Ilya Shambat
2010-02-25 10:55:43 UTC
It was 2 in the morning, and the Lost Soul was walking around the
neighborhood. Firefly, thought he, as an illumined unit of flesh and
awareness flew before him and disappeared again in the dark. The moon,
like a half of brie in the sky, was illuminating the path. And on the
other side of Bradford St. was paradise.
Small cozy houses amid trees that must have been there for centuries.
One of these trees was overhanging the street, its branches and leaves
hanging down, enfolded in cobwebs of fog. When Elvis Costello said
"They lead you half-way to paradise, they leave you half-way to bliss"
he was speaking about incomplete task. It has become up to us to
complete it.
"We could do nothing for them, so we did not" was the false thought of
the time. Except I could and did. It was wanted extinct and buried;
but his love and respect for it only grew the more this was being
done. Along with it grew passionate rage. And when they asked Balak to
curse, and instead Balak blessed, he had been doing nothing different
from what he was now doing.
"Bad crop," was said. "The worst generation." Not exactly, he said,
and he meant it. He loved these people, and he was willing to live for
the beauty that they had envisioned and put in craft. And if he was to
deal with what they were dealing with, he was game.
He was loathe to learn incomplete lessons. A lesson that is a function
of an interest or a worldview was bound to be full of distortion and
fallacy and either error or deliberate lies. It was said that the Jews
were hard-headed - would not they have to be in order to be the people
of God? Would not they have to suspend their judgment from what the
world told them in order to carry on the work? Would not that be
thought psychotic by those who equate each society with the whole of
reality and want to define people by reference to their status within
it? And would not they have to go elsewhere besides the societies that
hate them for insight and wisdom and personal truth?
He was loathe to learn incomplete lessons. The wrong lesson learned,
he reasoned, is worse than no lesson learned at all. And better than
both is right lesson learned, which can only be a result of complete
perspective. To see all the forces involved in a situation, he
reasoned, was higher form of justice than dumping on singular people
who were used as emotional garbage dumps for the civilization. And so
he traveled, read, explored, spoke to people from many cultures and
occupations and ways of thought.
They ask Balak to curse, but he blesses. You might call it enabling;
however the choice was to help beauty to thrive and have beautiful
existence. No change was required; why change something so sublime?
Rather clear the paths, improve the condition, and then she blossoms
into resplendor and sets example for the future that beauty is good
and viable and very much part of the real world -
- when people use the reality of their actions to make it so.
================================
At age 15 he saw essences intermingling and was told this was evil,
but he dived in. It gave information and understanding of what was
happening. If Adam was made in God's image then he was made to create;
and the process required knowledge.
How can there be free will when one is not cognizant of the forces on
which will is based and with which it deals? Such will is not free at
all, but rather wielded despite itself by one or another such force.
How can there be responsibility without knowledge? Responsible action
can only take place when one is informed of the full range of
consequences of one's actions and can thus act in an informed manner,
without unexpected consequences due to ignorance, and can take
responsibility for the result.
Thus: Any concept of responsibility that excludes knowledge and what
it takes to acquire it is therefore a transparent lie. True
responsibility presupposes knowledge -
And true will presupposes understanding of that on which it resides.
After which knowledge it can become truly free.
So he explores. He feels. He thinks. He combines experience with
observation. He trades places all the time to know how life by people
in those places is experienced.
He does not use the will to bludgeon but to explore.
He recognizes the social, political, ideological, historical, economic
conditions - all things that those who blindly mouth the lie of
responsibility without understanding that uninformed action makes it
impossible for one to actually be responsible - would rather people
living under their spell ignore.
Through this whole process, the false foundations of will are eroded,
and it becomes more informed and more free.
And then, with this wisdom gathered as to the internal and the
external world, it becomes possible to use the truly freed will to act
in a truly responsible manner.
===============================
Many societies tell people what to do, but I've observed in some
something yet more insidious: People being told what to WANT. Is that
not a form of enslavement? The first being only circumstance-based,
the second being internal?
Does it matter what circumstantial freedom man has, if his mind and
his wishes are not his own? And to formulate people and then set them
to compete against one another and call that liberty - is that not a
deception?
Is not freedom of thought - freedom of mind - the root of all other
freedoms? Are not man's actions guided by mind, and what forms mind
becomes expressed through action in the world? And to force mental
similitude and then call that freedom - is that not conmanship?
And does not conmanship and deception belie the claims of integrity
and ethics that one professes to espouse?
The societies that derive legitimacy from claims of providing for
human happiness, get very angry when humans within them want something
other than what they want them to want. Such a thing is a blow to
their claims of legitimacy and a refutation, by counterexample, of
their worldview.
It takes someone with an outsider's and insider's perspective to see
such things. More on this later.
=========================================
A golden tree grew up through him as she left him at the Poughkeepsie
train station. And in the morning there were many bikes. The train
rides here and there the little lakes glimmering with reflected clouds
and all-eating swamps and giant Edwin Church forests.
Scott Lasch said that we are morally at sea. So learn to swim with the
mermaids.
=================================
In order to keep the love of the mermaid, the prince had to learn to
swim. She was out of her natural element in the palace. The Prince,
wanting what in the landed mind passed for a normal relationship,
could not get that with someone who came from the ocean and thus could
not completely subsume her marine nature however much she tried to be
pleasing to the Prince. And because she was no longer the mermaid,
what made her lovable to him in the first place was gone.
So the Mermaid runs out to the sea. Her golden hair flies in the wind,
as tears run down her cheeks. She has come to throw herself into the
ocean and end her sorrow and the Prince's frustration.
Then a sound magnetic - a sound warm - a sound resonant - reaches to
her from the ocean. It's indistinct at first; it gets louder. It tugs
on aorta and squeezes the lungs. A face comes up to the beach.
It is the Dolphin, her childhood friend. He reminds her of where she
comes from.
And she knows now. She knows beyond the slightest doubt.
That in order for their marriage to continue, the Prince has to
experience the ocean.
And then he would know her world and understand her.
And the love that he had for her - the love that developed in his
heart when he knew her as the mermaid - will go on, now enriched with
understanding of what made her lovable in the first place.
And they will both be complete, in knowledge of both the Appolonian
and the Oceanic.
And then they can truly live happily everafter, having completed the
task of attaining marine and landed intelligence and become the
fruition of both.
IN ORDER TO LIVE HAPPILY WITH THE MERMAID, THE PRINCE HAS TO LEARN TO
SWIM.
=================================
I like to vanish into people's worlds. I like to experience them from
the inside. I like to feel them and be one with them. And then I like
to make sense of them, using both mind and heart.
=================================
Everything happens for a reason, and some reasons are better than
others.
Are things singularly caused? Overdetermined? Patterns from chaos?
Games? Fractals? Relative? Quantum swirls? Holographic? Karma? Ionized
multiplicity?
What does one do with Einsteinian reference frames that are
individuals' and cultures' perspectives?
Does their being incomplete make them worthless? Or merely incomplete
- convex mirrors, the curvature a function of the perspective - and
thus worthwhile in part and self-defeating in another?
And does not clarity develop by putting an object in middle of convex
mirrors, so that mirrors see both each other and the object, and it
becomes possible to reduce the curvature in all and arrive at greater
clarity of referential frames and clearer picture of the object?
It's hard to remove the beam from one's own eye. But to abrade
multiplicity of perspectives to clarity - by pointing them to the same
object and getting in them different pictures - which pictures then
show the natures as well as the incompletenesses of the perspectives -
there, is a way to reduce the amount of beam in everyone's eyes, while
letting them all gain greater clarity as to themselves and to each
other.
=================================
An inner world is not understood completely except from within. The
outside manifestations are not understood completely except from a
multiplicity of referential frames working in synthesis. A DC ghetto
is seen one way from liberal America; another from Midwest; another
from China; another from Africa; another from Russia; another from
Cherokees. In combining these perspectives is arrived a more complete
picture of the ghetto - and in the process of checking each other also
a more complete picture of liberal America, Midwest, China, Africa,
Russia and the Cherokee tribe.
As these perspectives check each other in understanding of a single
object, their own agendas and incompletenesses - as well as their
virtues - become apparent. An integrative perspective is formed of the
object being studied and of the things that are studying it. Flux is
created; both beams in the eyes and the eye-matter itself become seen
more completely. The result as these perspectives battle each other is
reduction in amount of beam in everyone's eyes.
The multiple pieces understand each other; they see each other and are
seen themselves. The incompleteness in each perspective is corrected,
and the virtue in each perspective is seen, by having to arrive at a
complete representation of what is being studied - and through
attaining this representation seeing each other and seeing themselves.
