealism as an outflow of the Enlightenment, which was the 18th and 19th century European intellectual movement that championed thought, rationality and individualism over religious belief and sensation. They took Plato’s theories and concluded that physical reality wasn’t based on an extra-dimensional realm of Ideas at all, but within human consciousness. The Idealists merely transposed ideas of divine consciousness down to the human level of consciousness. The Theosophists and their 20th century descendants, the New Agers, really took a shine to anything labeled, “divine consciousness,” which they took as God Itself and by claiming such a connection, becoming gods themselves. Scientists, however, really have no clue about what consciousness is or how it arises out of a the aggregation of the physical cells that make up the human body, due chiefly to the lack of scientific machinery that can measure such things. All that’s left to do is to debate.

Of course, the critics of Desteni also think highly of consciousness. They hold the opinion that consciousness does not exist independently of the self. They somehow believe, without doing the most casual reading of what Desteni actually says, that Desteni wants to empty minds in order to fill them with something nefarious and evil. Sounds scary, but it’s not true. Desteni just wants to present a simple, and scandalous consideration that consciousness may not be (gasp!) the best or essential part of a human being.

The mind just may be a liability that only enslaves the human being within limited, repetitive patterns. The mind just may be a liability that traps people through its highly programmable design. Madison Avenue got hip pretty quickly when they realized how easy it was to manipulate and direct the American People with specific placements of words, sounds and symbols. What’s even worse is that people generally understand that they are being programmed though the media – and the dumbasses are still generally “Ok” about it.

I get it. People are free to believe that what makes human beings human is a personality or a consciousness mind. And I guess they are “free” to lob bombs towards Desteni because they don’t like what they perceive as an “anti-mind” message, a message which isn’t often clearly understood, for the critics have decided to follow their programmed response of considering the mind, personality or consciousness as a thing beyond criticism, as the mind is seen as the most essential aspect of a human being. So what’s up with our special human minds that makes it such an indispensable thing?

Well, peeking inside a typical human’s dome, we can see memories, judgments, opinions, knowledge and thoughts that generate hate, love, wishes, dreams and personalities floating about in there. Knowledge and information piped in from the outside from parents, people, the media, school, religion, and nationalism that unceasingly  filled the mind with all kinds of patterns and opinions that go around in circles until death. No new idea can ever be introduced, because consciousness wasn’t is not designed to carry new ideas. The mind’s sole purpose is to recycle and re-evaluate knowledge already stored in the mind.While the mind does allow retrieval and understand “new knowledge,” say, in the form of reading and understanding a new book or being introduced a new concepts by someone else, the human mind cannot think up anything truly new. The all-powerful mind cannot cough up a single, new thought.

This is a puzzle because we see the handiwork of consciousness everywhere: cities, engineering, plastic and nuclear waste we dump in the ocean, and of course, fine art. But nothing truly new. If consciousness was all that and a bag of chips, There should be new thoughts appearing all the time, but this hasn’t happened. This is a serious flaw in the belief of the Supermind. It could mean consciousness could be devolving and looking back at the past. We see this same backward glance in fashion, arts and philosophy. Fashion, as the old saying goes, “always looks to the past.” Styles come in and go out of fashion, only to return to at a later time as a “classic.” Hegel noticed that Philosophy follows this same repetitive cycle, as “a circle of circles.” Philosophy of the Mind created by the Mind running over the same ground within an infinite Fibonacci spiral. Is that the most we can expect of “Divine Consciousness,” a ridiculous, Holy Mental Loop?

It is sad to see people fight for their own limitations. Desteni has concluded, by the weight of their research and evidence, that the mind is not the same as self. There is a life essence that can exist without the mind controlling its host like a head crab from the Half-Life video games. The critics that rail against Desteni for want everyone to kill their consciousness, have read the material through a filter of their own fears, and are intentionally misreading and mischaracterizing Desteni’s points. However, Desteni does not equate the mind with the self, the condition does exist of the self having become the mind. This mind-self will follow the mind no matter where it leads; even over the wall of death. People should really take a good, hard look  at what they “think” is  important.

