Alchememetic Illusionectomy

Asymmetric Warfare

2018-06-07T13:22:00.001-04:00

Sometimes we get into such ruts in our lives that the Universe essentially gives up on trying to pound you in the face with its blatant attempts at making you realize what you need to do, what you need to change and switches its strategy up. There’s only so long that the Universe will continue to tell you something, have people and situations tell you what you know you need to know, but refuse, before it will modify its tactics and employ asymmetric warfare against your stubbornness.

When the Universe changes tactics to asymmetric warfare against your defenses which need to be broken down it attacks certain strategic points in your psyche at strategically vulnerable times. All to get you to the point where your defenses are finally broken so that you surrender to what you should be doing.

Let yourself be tackled finally so that you can reconvene in a new formation at the line of scrimmage and try a new play. Your defenses have been broken. You have to say uncle. Then and only then can you really start over for real.

Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way. – Alan Watts

The Universe will attempt to breach your defenses at strategic points in your psyche instead of the head on waves of messages that it had previously sent. You already know what you need to do. It will send emissaries who will explain the terms of surrender and describe more explicitly what you need to work on once you finally raise the white flag.

You need to work on yourself. You need to better yourself. You must employ the modes of self-improvement – resources for which abound plentifully in this age of the internet – that deep down you’ve known that are necessary for you to move further. The sooner you respond to these attacks and pleas, the better able you are to assuage your pain and mitigate your losses.

Experience is a hard teacher because it gives the test first, and only then provides the lesson. – Vernon Law

Vigilance is the root of resilience. You can make it through these rough spots. You’ve possibly been in worse and made it out alive, but even if not, you do indeed have the wherewithal inside of you to make it through even if you’re completely alone in doing so. There are resources both internally and external to you to draw from.

You must cool down the obsessive thoughts and give up on negativity. When you’re in a serious mood it is easy to allow obsessive thinking and whereas emotions should not be repressed, they should also not be allowed to run the whole show.

Who said, “The mind is like a puppy. If you don’t train it, it will shit everywhere”? Well, it’s a bit true in the sense that, left untethered, the mind will take the inertia of negative thoughts and run amok throughout your whole system. It will affect your emotions, your focus, your relationships with others, your view of yourself, your view of what you know yourself to be capable of, your sleep, your overall physical body, and eventually, your humanity and the inherent will to live and persevere that exists in us all.

The easiest way to reverse this descent into negativity and ultimately madness is to simply give up. Give up to the forces both inside you – which desperately yearn for your survival and thriving – and that part of the Universe that wants the best for you that are attempting to get through to you information which you don’t want to process, but you know is right.

Experience is what you get when you get what you didn’t want. – Howard Marks

It’s all up to you. Say this to yourself because it really is. Any lasting change is going to have to come from you for you. We’ll skip the Hallmark card aisle palaver about loving yourself. No one needs to have their intelligence insulted any further with that as it doesn’t target the individual challenges that need to be met head on.

This is why we need to evaluate what obstacles need to be removed, which goals need to be striven for and the challenges that need to be overcome. You will need to craft self-discipline through showing compassion for your future self.

It might not be pleasant in the near-term, but you will feel gratitude in the future to yourself and your past self for it. As is said, self-improvement is the ultimate form of prepayment. Avoid Zero Days, i.e., do not go a single day without doing something to further your own goals; no days without doing something to get you closer to your Endgame.

Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories. – Zadie Smith

Are your desires in line with your intention and vice versa? What does your ideal day look like? Is it really sipping mimosas on a beach? Or is it coming home to a house you love filled with a family you love after spending a day working on a project you love?

What fills you with passion? What is an outlet that expresses what makes you jump out of bed in the morning before the alarm even goes off? What was it that excited you to the point where you weren’t even aware of how tired you should have been or made you forget to eat?

Neurons that fire together, wire together, [the] process of imagining the future outcomes creates new neural networks in your brain that help you form new beliefs, take new actions, and adopt new perspectives – Melody Wilding

In terms of causation, it may be not so much of your present pushing you toward your intention, but rather your future pulling you towards it. For this reason, it is imperative that you are clear about your intention.

Employ second-order thinking to mitigate unforeseen and unwanted side affects or blowback from unclear or unwise intent. Getting specific about the future you want to create will help you craft a stronger mental picture. Be specific about the future you wish to make.

Use visualization to explore this future and clarify your desires for it. This will give you a stronger concept of what you truly desire for your future Endgame.

Everything goes backwards in time to conspire in just such a way that the future you intend for occurs. – Dean Radin

Develop a campaign, an overall strategy with this subsequent Endgame. Imagine ahead to what you want as your Endgame then reason backward as to what constitutes what would have to happen to achieve that. This will give you a better strategy to employ what you need to do in order to achieve your desired results.

Make sure that your desires are in line with your intent and that your intent is in line with your true desires. The clearer you are about what you want, the easier it is for the universe to do its job for you. Visualize what that desired future outcome looks like.