De Tocqueville was able to write insightfully about America, because
as a Frenchman who had lived in America he combined the subjective
experience with outsider's perspective. Thus he was able to see both
the experience and the external effects.
================================
Leo Tolstoy said that all happy families are alike, but unhappy ones
differ. This means that according to him there is a single model of
happiness that applies to everyone, and any deviation from it leads to
misery.
I do not believe that people are such fools or such clones of each
other. If what's right for people is function of what is inside them,
then there will be many forms of happiness that are right for
different people.
Each person being an integrative function - of general human traits;
inner propensity and biology; culture and nation; gender; psychology;
guidance; and one's own choices -
And what is right for the each person being, functional to this,
widely different.
And if I am to be the change I wish to see in the world, then I will
be knowledgeable, generous, gallant, giving, inspired, and full of
passion and fire of life -
produce work worthy of having been written -
While also empowering in all ways possible that outside myself which I
am rejoicing to see -
Which I find valuable for what it is, what it embodies and what it
attains.
=================================
Kino dived into the ocean to retrieve a beautiful pearl. After trying
to sell it, and having his child killed on the way, he returned to the
ocean and threw the pearl back in it. The pearl was full of faces.
But the pearl in itself is innocent. Rather in it are placed like
gnarled roots and hedge the corruptions and incompletenesses and
cruelties of the world. These are the distillations of context in
which it is found. It is possible to say by the root and the hedge
just what the soul has been through and what is the shape of the
context.
And by looking at the pearl that is the soul, it becomes possible to
know what world exists at the time.
Some say that pearls are pathological. Yet it is the pearl that adorns
the necklace of the beloved.
The Russian way is to embrace the pearl and have the tragic worldview
that sees the world as hopeless.
The American way is to cut out the pearl.
The way that combines Russian and American in the highest synthetic
manner, is to remove roots from the pearl and allow it to continue,
now pure and innocent, to enrich the world.
And thus to achieve the completeness of civilized process, in which
can coexist the oyster and the pearl - the natural and the human - the
matter and soul - the ongoing and the sublime.
=================================
Pasternak said, "If it was so agonizing to love the woman, then how
much more painful would it be to be the woman and inspire the love?"
How much more painful indeed to have to be absolutely at the top of
everything, emotionally, mentally, physically, and carry unbearable
emotional loads while remaining a lady in all ways?
How much more painful indeed to be the embodiment of the emotional
striving of millions and carry that load while straining under
unbearable personal tragedy? And in the process to be attacked on one
side for daring to be ladylike and on the other for not being entirely
a servant or not being entirely one of the tribe?
How many tons of unbearable baggage could they have placed on one
delicate frame? And by what miraculous feat of strength was she able
to carry it all?
The Mermaid had no context for herself on the land, and lacking
experience of the sea the people of land had no intrinsic awareness of
her world and thus treated her without any empathy. And their
referential perspectives, being shaped in pursuit of one or another
land-interest, attacked her in every way. And the only way for her to
endure it -
Was to know that she is the Mermaid -
Was to know what Mermaids are made of -
And to stand on the truth of her Mermaidhood and to determinedly bring
ocean's intelligence to the parched lips.
The dolphins have been bashing themselves against shores recently in
large numbers. Maybe they're tired of mermaids being misunderstood and
misrepresented and seek to bring people the truth of the ocean,
whatever it does to themselves.
=================================
There are people who are of the belief that the romantic perspective
is untrue to reality.
The question to be asked is then, What is the composition of reality?
Reality is an integrative function of myriads of influences, some
natural, some manmade, some spiritual, some inherent, some created,
some eternal, some changing with the times.
And a large part of the composition of the reality - indeed a huge
chunk of its composition - is people's actions guided by their
beliefs.
So that, if one has belief in beauty, in passion, in excellence, in
fairness, in generosity, in compassion, and is willing to make these
beliefs count in his life and those of others, then he will use the
practical reality of his action, pursuant to these convictions, to
make these things more and more an aspect of reality.
A concept of realism that ignores man's role as active participant in
shaping reality, according to his beliefs, is a completely inadequate
concept of realism. It is a concept of realism that ignores man's
ability, as an active participant in the constant shaping and
reshaping of reality, to change it in any direction! And for someone
who claims himself to be a realist, to ignore something so fundamental
in shaping of reality, is to commit a fatal logical error according to
his own system of thought.
There is that which exists and cannot be changed; there is also that
which man does using the practical reality of his actions, pursuant to
his convictions.
And the more use the practical reality of their actions to make life
more beautiful, the more beautiful the practical reality of life
becomes.
And that, is a far more complete and inclusive realism -
One that recognizes man's role as participant in shaping of reality -
And thus recognizes and values and empowers true responsibility and
true will.
=================================
I majored in psychology and economics. I think in both economic and
psychological terms. The economic perspective is to combine the inputs
in such a way as to make the best outcome. Combine, for example, the
best businessmen with the best workers; or the best government with
the best population; or the best women with the best men.
Thus, when American business goes to China, the result is extremely
efficient production and improvement in quality of what is produced -
along with lifting 500 million people out of abject poverty in less
than three decades.
The same mentality can be applied to social and psychological issues.
Combining the best of the complementaries across the world. Bringing
talent, mind, heart, passion, man, woman, everything, where they can
do the most good and where they can be most appreciated and justly
rewarded.
Combining the psychological forces where they can be most effective
and be rewarded the most.
Computing psychological costs and in so doing creating a system of
valuation of psychic inputs.
And thus to make the most of all components, resulting in optimization
of human process -
With incentives for what is emotionally enriching and beautifying -
And disincentives for what emotionally grinds people into the dirt.
=================================
The error - indeed the crime - of failing to compute psychological
costs is the error that leads to abomination in all forms and
conditions. The prince wants to see the Mermaid's erotic resplendor as
worthless, and then he wants to feed on it while attacking her in the
process for not being completely made of land. And however much the
Mermaid disfigures herself or tries to please the Prince, it is never
sufficient: Nothing will satisfy him except her complete evisceration.
And then he catches himself in a double bind. If the Mermaid was no
longer the Mermaid, then what he loved about her would be gone. And if
the Mermaid in any part of her being remains the Mermaid, then that is
a violation of his lie of normalcy. He catches himself in a double
bind; he catches her in a double bind. He wants her to feel her gifts
worthless and meaningless; he wants her to feel trapped and helpless.
And in the meanwhile he's preying on her magnificent energy, with his
own actions of being with her and preying upon her denying the
supposed worthlessness that he has to her ascribed.
These Gordian knots require participation of mind and heart to untie.
The mind by itself would not see the insides of the knot. The heart by
itself would not know how to untie it. Put them together, and there is
no longer the need for the sword.
THE GORDIAN KNOT IS TO BE UNTIED BY MAN'S WITS, GUIDED BY MAN'S
DESIRE.
============================================
The biggest ongoing error that keeps insidiously creeping into
psychology is that of introjecting into the mind the method used to
study the mind, and judge it instead of understanding it should its
processes be found to run by a logic different than that of that
method. That is of course a betrayal of the very rationality one
claims to espouse. The purpose of scientific analysis is to study and
comprehend. And if that which is being studied runs by logic different
from one used to study it, then that is simply how the thing is made
and deserves to be understood for its nature rather than being
bludgeoned to death for difference from one's own methodology.
A corollary of the same damnable error were such abominations as
logical positivism, which made the incredible irrationality (for
people regarding themselves rational) of discarding all that did not
parse with their concept of logic instead of finding out the logic by
which the thing was in itself made. This, of course, is the highest of
irrationality; and while the movement is supposedly dead, it is
important that it remain dead.
As should historical errors such as imperialism, which damned and
sought conquer-worthy all other civilizations for supposedly using
different methodology or supposedly having different attributes
(attributes that oneself did not create, could not create and thus is
not licensed to be judging).
It is important that such abominations and all similar manifestations
not only be dead, but have their graves covered in spit.
Is reason " a higher function"? Let me ask a stupid question:
Wherefrom comes reason? Then does the person who claims to be rational
being rational in claiming credit for it while attacking all else? A
higher function? I repeat, wherefrom comes the higher function? Did
the supposedly rational person create it? Then what is the rational
thing to do with this supposed higher function: Attack other functions
- ones that one has not created - or to do something with it - to make
something with it - to use it for something of benefit?
As I am using my own, innate, function, of insight for the benefit of
deconstructing sophistries - in this case, sophistries spun by misuses
of rational mind.
============================================
What is the logic by which something exists? Of what is its existence
a function? What is its nature, what is its essence?