 

2010/09/30 – A Monograph in Defense of Equality Part 12

Nietzsche, Value  and the Invention of Free Will

In his Genealogy of Morality[1], the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche claimed that the gods were created by mankind to give meaning to suffering. In other words, Nietzsche suggests that morality, religion, ethical philosophy, economics, politics and values were all the result of man coming to terms with the ultimately unknown reason for its existence within a world that provided very little clues. Nietzsche saw it was time to move beyond a religious conception of morality after he determined that morality and its values underwent an evolutionary trajectory, its origins located within the dim past in poorly understood human psychology. Nietzsche concluded that it would be a mistake to consider his modern European Christian world of the late 19th century he lived in – was near the end of history, existing only to wait for the Second Coming of Christ. To continue within a mass superstition was not the only recourse for the advancement of civilization – there was also a postmetaphysical one, where values were not defined by an immature Master – Slave mentality or spirituality. Instead, there must be a new set of values that were based on transcending the old one.

The Genealogy of Morals is hopelessly marred by Nietzsche dragging in the  “dominant blond Aryan”  nonsense to support his thesis, which was apparently a popular European notion at the time, and his “proofs” of etymology to support his idea of moral evolution of the “good and bad” isn’t terribly relevant to his main points. However, Nietzsche is on firmer ground when he links the political and economical to the spiritual within his conception of moral evolution. The wealthy has always been considered “good” (Master) and the poor, “bad” (Slave). The “Slaves” eventually resent their “evil” inferiority and suffering, and resort to religious values like asceticism and religious beliefs to give their suffering and inferiority meaning. The Slaves even go as far of reversing the polarity and to place themselves as “superior” and the elite as “inferior.”  This can be located within the Christian Gospels as the “First shall be the last, and the last first.” The problem for Nietzsche is that he believes that the Slave Morality which features aspects of religion, communalism, democracy and especially equality – as the inferior value system, which he believes saps the natural Masters of its strength, robbing Mankind of its collective vitality.

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The Gospel of Economic Equality

Let’s go back for a moment of Nietzsche’s claim that the Slave moral values attempts to place their inherent inferiority as the superior value. This appears, as I have said, in the Gospel of Mark and there should be no doubt that Nietzsche was aware of its existence. What is fascinating is that in the Gospel of Mark, there is a little – publicized parable of Jesus that appears immediately before he warns his disciples of his impending capture. This parable involves an elite landowner personified as the “Kingdom of Heaven” which ends with the “First shall be the last” punch line, but not in the way one would expect.

1 For the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is a householder, which went out early in the morning to hire labourers into his vineyard.

2 And when he had agreed with the labourers for a penny a day, he sent them into his vineyard.

3 And he went out about the third hour, and saw others standing in the marketplace idle;

4 and to them he said, Go ye also into the vineyard, and whatsoever is right I will give you. And they went their way.

5 Again he went out about the sixth and the ninth hour, and did likewise.

6 And about the eleventh hour he went out, and found others standing; and he saith unto them, Why stand ye here all the day idle?

7 They say unto him, Because no man hath hired us. He saith unto them, Go ye also into the vineyard.

8 And when even was come, the lord of the vineyard saith unto his steward, Call the labourers, and pay them their hire, beginning from the last unto the first.

9 And when they came that were hired about the eleventh hour, they received every man a penny.

10 And when the first came, they supposed that they would receive more; and they likewise received every man a penny.

11 And when they received it, they murmured against the householder,

12 saying, These last have spent but one hour, and thou hast made them equal unto us, which have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.

13 But he answered and said to one of them, Friend, I do thee no wrong: didst not thou agree with me for a penny?

14 Take up that which is thine, and go thy way; it is my will to give unto this last, even as unto thee.

15 Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? or is thine eye evil, because I am good?