Remember that on the one hand, effective visualization is grounded in reality, but on the other do not let limitations such as your own present situation – however undesirable – dictate where you want to end up.

When we are fearful, we tighten our grip, hoping for more control of the chaos. Our grip strangles reality so tightly that nothing can change. When we are calm and expectant, we loosen our grip on reality. Strangely enough, the more we loosen our grip, reality gets loose and changeable. When we stop trying to force things to happen, they happen.– Adam Blackthorne

Adjust your preferred outcomes as reality changes. Be careful not to allow clouding in your view of reality. Be mindful and intellectually honest enough with yourself to allow this to be visible. Take your ego out of your line of sight. The better you understand a problem, the better you can choose actions which would embody a proper response.

Identify the tasks or knowledge that are just out of your reach, strive to upgrade your performance, monitor your progress, and revise accordingly. – Susan Cain

Remember that manifestation must have a pathway. You must find what is required in order to achieve your results. You may need to expand your palette in order to paint the picture in reality that you see in your mind.

Also remember to show gratitude. Be grateful for everything that you do have. Be grateful for what remains and grateful for what you will become and achieve and acquire. Be grateful for things that are no longer in your life that could have caused even more harm.

In showing gratitude, you inherently change your mindset. Your mental picture of both the world in general, your immediate surroundings and your own self will get brighter. Your outlook will indeed change because you are focusing on the positives that exist and are going to exist as opposed to the negatives that may exist presently and that you fear will occur. Your capacity for optimism increases whilst pessimism decreases.

None is more impoverished than the one who has no gratitude. Gratitude is a currency that we can mint for ourselves, and spend without fear of bankruptcy. —Fred De Witt Van Amburgh

Playfulness

2015-11-20T16:08:00.002-05:00

Keeping a sort of 'playfulness' in terms of attempting imagination and creativity allows one to avoid the rigidity and closedness of mind that so often occurs in times of panic and whilst one is under stress. This allows one to possibly see solutions to problems that, otherwise, one would not consider due to previous conditioning brought on by 'cognitive conformity', which can be defined as the type of thinking that becomes the normal mode for individuals as they are taught by authority figures throughout their formative years for reasons (usually unknowingly so) of developing a conformist thought process and, hence, overall view of the world.
This includes the entirety of concepts that one is told to not bother entertaining for whatever variety of reasons and the concepts one learns to not bother entertaining later on.
In an increasingly complex world, the need for the ability to deal with new and novel issues requires creative and unique solutions.

Sometimes It Rains In San Francisco

2015-11-16T23:07:00.000-05:00

Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick.

This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering its a feather bed.

Terrance McKenna

Integrative values allowing for a constellation of possibilities previously not available due to tunnel realities informed by consensus reality – monoculture. Breaking out of these parameters placed on certain modalities of thought allows for the possibility to shed new light on an entire array of new aspects with regards to understanding – it opens the world of revelatory insights. It opens the mind at first and further along may open the conscious mind to working purposefully with the subconscious mind further allowing for coordinating in its way with the Collective Unconscious – the Universe – which may bring forth manifestation of the Will.

Especially once one can move past Sacredness and the polarities inherent in both belonging to and desiring to be part of groups. Groups inherently drive members to polarities and work against depolarization. The feed the Ego. Also, by providing a prefabricated system of conceptualizing around a certain number of topics, it allows members to take on certain beliefs (which of course can inform behavior) without having to figure things out on their own. I.e., allowing for intellectual laziness. It thusly reinforces less thinking and lesser quality thinking at that. Additionally, groups which focus on negativity against those outside it typify behavior that engenders a culture of discord. Being disinclusive.

Recognizing how seemingly disparate concepts may actually compliment one another opens up a whole new world.

There are those of us on the path. The path that implies an incredibly strong desire for a deeper understanding of reality as it actually is. It seems inherent in this that a large amount of claims by those who mold consensus reality are dubious at best. As information regarding what may actually be the (bizarre) reality as it really is becomes more and more available (and those of us on the path are often adamant in finding it regardless of its apparent availability), the number of possibilities to explore multiplies.

Whether it be pet interests in indy music, parapolitics, pseudo/alternative history or quantum physics, the urge to delve deeper still is always there. The ideas of fringe thinkers take on new importance. The experiments of artists and alchemists alike hold heretofore overlooked import. As the research mounts, context for all of this increases and hence also does the understanding thereof. Articles, experiences, interactions, travels all hold a new, exciting, magical, pregnant meaning. An interests in the Fortean, the philosophical, the psychological, the mysterious – matters of consciousness – is at that point nigh inevitable. Terms like pseudoscience and fantastical hold meanings different to one at this juncture. They understand how certain terminology is employed to deter those who have been successfully reprogrammed on a subconscious level by those with a stake in the herd thinking in such terms, in such ways. Twilight language.