What things are functional of that essence, and what can be most made
with it?
============================================
What logic motivates a flower? What is a flower? A flower is the
completion, the consummation, the mature form, of the species, as well
as its link to the future times. The logic? CONSUMMATION and
CONTINUITY, both functional to what the flower IS. As the consummation
of the species, it is the flower's nature to be exquisite, self-
demanding and bent on pursuit of excellence. As the link to the future
times, it is the flower's nature to be forward-seeking and fiercely
determined toward nurturing future generations. The first makes the
flower delicate, vulnerable to criticism and determined to be her most
splendid. The second makes the flower self-sacrificial and most
concerned for the future.
A corollary of being the consummation - and the incredible mental work
it takes to remain at that level - is a very legitimate longing to be
seen, appreciated and adored for the inner-directed effort. This can
easily get her in trouble and may be slandered and misconstrued. "Who
does she think she is," ask many. I tell you who I think she is: A
splendid, giving, loving, generous, and rigorously self-demanding
human being - a flowering of humanity, its mature form and
manifestation, desiring as part of her nature to be her most
magnificent and justly seeking to be rewarded for the colossal
emotional and mental effort it takes to be at that level of Being.
Which is of course only fair. And which fairness becomes likewise
functional to the ethic of the flower - for the same reason as
fairness was advocated by Socrates: Because it is necessary for
ongoing, resentment-free, harmonious, perpetuation of life.
With (from economics) incentives created for all that leads to
magnificence:
Rewarding fairly, by computing the psychological costs, for the work
done by the flower to make the highest resplendency of herself.
=============================
The erotic becomes an aspect of being a flower, as the erotic is blood
of life. The flower is filled with erotic energy and seeks rightly to
be for it seen and appreciated. The erotic becomes likewise a path to
the future; a lifeline toward the next generation and the next step.
The flower sacrifices herself for the future and is fiercely
determined to make the lives of the coming to be a success; to not
only protect them and educate them while they are growing but to
likewise make sure that the environment in which they grow up be
peaceful and friendly to their development and existence. That's no
illogic; that's how the thing is made - rightly - and it is by looking
at the process, intrinsically, instead of adjudicating it
referentially to a mode of cognition that is acquired not only
understanding and empathy - empathy that the logicists sorely lack -
but knowledge and wisdom and ultimately a path to the future where
flowers can blossom.
============================================
There are many who refer people in America who like European culture,
or literature, or poetry, or art, as posers. My response: Who cares if
you think they're posers? These are people who seek to have beauty and
class and elegance in their lives. If they go for it to Europe or to
Japan, then that's simply because those places know how to cultivate
class and beauty. And I say furthermore this:
That by bringing class, beauty and elegance to American soil, they
enrich America.
And it is by bringing the best from all of the world that America
grows and redefines itself into ongoing greatness:
An E PLURIBUS UNUM of all that is of highest quality, weaving the
talents, the wisdom, the greatness, contained in each into
completeness that serves one and all.
It takes someone who's lived on the outside and on the inside to have
an integrative perspective -
And it takes someone who's seen both worlds at times to remind
America, lost as it often is and most countries are in one or another
shroud, of what it can and should be.
============================================
We have been living in times that have waged a war on beauty.
An attack was waged on the psychological foundations of beauty,
leading people to wrongly believe beauty to be narcissistic.
An attack was waged on the economic foundations of beauty, leading
people to wrongly believe beauty to be impractical.
An attack was waged on the philosophical foundations of beauty,
leading people to wrongly believe beauty to be a temporary artifact of
a male-dominated society.
An attack was waged on moral foundations of beauty, leading people to
wrongly believe beauty to be shallow.
An attack was waged on beauty at the political level, leading people
to believe it elitist.
Until the nation was robbed of beauty, and all that was of beauty was
in one or another bind, allowing the enemies of beauty to claim that
this was what beauty led to naturally and to perpetuate in so doing
their wicked worldview.
Many people were led astray into hideous places by such hideousness.
And through manipulation of social climate and psychological climate
the people were led to participate in this abomination, with climate
(and resulting lessons) manufactured to lead people to make
deliberately contrived, fallacious, conclusions, to validate this
fallacious worldview.
So man rises.
The fire from the center of the earth, bound down by the crust, which
is itself a congealment of plasmic fire, rises.
He bursts through the crust. In order to tower at the top of the
crust. Not so that he could itself tower - no, not for anything nearly
so vain or short-sighted.
But so that water, the solvent of life, the love of man that is the
feminine counterpart.
The life-giving substance that is the reason for life; that being pure
in herself dissolves into herself all forms of rubbish, and thinks
herself the vilest things on earth when it is the reason for life and
is in itself utterly indispensable and sublime.
With people calling her damaged goods if she were to dissolve into
herself any rubbish, and in so doing becoming accomplices in the
original crime of dumping the garbage into the water instead of doing
what justice demands and removing the trash.
Water, that is the reason for all of life, and that by ingratitude and
malice and jealousy and ideologies catering and justifying malice and
jealousy is contaminated with all kinds of poison.
Could seep into the top of the volcano.
Into the crater that congealed fire has made for her.
And bask at the top, under the sky, in delicacy and enchantment -
dissolving minerals, and yet being completely and utterly clear,
transparent, and enchanting - at night reflecting the stars and at day
being dressed in fog and white gossamer webs of clouds.
So that people could journey for thousands of miles, to the crater,
and not only be healed of their ailments. But to behold life as life
can be - as is the attained merger of elements - as is the result of
man's action guided by inspired and principled passion - as is the
wisdom embodied in the planet.
And as is finally, after all the horror and error and misdirection
that has been done through incomplete study and incomplete
understanding - after web-spinning, fabrication, illusioneering in
service of hideous motives and hideous worldviews - after all the
fallaciousness and worldview-fabricating - after all these things, at
long last, weaving a gordian knot around the soul and silencing it
into extinction 0 is by the reality of man's action made part of
reality of the world.
So that beauty can be by practical reality of man's action made a part
of the practical reality. That by the fire rising from the depth of
being, at the sight of horrible social manipulation leading the
world's most sublime things into extinction, is grounded in deepest
human reality and informed, intelligent, ethical choice. That, being
aware of this manipulation, is based on the highest human
intelligence. That, by man's action out of love based in profound
aesthetic sensibility and rightful wrath upon seeing beloved water
contaminated with debris and usurped and denatured and robbed and
denounced, is grounded in greatest motives known to man. And that, by
being what it is in itself, becomes a complete manifestation of what
is possible here on earth, and inspires others with sight of
accomplishment based in deepest human reality and reaching toward
states worthy of the world that we have been given and that makes us
worthy of that world.
This, consummation of love, a volcanic crater lake, solution to the
disease of the times, flowering of truth of humanity and inspiration
for generations to come.
It's better to learn no lesson than it is to learn a wrong lesson.
If things don't parse with theory, check your premises.
And a lesson that is most profoundly premised, is based on the depths
underlying reality.
It's based on the Fire at the Center of the Earth.
===================================
Then can the frames of reference be redintegrated around this plasmic
fire. Then can ideologies can be stood on their heads and seen for
their incompleteness. Then can commonsense - the mental shroud of the
times - get punctured as is the seeming, and visible resplendor
becomes the embodied reality of human mind, of ethics, of sensibility
and pursuant that of the civilization.
The commonsense redintegrates around this reality, and becomes servant
of it as is its nature.
Don't have common sense? Good for you. Reach for inspired truth, and
make that formative to a more informed commonsense.
==================================
Love is an unexpected guest at the table. Tsvetayeva: "they dressed
the table for the six, but seventh one they did forget." They forgot
her, and she came unannounced. Did not knock at the door, did not
call, did not ask for an invitation. They banished her; they thought
she was a mirage.
What is a mirage? A reflection, across the sky, of something real that
dwells on the other side of the desert.
And which as such is a sign, to the parched traveler, that there is a
world outside the desert - a real world, a rich world, and a world
that is worth traveling through the desert to find - as it is itself
trying to find the traveler through its reflections that the sky sends
to him on his path.
==================================
There is love general, love Christlike, love directed toward one and
all.
And then there is love particular, love preferential, love passionate.
There are many who, practicing first form, are hateful of second form.
That is a bad error.
To reward the magnificent - for making the effort to be magnificent -
with gift of romantic passion, is to give people incentive to be
resplendent -
While rightly rewarding those who make such an effort -
And in so doing to help make the most of people and the most of
humankind.
===============================
What happens to a dream deferred?
More importantly, what happens to an ability suffocated?
It becomes cancerous. It eats from the inside. It tears out the lungs.