16 So the last shall be first, and the first last.

Matthew 20 1- 16. English Revised Version [2]

What was Jesus saying here in this story? Why did he choose the figure of a landed elite as a wealthy vineyard owner to symbolize Kingdom of Heaven? Well, Heaven has the power to disburse money, which is tantamount as a godlike attribute as anything in this world, and this is as true for us today as it was in Jesus’ time.

What did Jesus mean to teach with having the workers coming to the vineyard to work at different times of the day, only to be paid the same as the earlier workers? The vineyard owner looks for those without work and agrees to pay them the same as those already hired, although it seems that he chooses to not reveal his reasoning behind the matter, only that he had the agreement of the group, individually, what each would be paid.

The workers who arrived earlier felt they were unjustly penalized, however, for they experienced jealousy of the latecomers. They felt that since they worked longer, they should have gotten more than the agreed price than those who worked “only for an hour.” They had no concern of the needs of the workers who came later, and yet, they all shared the experience of needing money to survive.

Jesus here is saying something significant in the psychology of the human being when it comes to money. It appears that the landowner may have acted unethically, for if he told the workers he would pay a penny no matter how long they worked, who would work all day when one could easily wait until the last-minute and get the same? But Jesus is shown to not explicitly give the reasons of why the landowner paid the same to everyone. We must pass over such objections in silence.

However, note verse 16: whoever edited Jesus’ words apparently didn’t realize that the punch line of “the first were treated as the last,” doesn’t exactly fit the scenario. Although one would expect that the moral or “right thing to do” would be to pay those who started earlier more, since they expended more effort and actually did more “work,” would it have been ethical for the workers to ask for more after the fact, thus changing the agreement and going back on their word? Those arrived last did not receive more than those who arrived later. The workers were treated equally by Lord of the vineyard, regardless of their imagined “Superior” position here symbolized by the early arrival of workers to the vineyard.

An Equal Money system will create much jealousy within those who see themselves as Nietzsche’s “Masters” that will be directed to those who will be given an equal amount of money to live. We have placed value in having “more” and “less” than others. They will need to get over themselves. A far more pleasant, sane and just world will be the result of such humbleness.

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Nietzsche, Nature  and the Problem of Value

“All sciences are now under the obligation to prepare the ground for the future task of the philosopher, which is to solve the problem of value, to determine the true hierarchy of values.”[3]

We have discovered the true Hierarchy of Value, with the Principle of Equality surpassing all other opinions and philosophies but Nietzsche will not like the answer. He could not conceive of what he asked for because he was unwilling to consider Equality, viewing it as a slavish and weak morality instead of as the key to all principles and all moralities. Therefore he could not gauge the value of life because he operated from premises that destroyed the value of life because he choose the mechanisms of  nature as his starting point, which he then linked to his philosophical constructs which led him away from the point of considering Equality as the Highest Value as the best for all. What Nietzsche wants, a superior value system that transcends the current “inferior” one, is something he can’t have without considering Equality.

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“That every will must consider every other will its equal – would be a principle hostile to life, an agent of the dissolution and destruction of man, an attempt to assassinate the future of man, a sign of weariness, a secret path to nothingness.”[4]

This conclusion descends from Nietzsche’s starting point of Mankind needing leaders who rule over the masses, in accordance to natural law, as Nietzsche understood it to be. We question this as there is no clear or inherent “reason” or evidence that nature is “superior” to man. Maybe Nietzsche meant nature of man was equal to the nature of animals in the environment, but Humanity surely isn’t equal to the natural world. Humanity has done a fantastic job in destroying what is left of the natural world, and that simply can’t be said of nature… yet. The Equality within nature is just more mechanistic and systematic. Nature does not operate within philosophy, morality or rationality.   Nature is a biological computer. Nature does not have a philosophical component that looks for answers to its existence. Human beings are biological computers as well, but we have the burden of being acutely aware of our own suffering and that of others, of our mortality.

Nietzsche is correct: morality, free will and God are all inventions of human consciousness. He is dead wrong in appealing to natural law as a superior system to emulate. We are capable of attaining Equality because we are capable of conceiving a world where the value of life and the value of money are not mutually exclusive.