The hobbled minds and emotions either turn outside in jaws or are
gnarled inside.
It becomes a poison that injures oneself; or it becomes a criminal
that injures others.
The more it is attacked, the more obvious becomes the cruelty and
abomination and hypocrisy of what it takes to constrain it.
Until someone who's seen both perspectives reminds people of what E
PLURIBUS UNUM means.
================================
E PLURIBUS UNUM means this: That there are multiple valid abilities,
that can produce multiple valid results. That there is not a single
way that is right for everyone, nor a single hierarchy, nor a single
"adequacy," nor a single mode of computation, but multiplicity of
pursuits and modes. It means that there are multiple intelligences,
all expressed to different extents in different people. It means that
there are multiple ways to the top of the mountain; it means that
there are multiple valid endeavors; it means that there are multiple
mirrors; it means that there are multiple PATHS.
And by allowing people a fruition of what they are given - in paths
that are right for them - more and more of the human potential is
given a way to expression for the good of one and all. Economically;
academically; artistically; and in multiplicity of endeavors.
That, is the meaning of E PLURIBUS UNUM.
================================
A neighborhood kid tried to teach me what he called player tips. I
stopped him right in his tracks.
A relationship that is based on deception will be toppled by any
manifestation of emotional truth.
The process of defending such a relationship involves spinning an ever-
more-wide, ever-more-oppressive, ever-more-strangulating and
ultimately ever-more-transparently-dishonest web of deceit, in order
to not only keep what the partner truly wants from appearing, but to
keep the partner so shackled and guilt-ridden and miserable as to not
be capable of seeing the deceit or extricating herself from it.
The lie grows; it becomes more ensnaring. Everything in the partner
that is receptive to emotional truth is torn up and destroyed. The
people cannot give love to their children or to handle in them
sincerity or give them emotional understanding, because such things
are a menace to the falsehood that is their existence: A foil for it
and, as something of sincerity itself, a frame that makes apparent
their own insincerity.
The people retreat behind closed-gate neighborhoods and develop
groupthink, allowing lies to build up while aggressively excluding
anyone with any other ideas. The church comes in to justify the lie,
profaning itself and the name of God in the process. Psychology comes
in to make people believe that they don't think what they think and
don't feel what they feel. Social movements come in to deal with those
who would not be deceived by either of these methods.
Criminalized, the emotional truth becomes criminal, while the lie
becomes the law.
It becomes, in the words of Steven Jay Gould, "Shared dogma
masquerading as objectivity" - and defining all people, all abilities,
all perceptions, all values, all mindsets, all personalities, in
reference to - itself.
Creating a bigger and bigger shroud; a bigger and bigger falsehood;
and a bigger and bigger skein of self-perpetuating and mutually-
perpetuating lies.
It has been often observed that suburban life is hypocritical. I've
just explained why and how.
==================================
If something exists at a rate greater than chance, then there is
inevitably a reason. Thus many of the things that are stereotypical
are based on actual root causes. The task becomes to see the
underlying mechanism.
"Jews are hard-headed" - well yeah, and I've said why they have to be.
"Black people in America are lazy and violent" - many aren't, but
historical analysis would refer to it as learned helplessness in face
of having all of their work expropriated. "Women aren't rational" -
while many are, the ones that aren't simply think along different
lines which are functional to another level of nature.
To know this, is a way to move out from cultural dogma masquerading as
objectivity -
And toward actual examination of cultural, historical and
psychological forces that are necessary for integrative portrayal of
people at levels individual and collective -
And, once this wisdom is quantified, making possible for actual,
informed, responsibility to be the fact of people's lives.
================================
It has been this experience: That whenever faith is put into something
that is incomplete, follows a refutation by counterexample. Someone
puts faith in brotherhood of man - and gets stung by a scorpion.
Someone puts faith in himself - and to survive keeps having to draw on
other forms of knowledge, on friendships, on alliances, that expand
his horizons beyond himself. Someone puts faith in work or
responsibility - and as the work builds all kinds of unexpected
consequences arise, that demand more knowledge, that call on more
faculties, that expand the definition of work and responsibility and
activity that is useful that was not previously known as work. Someone
puts faith in empiricism - and as empiricism builds on itself it finds
out, through Einsteinian relativity, quantum mechanics and game and
chaos theories, that it is not the absolute truth. People put faith in
logic - and get Kant and others using the logic for suicidal
epistemologizing. Communists put faith in mankind - and get the worst
of what man can be.
All and further along; these aren't tricks, these aren't illusions,
this is not human condition, these are simply manifestations of how
the universe is. The false theories get tested and deconstructed, with
their shortcomings becoming immediately or sometimes not so
immediately made apparent. Does incompleteness of all these things
render them worthless? No, but it renders them incomplete.
Through interpolation among convex mirrors the amount of curvature is
made fathomable, and the legitimate, being separated from the
illegitimate - as is grain from the chaff - gives clarity of
perspective; clarity about perspectives; and sets in forth the
dynamics by which the beam in everyone's eyes is reduced to
undistinguishable quantities.
There is more.
==================================
The human being, from perspective of self, can be said to possess self-
interest and other-interest. If evolution is true, then man is both
self and part of the greater whole. This avoids the two errors -
objectivism and communism - on either side: There is the self; there
is the whole; and both are valid. One is not only a wave or a part of
the ocean; one is both part of the ocean and the wave. There is the
collective identity; there is the individual identity; both are valid,
both are real, both are incomplete and both enrich each other.
Thus, the completeness of human beingness is accomplished when people
are allowed to make the most of self-interest and likewise to do the
most good for the fellow human beings. In this way is fulfilled
constructively, for good of all selves and good of the whole, the
totality of human beingness. And it is by encouraging both of these
directions that can be made the completeness of man and the
completeness of humankind.
==================================
The pomegranate contains myriads of seeds. The seeds are the function
of their unique selves, and of the fruit around them. The fruit is the
function of itself and the seeds. Through integrative synthesis, tug-
and-play, checks-and-balance and ultimately synergy between levels of
substructure and superstructure, is created the best fruit and the
best seeds.
At any given point in time, based upon analysis of the seeds, patterns
emerge, explanations, apparencies. These apparencies become the
worldview; the worldview that claims to speak for the world. They will
claim that they speak for the whole of the fruit and for all of the
seeds. At one point or another will appear a seed that refutes the
pattern.
Such a seed will be pressed from all sides. Such a seed will be
maligned and attacked. Such a seed will be seen as a threat - a threat
not for what it IS, but for the fact that, by being what it is, it is
a REFUTATION OF THE WORLDVIEW - of the shared dogma masquerading as
objectivity. Few things are more threatening than challenges to
worldview; the result is what I call WORLDVIEW PANIC. And the first
and most frequent response to the worldview panic: Destroy what causes
it.
And for any such pioneer seed, faced with such dynamics, the correct
answer is this:
Identify with the inherent truth;
Identify with the entirety of the fruit, which it is by being what it
is - and refuting the temporary dogma - serves to a far greater extent
than does the dogma;
And stand, both on the grounds of the unique embodied essence in it
embodied and on the ground of the fruit's shared interest -
Identifying with self as well as the shared -
The seed becomes tuned into the reality of itself and the fruit -
Reality which is an integrative function of the given and the newly
created -
And which it serves by making the most of itself and the fruit (or
wave and ocean, or self-interest and shared-interest).
At which point again becomes manifest this:
A more complete understanding of human interest, as interest of each
self and interest of the totality - working through integrative
synthesis:
And which, through commingling and interaction among levels of
structure, not only refute temporary shared dogmas -
But in fact complete and become and make manifest the totality of
human process:
AS EACH UNIQUE SELF AND THE WHOLE WORKING IN SYNERGY -
And through which synergy among substructure and superstructure, as
shown, is actualized the totality of that which is man and that which
is humanity -
And reality of both attains the highest functionality -
For good of each person and good of mankind.
================================
Then the seeds fall out; become themselves; and give birth to the new
fruit.
Succession of the seasons. The way of the universe.
Bring in will guided by wisdom and goodwill, and build the next level.
Not only cyclical as in the East.
Not only linear as in the West.
But understanding integratively - intrinsically and through synthesis
of referential planes - arrive at an ever-more-complete, ever-more-
clear, understanding.
And then use the real mechanism of will, informed by real knowledge
and real benificence, to make the most of - reality.
To build the next level, now inspired with passionate embrace of the
resplendent -
And to make it an ongoing, continuous, practical part of the reality
of the world -
By using the practical reality of man's actions inspired by the
resplendent to make it so.
===================================
Ilya Shambat 2006.
http://sites.google.com/sites/ilyashambatwritings
http://sites.google.com/sites/ibshambat
neighborhood. Firefly, thought he, as an illumined unit of flesh and
awareness flew before him and disappeared again in the dark. The moon,
like a half of brie in the sky, was illuminating the path. And on the
other side of Bradford St. was paradise.
Small cozy houses amid trees that must have been there for centuries.
One of these trees was overhanging the street, its branches and leaves
hanging down, enfolded in cobwebs of fog. When Elvis Costello said
"They lead you half-way to paradise, they leave you half-way to bliss"
he was speaking about incomplete task. It has become up to us to
complete it.
"We could do nothing for them, so we did not" was the false thought of
the time. Except I could and did. It was wanted extinct and buried;
but his love and respect for it only grew the more this was being
done. Along with it grew passionate rage. And when they asked Balak to
curse, and instead Balak blessed, he had been doing nothing different
from what he was now doing.
"Bad crop," was said. "The worst generation." Not exactly, he said,
and he meant it. He loved these people, and he was willing to live for
the beauty that they had envisioned and put in craft. And if he was to
deal with what they were dealing with, he was game.
He was loathe to learn incomplete lessons. A lesson that is a function
of an interest or a worldview was bound to be full of distortion and
fallacy and either error or deliberate lies. It was said that the Jews
were hard-headed - would not they have to be in order to be the people
of God? Would not they have to suspend their judgment from what the
world told them in order to carry on the work? Would not that be
thought psychotic by those who equate each society with the whole of
reality and want to define people by reference to their status within
it? And would not they have to go elsewhere besides the societies that
hate them for insight and wisdom and personal truth?
He was loathe to learn incomplete lessons. The wrong lesson learned,
he reasoned, is worse than no lesson learned at all. And better than
both is right lesson learned, which can only be a result of complete
perspective. To see all the forces involved in a situation, he
reasoned, was higher form of justice than dumping on singular people
who were used as emotional garbage dumps for the civilization. And so
he traveled, read, explored, spoke to people from many cultures and
occupations and ways of thought.
They ask Balak to curse, but he blesses. You might call it enabling;
however the choice was to help beauty to thrive and have beautiful
existence. No change was required; why change something so sublime?
Rather clear the paths, improve the condition, and then she blossoms
into resplendor and sets example for the future that beauty is good
and viable and very much part of the real world -
- when people use the reality of their actions to make it so.
================================
At age 15 he saw essences intermingling and was told this was evil,
but he dived in. It gave information and understanding of what was
happening. If Adam was made in God's image then he was made to create;
and the process required knowledge.
How can there be free will when one is not cognizant of the forces on
which will is based and with which it deals? Such will is not free at
all, but rather wielded despite itself by one or another such force.
How can there be responsibility without knowledge? Responsible action
can only take place when one is informed of the full range of
consequences of one's actions and can thus act in an informed manner,
without unexpected consequences due to ignorance, and can take
responsibility for the result.
Thus: Any concept of responsibility that excludes knowledge and what
it takes to acquire it is therefore a transparent lie. True
responsibility presupposes knowledge -
And true will presupposes understanding of that on which it resides.
After which knowledge it can become truly free.
So he explores. He feels. He thinks. He combines experience with
observation. He trades places all the time to know how life by people
in those places is experienced.
He does not use the will to bludgeon but to explore.
He recognizes the social, political, ideological, historical, economic
conditions - all things that those who blindly mouth the lie of
responsibility without understanding that uninformed action makes it
impossible for one to actually be responsible - would rather people
living under their spell ignore.
Through this whole process, the false foundations of will are eroded,
and it becomes more informed and more free.
And then, with this wisdom gathered as to the internal and the
external world, it becomes possible to use the truly freed will to act
in a truly responsible manner.
===============================
Many societies tell people what to do, but I've observed in some
something yet more insidious: People being told what to WANT. Is that
not a form of enslavement? The first being only circumstance-based,
the second being internal?
Does it matter what circumstantial freedom man has, if his mind and
his wishes are not his own? And to formulate people and then set them
to compete against one another and call that liberty - is that not a
deception?
Is not freedom of thought - freedom of mind - the root of all other
freedoms? Are not man's actions guided by mind, and what forms mind
becomes expressed through action in the world? And to force mental
similitude and then call that freedom - is that not conmanship?
And does not conmanship and deception belie the claims of integrity
and ethics that one professes to espouse?
The societies that derive legitimacy from claims of providing for
human happiness, get very angry when humans within them want something
other than what they want them to want. Such a thing is a blow to
their claims of legitimacy and a refutation, by counterexample, of
their worldview.
It takes someone with an outsider's and insider's perspective to see
such things. More on this later.
=========================================
A golden tree grew up through him as she left him at the Poughkeepsie
train station. And in the morning there were many bikes. The train
rides here and there the little lakes glimmering with reflected clouds
and all-eating swamps and giant Edwin Church forests.
Scott Lasch said that we are morally at sea. So learn to swim with the
mermaids.
=================================
In order to keep the love of the mermaid, the prince had to learn to
swim. She was out of her natural element in the palace. The Prince,
wanting what in the landed mind passed for a normal relationship,
could not get that with someone who came from the ocean and thus could
not completely subsume her marine nature however much she tried to be
pleasing to the Prince. And because she was no longer the mermaid,
what made her lovable to him in the first place was gone.
So the Mermaid runs out to the sea. Her golden hair flies in the wind,
as tears run down her cheeks. She has come to throw herself into the
ocean and end her sorrow and the Prince's frustration.
Then a sound magnetic - a sound warm - a sound resonant - reaches to
her from the ocean. It's indistinct at first; it gets louder. It tugs
on aorta and squeezes the lungs. A face comes up to the beach.
It is the Dolphin, her childhood friend. He reminds her of where she
comes from.
And she knows now. She knows beyond the slightest doubt.
That in order for their marriage to continue, the Prince has to
experience the ocean.
And then he would know her world and understand her.
And the love that he had for her - the love that developed in his
heart when he knew her as the mermaid - will go on, now enriched with
understanding of what made her lovable in the first place.
And they will both be complete, in knowledge of both the Appolonian
and the Oceanic.
And then they can truly live happily everafter, having completed the
task of attaining marine and landed intelligence and become the
fruition of both.
IN ORDER TO LIVE HAPPILY WITH THE MERMAID, THE PRINCE HAS TO LEARN TO
SWIM.
=================================
I like to vanish into people's worlds. I like to experience them from
the inside. I like to feel them and be one with them. And then I like
to make sense of them, using both mind and heart.
=================================
Everything happens for a reason, and some reasons are better than
others.
Are things singularly caused? Overdetermined? Patterns from chaos?
Games? Fractals? Relative? Quantum swirls? Holographic? Karma? Ionized
multiplicity?
What does one do with Einsteinian reference frames that are
individuals' and cultures' perspectives?
Does their being incomplete make them worthless? Or merely incomplete
- convex mirrors, the curvature a function of the perspective - and
thus worthwhile in part and self-defeating in another?
And does not clarity develop by putting an object in middle of convex
mirrors, so that mirrors see both each other and the object, and it
becomes possible to reduce the curvature in all and arrive at greater
clarity of referential frames and clearer picture of the object?
It's hard to remove the beam from one's own eye. But to abrade
multiplicity of perspectives to clarity - by pointing them to the same
object and getting in them different pictures - which pictures then
show the natures as well as the incompletenesses of the perspectives -
there, is a way to reduce the amount of beam in everyone's eyes, while
letting them all gain greater clarity as to themselves and to each
other.
=================================
An inner world is not understood completely except from within. The
outside manifestations are not understood completely except from a
multiplicity of referential frames working in synthesis. A DC ghetto
is seen one way from liberal America; another from Midwest; another
from China; another from Africa; another from Russia; another from
Cherokees. In combining these perspectives is arrived a more complete
picture of the ghetto - and in the process of checking each other also
a more complete picture of liberal America, Midwest, China, Africa,
Russia and the Cherokee tribe.
As these perspectives check each other in understanding of a single
object, their own agendas and incompletenesses - as well as their
virtues - become apparent. An integrative perspective is formed of the
object being studied and of the things that are studying it. Flux is
created; both beams in the eyes and the eye-matter itself become seen
more completely. The result as these perspectives battle each other is
reduction in amount of beam in everyone's eyes.
The multiple pieces understand each other; they see each other and are
seen themselves. The incompleteness in each perspective is corrected,
and the virtue in each perspective is seen, by having to arrive at a
complete representation of what is being studied - and through
attaining this representation seeing each other and seeing themselves.