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[1] Die Götzen-Dämmerung – Twilight of the Idols, Friedrich Nietzsche (1895)

[2] Mark 20:16, English Revised Version.

[3] On the Genealogy of Morality (1887). Essay 2, Section 11 Friedrich Nietzsche (1887)

[4] On the Genealogy of Morality

2010/09/23 – A Monograph in Defense of Equality Part 11

The Commodity of Sex - Is Survival A Victimless Crime?

What is with Neoliberals and their Insane Obsession with Prostitution?

“Prostitution should not be a crime. Prostitutes are not committing an inherently harmful act. While the spread of disease and other detriments are possible in the practice of prostitution, criminalization is a sure way of exacerbating rather than addressing such effects. We saw this quite clearly in the time of alcohol prohibition in this country.

…What makes prostitution a ‘victimless crime’ in the sense that no one is necessarily harmed by it is that there are consenting adults involved.”[1]

Sherry F. Colb, JD, Professor of Law and Judge Frederick Lacey Scholar at Rutgers Law School (2006)

It’s not surprising to see Prostitution defended as a “Victimless Crime.” Professor Colb and Judge Lacey believe it to be a “crime without a victim.” But what about children being forced into prostitution? Obviously, such a broad statement declaring “prostitution is a victimless crime” is not totally defensible. I wonder if either Colb 0r Lacey would find their opinion of  prostitution change if they were forced to trade places with a street walker for a month.

There are many dimensions to the phenomenon of prostitution: psychological, sexual, religious, economics… and it seems that only one could only defend such a complicated thing without the knowledge of these dimensions.

Women endure prostitution because they need money. Men have forced women to prostitute their sexuality as a means of ensuring survival. As being dubbed, the “World’s Oldest Profession,” prostitution predates the use of money, but not survival. There is evidence that the prostitute were accorded favorably in certain eras and cultures, whether in the Court or the Temple. Rajendra Kumar Sharma relates in his book, “Social Problems And Welfare,” that India was home to a religious mode of cultural expectation in the south of the continent, which produced an expectation that a family provide one daughter to be the one of the “Devadasis,” or “slaves of God.” These young girls were “slaves” all right, as they were forced into a life of prostitution as sacred whores. [3] By the time India reached the medieval period, prostitutes became Courtesans in the courts of the noblemen and royalty. Mesopotamia and the Greco-Roman cultures also had their version of the practice.

Some researchers claim that prostitution only exists because of male promiscuity, [4] which is a simple idea easily grasped. The neoliberal will claim that there is a “free exchange” between the prostitute and the john, so there is no “crime.” but I suggest that the exchange is made  unequally – for the john usually has his survival sorted out to the point where he can buy the right to have sex with a woman. The woman is in a different state altogether: she had to have sex with the john so she can eat and survive. Seems to me that there is a crime going on here that is called, “Exploitation,” which is a “right” the neoliberal gives himself through a twisted sense of morality (as we have seen in Mises, Rothbard and Rand).

In an Equal Money system, there will be no need for prostitutes at all, for a couple of reasons: men will no longer be allowed to treat women as objectified sex toys  and because there will be no need to survive as all the basic requirements will be taken care of  by the point of Equality, for prostitution exists only because of men’s lust and the money they created which we’re forced to use in order to buy our survival with. Economic Equality for All ensures that a TRUE “Capitalism is possible – where there is no deliberate-manufactured scarcity and people  are able to fulfill the life that they can be equal to in all ways. The Equal Money system is the answer yet again.

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[1] http://prostitution.procon.org/view.answers.php?questionID=000119

[2] http://prostitution.procon.org/view.source.php?sourceID=000747

[3] Social Problems And Welfare, by Rajendra Kumar Sharma, Atlantic. 1998

[4] Love for Sale: A World History of Prostitution, by Nils Johan Ringdal, Richard Daly, Grove Press. 2005

2010/08/13 – 21 Laws of Manu and How the LOA Abuses Life