De Tocqueville was able to write insightfully about America, because
as a Frenchman who had lived in America he combined the subjective
experience with outsider's perspective. Thus he was able to see both
the experience and the external effects.
================================
Leo Tolstoy said that all happy families are alike, but unhappy ones
differ. This means that according to him there is a single model of
happiness that applies to everyone, and any deviation from it leads to
misery.
I do not believe that people are such fools or such clones of each
other. If what's right for people is function of what is inside them,
then there will be many forms of happiness that are right for
different people.
Each person being an integrative function - of general human traits;
inner propensity and biology; culture and nation; gender; psychology;
guidance; and one's own choices -
And what is right for the each person being, functional to this,
widely different.
And if I am to be the change I wish to see in the world, then I will
be knowledgeable, generous, gallant, giving, inspired, and full of
passion and fire of life -
produce work worthy of having been written -
While also empowering in all ways possible that outside myself which I
am rejoicing to see -
Which I find valuable for what it is, what it embodies and what it
attains.
=================================
Kino dived into the ocean to retrieve a beautiful pearl. After trying
to sell it, and having his child killed on the way, he returned to the
ocean and threw the pearl back in it. The pearl was full of faces.
But the pearl in itself is innocent. Rather in it are placed like
gnarled roots and hedge the corruptions and incompletenesses and
cruelties of the world. These are the distillations of context in
which it is found. It is possible to say by the root and the hedge
just what the soul has been through and what is the shape of the
context.
And by looking at the pearl that is the soul, it becomes possible to
know what world exists at the time.
Some say that pearls are pathological. Yet it is the pearl that adorns
the necklace of the beloved.
The Russian way is to embrace the pearl and have the tragic worldview
that sees the world as hopeless.
The American way is to cut out the pearl.
The way that combines Russian and American in the highest synthetic
manner, is to remove roots from the pearl and allow it to continue,
now pure and innocent, to enrich the world.
And thus to achieve the completeness of civilized process, in which
can coexist the oyster and the pearl - the natural and the human - the
matter and soul - the ongoing and the sublime.
=================================
Pasternak said, "If it was so agonizing to love the woman, then how
much more painful would it be to be the woman and inspire the love?"
How much more painful indeed to have to be absolutely at the top of
everything, emotionally, mentally, physically, and carry unbearable
emotional loads while remaining a lady in all ways?
How much more painful indeed to be the embodiment of the emotional
striving of millions and carry that load while straining under
unbearable personal tragedy? And in the process to be attacked on one
side for daring to be ladylike and on the other for not being entirely
a servant or not being entirely one of the tribe?
How many tons of unbearable baggage could they have placed on one
delicate frame? And by what miraculous feat of strength was she able
to carry it all?
The Mermaid had no context for herself on the land, and lacking
experience of the sea the people of land had no intrinsic awareness of
her world and thus treated her without any empathy. And their
referential perspectives, being shaped in pursuit of one or another
land-interest, attacked her in every way. And the only way for her to
endure it -
Was to know that she is the Mermaid -
Was to know what Mermaids are made of -
And to stand on the truth of her Mermaidhood and to determinedly bring
ocean's intelligence to the parched lips.
The dolphins have been bashing themselves against shores recently in
large numbers. Maybe they're tired of mermaids being misunderstood and
misrepresented and seek to bring people the truth of the ocean,
whatever it does to themselves.
=================================
There are people who are of the belief that the romantic perspective
is untrue to reality.
The question to be asked is then, What is the composition of reality?
Reality is an integrative function of myriads of influences, some
natural, some manmade, some spiritual, some inherent, some created,
some eternal, some changing with the times.
And a large part of the composition of the reality - indeed a huge
chunk of its composition - is people's actions guided by their
beliefs.
So that, if one has belief in beauty, in passion, in excellence, in
fairness, in generosity, in compassion, and is willing to make these
beliefs count in his life and those of others, then he will use the
practical reality of his action, pursuant to these convictions, to
make these things more and more an aspect of reality.
A concept of realism that ignores man's role as active participant in
shaping reality, according to his beliefs, is a completely inadequate
concept of realism. It is a concept of realism that ignores man's
ability, as an active participant in the constant shaping and
reshaping of reality, to change it in any direction! And for someone
who claims himself to be a realist, to ignore something so fundamental
in shaping of reality, is to commit a fatal logical error according to
his own system of thought.
There is that which exists and cannot be changed; there is also that
which man does using the practical reality of his actions, pursuant to
his convictions.
And the more use the practical reality of their actions to make life
more beautiful, the more beautiful the practical reality of life
becomes.
And that, is a far more complete and inclusive realism -
One that recognizes man's role as participant in shaping of reality -
And thus recognizes and values and empowers true responsibility and
true will.
=================================
I majored in psychology and economics. I think in both economic and
psychological terms. The economic perspective is to combine the inputs
in such a way as to make the best outcome. Combine, for example, the
best businessmen with the best workers; or the best government with
the best population; or the best women with the best men.
Thus, when American business goes to China, the result is extremely
efficient production and improvement in quality of what is produced -
along with lifting 500 million people out of abject poverty in less
than three decades.
The same mentality can be applied to social and psychological issues.
Combining the best of the complementaries across the world. Bringing
talent, mind, heart, passion, man, woman, everything, where they can
do the most good and where they can be most appreciated and justly
rewarded.
Combining the psychological forces where they can be most effective
and be rewarded the most.
Computing psychological costs and in so doing creating a system of
valuation of psychic inputs.
And thus to make the most of all components, resulting in optimization
of human process -
With incentives for what is emotionally enriching and beautifying -
And disincentives for what emotionally grinds people into the dirt.
=================================
The error - indeed the crime - of failing to compute psychological
costs is the error that leads to abomination in all forms and
conditions. The prince wants to see the Mermaid's erotic resplendor as
worthless, and then he wants to feed on it while attacking her in the
process for not being completely made of land. And however much the
Mermaid disfigures herself or tries to please the Prince, it is never
sufficient: Nothing will satisfy him except her complete evisceration.
And then he catches himself in a double bind. If the Mermaid was no
longer the Mermaid, then what he loved about her would be gone. And if
the Mermaid in any part of her being remains the Mermaid, then that is
a violation of his lie of normalcy. He catches himself in a double
bind; he catches her in a double bind. He wants her to feel her gifts
worthless and meaningless; he wants her to feel trapped and helpless.
And in the meanwhile he's preying on her magnificent energy, with his
own actions of being with her and preying upon her denying the
supposed worthlessness that he has to her ascribed.
These Gordian knots require participation of mind and heart to untie.
The mind by itself would not see the insides of the knot. The heart by
itself would not know how to untie it. Put them together, and there is
no longer the need for the sword.
THE GORDIAN KNOT IS TO BE UNTIED BY MAN'S WITS, GUIDED BY MAN'S
DESIRE.
============================================
The biggest ongoing error that keeps insidiously creeping into
psychology is that of introjecting into the mind the method used to
study the mind, and judge it instead of understanding it should its
processes be found to run by a logic different than that of that
method. That is of course a betrayal of the very rationality one
claims to espouse. The purpose of scientific analysis is to study and
comprehend. And if that which is being studied runs by logic different
from one used to study it, then that is simply how the thing is made
and deserves to be understood for its nature rather than being
bludgeoned to death for difference from one's own methodology.
A corollary of the same damnable error were such abominations as
logical positivism, which made the incredible irrationality (for
people regarding themselves rational) of discarding all that did not
parse with their concept of logic instead of finding out the logic by
which the thing was in itself made. This, of course, is the highest of
irrationality; and while the movement is supposedly dead, it is
important that it remain dead.
As should historical errors such as imperialism, which damned and
sought conquer-worthy all other civilizations for supposedly using
different methodology or supposedly having different attributes
(attributes that oneself did not create, could not create and thus is
not licensed to be judging).
It is important that such abominations and all similar manifestations
not only be dead, but have their graves covered in spit.
Is reason " a higher function"? Let me ask a stupid question:
Wherefrom comes reason? Then does the person who claims to be rational
being rational in claiming credit for it while attacking all else? A
higher function? I repeat, wherefrom comes the higher function? Did
the supposedly rational person create it? Then what is the rational
thing to do with this supposed higher function: Attack other functions
- ones that one has not created - or to do something with it - to make
something with it - to use it for something of benefit?
As I am using my own, innate, function, of insight for the benefit of
deconstructing sophistries - in this case, sophistries spun by misuses
of rational mind.
============================================
What is the logic by which something exists? Of what is its existence
a function? What is its nature, what is its essence?
What things are functional of that essence, and what can be most made
with it?
============================================
What logic motivates a flower? What is a flower? A flower is the
completion, the consummation, the mature form, of the species, as well
as its link to the future times. The logic? CONSUMMATION and
CONTINUITY, both functional to what the flower IS. As the consummation
of the species, it is the flower's nature to be exquisite, self-
demanding and bent on pursuit of excellence. As the link to the future
times, it is the flower's nature to be forward-seeking and fiercely
determined toward nurturing future generations. The first makes the
flower delicate, vulnerable to criticism and determined to be her most
splendid. The second makes the flower self-sacrificial and most
concerned for the future.
A corollary of being the consummation - and the incredible mental work
it takes to remain at that level - is a very legitimate longing to be
seen, appreciated and adored for the inner-directed effort. This can
easily get her in trouble and may be slandered and misconstrued. "Who
does she think she is," ask many. I tell you who I think she is: A
splendid, giving, loving, generous, and rigorously self-demanding
human being - a flowering of humanity, its mature form and
manifestation, desiring as part of her nature to be her most
magnificent and justly seeking to be rewarded for the colossal
emotional and mental effort it takes to be at that level of Being.
Which is of course only fair. And which fairness becomes likewise
functional to the ethic of the flower - for the same reason as
fairness was advocated by Socrates: Because it is necessary for
ongoing, resentment-free, harmonious, perpetuation of life.
With (from economics) incentives created for all that leads to
magnificence:
Rewarding fairly, by computing the psychological costs, for the work
done by the flower to make the highest resplendency of herself.
=============================
The erotic becomes an aspect of being a flower, as the erotic is blood
of life. The flower is filled with erotic energy and seeks rightly to
be for it seen and appreciated. The erotic becomes likewise a path to
the future; a lifeline toward the next generation and the next step.
The flower sacrifices herself for the future and is fiercely
determined to make the lives of the coming to be a success; to not
only protect them and educate them while they are growing but to
likewise make sure that the environment in which they grow up be
peaceful and friendly to their development and existence. That's no
illogic; that's how the thing is made - rightly - and it is by looking
at the process, intrinsically, instead of adjudicating it
referentially to a mode of cognition that is acquired not only
understanding and empathy - empathy that the logicists sorely lack -
but knowledge and wisdom and ultimately a path to the future where
flowers can blossom.
============================================
There are many who refer people in America who like European culture,
or literature, or poetry, or art, as posers. My response: Who cares if
you think they're posers? These are people who seek to have beauty and
class and elegance in their lives. If they go for it to Europe or to
Japan, then that's simply because those places know how to cultivate
class and beauty. And I say furthermore this:
That by bringing class, beauty and elegance to American soil, they
enrich America.
And it is by bringing the best from all of the world that America
grows and redefines itself into ongoing greatness:
An E PLURIBUS UNUM of all that is of highest quality, weaving the
talents, the wisdom, the greatness, contained in each into
completeness that serves one and all.
It takes someone who's lived on the outside and on the inside to have
an integrative perspective -
And it takes someone who's seen both worlds at times to remind
America, lost as it often is and most countries are in one or another
shroud, of what it can and should be.
============================================
We have been living in times that have waged a war on beauty.
An attack was waged on the psychological foundations of beauty,
leading people to wrongly believe beauty to be narcissistic.
An attack was waged on the economic foundations of beauty, leading
people to wrongly believe beauty to be impractical.
An attack was waged on the philosophical foundations of beauty,
leading people to wrongly believe beauty to be a temporary artifact of
a male-dominated society.
An attack was waged on moral foundations of beauty, leading people to
wrongly believe beauty to be shallow.
An attack was waged on beauty at the political level, leading people
to believe it elitist.
Until the nation was robbed of beauty, and all that was of beauty was
in one or another bind, allowing the enemies of beauty to claim that
this was what beauty led to naturally and to perpetuate in so doing
their wicked worldview.
Many people were led astray into hideous places by such hideousness.
And through manipulation of social climate and psychological climate
the people were led to participate in this abomination, with climate
(and resulting lessons) manufactured to lead people to make
deliberately contrived, fallacious, conclusions, to validate this
fallacious worldview.
So man rises.
The fire from the center of the earth, bound down by the crust, which
is itself a congealment of plasmic fire, rises.
He bursts through the crust. In order to tower at the top of the
crust. Not so that he could itself tower - no, not for anything nearly
so vain or short-sighted.
But so that water, the solvent of life, the love of man that is the
feminine counterpart.
The life-giving substance that is the reason for life; that being pure
in herself dissolves into herself all forms of rubbish, and thinks
herself the vilest things on earth when it is the reason for life and
is in itself utterly indispensable and sublime.
With people calling her damaged goods if she were to dissolve into
herself any rubbish, and in so doing becoming accomplices in the
original crime of dumping the garbage into the water instead of doing
what justice demands and removing the trash.
Water, that is the reason for all of life, and that by ingratitude and
malice and jealousy and ideologies catering and justifying malice and
jealousy is contaminated with all kinds of poison.
Could seep into the top of the volcano.
Into the crater that congealed fire has made for her.
And bask at the top, under the sky, in delicacy and enchantment -
dissolving minerals, and yet being completely and utterly clear,
transparent, and enchanting - at night reflecting the stars and at day
being dressed in fog and white gossamer webs of clouds.
So that people could journey for thousands of miles, to the crater,
and not only be healed of their ailments. But to behold life as life
can be - as is the attained merger of elements - as is the result of
man's action guided by inspired and principled passion - as is the
wisdom embodied in the planet.
And as is finally, after all the horror and error and misdirection
that has been done through incomplete study and incomplete
understanding - after web-spinning, fabrication, illusioneering in
service of hideous motives and hideous worldviews - after all the
fallaciousness and worldview-fabricating - after all these things, at
long last, weaving a gordian knot around the soul and silencing it
into extinction 0 is by the reality of man's action made part of
reality of the world.
So that beauty can be by practical reality of man's action made a part
of the practical reality. That by the fire rising from the depth of
being, at the sight of horrible social manipulation leading the
world's most sublime things into extinction, is grounded in deepest
human reality and informed, intelligent, ethical choice. That, being
aware of this manipulation, is based on the highest human
intelligence. That, by man's action out of love based in profound
aesthetic sensibility and rightful wrath upon seeing beloved water
contaminated with debris and usurped and denatured and robbed and
denounced, is grounded in greatest motives known to man. And that, by
being what it is in itself, becomes a complete manifestation of what
is possible here on earth, and inspires others with sight of
accomplishment based in deepest human reality and reaching toward
states worthy of the world that we have been given and that makes us
worthy of that world.
This, consummation of love, a volcanic crater lake, solution to the
disease of the times, flowering of truth of humanity and inspiration
for generations to come.
It's better to learn no lesson than it is to learn a wrong lesson.
If things don't parse with theory, check your premises.
And a lesson that is most profoundly premised, is based on the depths
underlying reality.
It's based on the Fire at the Center of the Earth.
===================================
Then can the frames of reference be redintegrated around this plasmic
fire. Then can ideologies can be stood on their heads and seen for
their incompleteness. Then can commonsense - the mental shroud of the
times - get punctured as is the seeming, and visible resplendor
becomes the embodied reality of human mind, of ethics, of sensibility
and pursuant that of the civilization.
The commonsense redintegrates around this reality, and becomes servant
of it as is its nature.
Don't have common sense? Good for you. Reach for inspired truth, and
make that formative to a more informed commonsense.
==================================
Love is an unexpected guest at the table. Tsvetayeva: "they dressed
the table for the six, but seventh one they did forget." They forgot
her, and she came unannounced. Did not knock at the door, did not
call, did not ask for an invitation. They banished her; they thought
she was a mirage.
What is a mirage? A reflection, across the sky, of something real that
dwells on the other side of the desert.
And which as such is a sign, to the parched traveler, that there is a
world outside the desert - a real world, a rich world, and a world
that is worth traveling through the desert to find - as it is itself
trying to find the traveler through its reflections that the sky sends
to him on his path.
==================================
There is love general, love Christlike, love directed toward one and
all.
And then there is love particular, love preferential, love passionate.
There are many who, practicing first form, are hateful of second form.
That is a bad error.
To reward the magnificent - for making the effort to be magnificent -
with gift of romantic passion, is to give people incentive to be
resplendent -
While rightly rewarding those who make such an effort -
And in so doing to help make the most of people and the most of
humankind.
===============================
What happens to a dream deferred?
More importantly, what happens to an ability suffocated?
It becomes cancerous. It eats from the inside. It tears out the lungs.
The hobbled minds and emotions either turn outside in jaws or are
gnarled inside.
It becomes a poison that injures oneself; or it becomes a criminal
that injures others.
The more it is attacked, the more obvious becomes the cruelty and
abomination and hypocrisy of what it takes to constrain it.
Until someone who's seen both perspectives reminds people of what E
PLURIBUS UNUM means.
================================
E PLURIBUS UNUM means this: That there are multiple valid abilities,
that can produce multiple valid results. That there is not a single
way that is right for everyone, nor a single hierarchy, nor a single
"adequacy," nor a single mode of computation, but multiplicity of
pursuits and modes. It means that there are multiple intelligences,
all expressed to different extents in different people. It means that
there are multiple ways to the top of the mountain; it means that
there are multiple valid endeavors; it means that there are multiple
mirrors; it means that there are multiple PATHS.
And by allowing people a fruition of what they are given - in paths
that are right for them - more and more of the human potential is
given a way to expression for the good of one and all. Economically;
academically; artistically; and in multiplicity of endeavors.
That, is the meaning of E PLURIBUS UNUM.
================================
A neighborhood kid tried to teach me what he called player tips. I
stopped him right in his tracks.
A relationship that is based on deception will be toppled by any
manifestation of emotional truth.
The process of defending such a relationship involves spinning an ever-
more-wide, ever-more-oppressive, ever-more-strangulating and
ultimately ever-more-transparently-dishonest web of deceit, in order
to not only keep what the partner truly wants from appearing, but to
keep the partner so shackled and guilt-ridden and miserable as to not
be capable of seeing the deceit or extricating herself from it.
The lie grows; it becomes more ensnaring. Everything in the partner
that is receptive to emotional truth is torn up and destroyed. The
people cannot give love to their children or to handle in them
sincerity or give them emotional understanding, because such things
are a menace to the falsehood that is their existence: A foil for it
and, as something of sincerity itself, a frame that makes apparent
their own insincerity.
The people retreat behind closed-gate neighborhoods and develop
groupthink, allowing lies to build up while aggressively excluding
anyone with any other ideas. The church comes in to justify the lie,
profaning itself and the name of God in the process. Psychology comes
in to make people believe that they don't think what they think and
don't feel what they feel. Social movements come in to deal with those
who would not be deceived by either of these methods.
Criminalized, the emotional truth becomes criminal, while the lie
becomes the law.
It becomes, in the words of Steven Jay Gould, "Shared dogma
masquerading as objectivity" - and defining all people, all abilities,
all perceptions, all values, all mindsets, all personalities, in
reference to - itself.
Creating a bigger and bigger shroud; a bigger and bigger falsehood;
and a bigger and bigger skein of self-perpetuating and mutually-
perpetuating lies.
It has been often observed that suburban life is hypocritical. I've
just explained why and how.
==================================
If something exists at a rate greater than chance, then there is
inevitably a reason. Thus many of the things that are stereotypical
are based on actual root causes. The task becomes to see the
underlying mechanism.
"Jews are hard-headed" - well yeah, and I've said why they have to be.
"Black people in America are lazy and violent" - many aren't, but
historical analysis would refer to it as learned helplessness in face
of having all of their work expropriated. "Women aren't rational" -
while many are, the ones that aren't simply think along different
lines which are functional to another level of nature.
To know this, is a way to move out from cultural dogma masquerading as
objectivity -
And toward actual examination of cultural, historical and
psychological forces that are necessary for integrative portrayal of
people at levels individual and collective -
And, once this wisdom is quantified, making possible for actual,
informed, responsibility to be the fact of people's lives.
================================
It has been this experience: That whenever faith is put into something
that is incomplete, follows a refutation by counterexample. Someone
puts faith in brotherhood of man - and gets stung by a scorpion.
Someone puts faith in himself - and to survive keeps having to draw on
other forms of knowledge, on friendships, on alliances, that expand
his horizons beyond himself. Someone puts faith in work or
responsibility - and as the work builds all kinds of unexpected
consequences arise, that demand more knowledge, that call on more
faculties, that expand the definition of work and responsibility and
activity that is useful that was not previously known as work. Someone
puts faith in empiricism - and as empiricism builds on itself it finds
out, through Einsteinian relativity, quantum mechanics and game and
chaos theories, that it is not the absolute truth. People put faith in
logic - and get Kant and others using the logic for suicidal
epistemologizing. Communists put faith in mankind - and get the worst
of what man can be.
All and further along; these aren't tricks, these aren't illusions,
this is not human condition, these are simply manifestations of how
the universe is. The false theories get tested and deconstructed, with
their shortcomings becoming immediately or sometimes not so
immediately made apparent. Does incompleteness of all these things
render them worthless? No, but it renders them incomplete.
Through interpolation among convex mirrors the amount of curvature is
made fathomable, and the legitimate, being separated from the
illegitimate - as is grain from the chaff - gives clarity of
perspective; clarity about perspectives; and sets in forth the
dynamics by which the beam in everyone's eyes is reduced to
undistinguishable quantities.
There is more.
==================================
The human being, from perspective of self, can be said to possess self-
interest and other-interest. If evolution is true, then man is both
self and part of the greater whole. This avoids the two errors -
objectivism and communism - on either side: There is the self; there
is the whole; and both are valid. One is not only a wave or a part of
the ocean; one is both part of the ocean and the wave. There is the
collective identity; there is the individual identity; both are valid,
both are real, both are incomplete and both enrich each other.
Thus, the completeness of human beingness is accomplished when people
are allowed to make the most of self-interest and likewise to do the
most good for the fellow human beings. In this way is fulfilled
constructively, for good of all selves and good of the whole, the
totality of human beingness. And it is by encouraging both of these
directions that can be made the completeness of man and the
completeness of humankind.
==================================
The pomegranate contains myriads of seeds. The seeds are the function
of their unique selves, and of the fruit around them. The fruit is the
function of itself and the seeds. Through integrative synthesis, tug-
and-play, checks-and-balance and ultimately synergy between levels of
substructure and superstructure, is created the best fruit and the
best seeds.
At any given point in time, based upon analysis of the seeds, patterns
emerge, explanations, apparencies. These apparencies become the
worldview; the worldview that claims to speak for the world. They will
claim that they speak for the whole of the fruit and for all of the
seeds. At one point or another will appear a seed that refutes the
pattern.
Such a seed will be pressed from all sides. Such a seed will be
maligned and attacked. Such a seed will be seen as a threat - a threat
not for what it IS, but for the fact that, by being what it is, it is
a REFUTATION OF THE WORLDVIEW - of the shared dogma masquerading as
objectivity. Few things are more threatening than challenges to
worldview; the result is what I call WORLDVIEW PANIC. And the first
and most frequent response to the worldview panic: Destroy what causes
it.
And for any such pioneer seed, faced with such dynamics, the correct
answer is this:
Identify with the inherent truth;
Identify with the entirety of the fruit, which it is by being what it
is - and refuting the temporary dogma - serves to a far greater extent
than does the dogma;
And stand, both on the grounds of the unique embodied essence in it
embodied and on the ground of the fruit's shared interest -
Identifying with self as well as the shared -
The seed becomes tuned into the reality of itself and the fruit -
Reality which is an integrative function of the given and the newly
created -
And which it serves by making the most of itself and the fruit (or
wave and ocean, or self-interest and shared-interest).
At which point again becomes manifest this:
A more complete understanding of human interest, as interest of each
self and interest of the totality - working through integrative
synthesis:
And which, through commingling and interaction among levels of
structure, not only refute temporary shared dogmas -
But in fact complete and become and make manifest the totality of
human process:
AS EACH UNIQUE SELF AND THE WHOLE WORKING IN SYNERGY -
And through which synergy among substructure and superstructure, as
shown, is actualized the totality of that which is man and that which
is humanity -
And reality of both attains the highest functionality -
For good of each person and good of mankind.
================================
Then the seeds fall out; become themselves; and give birth to the new
fruit.
Succession of the seasons. The way of the universe.
Bring in will guided by wisdom and goodwill, and build the next level.
Not only cyclical as in the East.
Not only linear as in the West.
But understanding integratively - intrinsically and through synthesis
of referential planes - arrive at an ever-more-complete, ever-more-
clear, understanding.
And then use the real mechanism of will, informed by real knowledge
and real benificence, to make the most of - reality.
To build the next level, now inspired with passionate embrace of the
resplendent -
And to make it an ongoing, continuous, practical part of the reality
of the world -
By using the practical reality of man's actions inspired by the
resplendent to make it so.
===================================
Ilya Shambat 2006.
http://sites.google.com/sites/ilyashambatwritings
http://sites.google.com/sites/ibshambat