“In a sense, it’s no surprise that synchromysticism has links to conspiracy theory, psychedelics and occult traditions because all three are methods to deprogram oneself from cultural conditioning, a means to connect a diverse range of information and ideas, as well as a way to see the world from a more open perspective. It’s an alchemical technique to create meaning out of the chaos of current events and seemingly vapid commercial detritus that bombards us on a daily basis, and to add new layers of meaning to more enduring and celebrated works of art.”

http://occulture64.wordpress.com/2008/04/29/synchromysticism/

We subconsciously react to certain words and symbols differently than our conscious mind does. It is all dependent upon our imprints and our personal narrative – how we’ve been programmed to think about and react to certain things. Our unawareness to those things makes us vulnerable to being affected in unseen, unknown ways to our encounters with them in day to day interactions.

Our subconsciouses are our way to communicate with the Universe on a direct level, but they are also what directs our thoughts and behaviors at root. Understanding this revelation is only the first step, After this, we must look at how to identify and modify what the hell exactly it is that our subconscious is doing and how it is programmed and how this programming is affecting us.

Integrative values being the depolarization of the mind and the psyche. The alchemical marriage of the left and right brain; of anima and animus. It is whole brain thinking. It is what neuroplasticity informs us of. It allows for full understanding.

…tears always have deeper roots than smiles.

E.M. Cioran

Stoicism should be viewed as a tool to be employed to reel in your emotions before they overtake you. Not as a way of life which inevitably takes away your humanity.

Interpretations are exploratory.

Models are explanatory.

Macro-enchantment to get things going and the micro-enchantment for the specific things to go right (the way you want them to) as opportunities arise. Ride the chaos. Learn to surrender when needed, to fail better, to know how and when to collapse and also to be proactive and say yes and know when to say fuck it.

An interesting life requires fortitude and wisdom; the ability to ride the waves of chaos in the ocean that is the direction the Universe moves you. Magic is your rigging, but the Universe provides the winds and you can’t predict the direction the winds will blow from. You can adjust your sail, but your port-of-call is up to the Universe, unless you sail past into the inevitable storm.

It is difficult to tell sometimes where one should be or be headed though. It is imperative to stave off negative energy. Not only to ward it off, but to ensure it isn’t allowed to stay inside oneself. Cleansing rituals and meditation can definitely help, but mindfulness is also necessary to keep an eye on where you are.

There is an odd synchronicity in the way parallel lives veer to touch one another, change direction, and then come close again and again until they connect and hold for whatever it was that fate intended to happen.

Ann Rule

Chanting as a way of reprogramming the subconscious in similar ways that sigilizing turns an intention of the Will into a symbol thus transferring it from Consciousness to Subconsciousness, so that the Subconscious can then get to work on manifesting the Intention. According to my current model/chosen interpretation, the Conscious self once it wills something (most often using intellect or desire), then has to ‘translate’ this intention into something the Subconscious can be reprogrammed to manifest, which once accomplished, can then ‘communicate’ with the Universe, the Collective Unconscious, thus changing the probability that the Universe will set a course of events to bring about this change – i.e., to manifest this change in our perceived reality (on a conscious level). This is working on the assumption that the Subconscious understands a symbol-language instead of a word-based language. Hence, the possible effectiveness of chanting something to the point where it no longer holds meaning – where the words cease to hold their original meaning, where they become mere vibrations and repetitions of intent on a conceptual level instead of being thought upon as the meanings of their words with each utterance. I believe this also plays a part into why chanting in a language which one does not know helps the Subconscious overcome this – instead it has the meaning – the symbolic meaning – of the chanted words, the sounds, the syllables transferred to it. Possibly in this way, it can ‘understand’ the true intent better than it could by means of a word-based language (implying that that would require a different set of translation). Given, word-based languages in their written form are themselves symbol sets, I’m not quite sure where I stand on this issue. Quite frankly, if it works who cares? But on a level of thinking that I find comfortable, I still find it somewhat necessary to parse and pursue such questions.

Conscious intent > Subconscious reprogramming > Universe changing the winds of chaos in accordance > greater probability of manifestation in the plane we exist on.

This explains why a means of manifestation is important. Why if your intention can only be manifested in the dreamworld or the astral plane, then that is where your intention will most likely manifest. If there is a means of manifestation in the waking world, then you still should be doing everything you consciously can to work toward this goal without relying on the admittedly absurd belief that magic will do everything for you.

It is looking like it is going to be quite an undertaking to understand all the systems I want to in order that I may understand as fully as possible the overall overlapping concepts. Ie, practical magic, alchemy, tarot, astrology, psychology, western philosophy, eastern mystic schools, kabbalah, numerology, meditation and visualization techniques. etc. There are so many overlaps between them all. Underlying, seems to be the 7 Hermetic Principles. The Conscious, Subconscious and Collective Unconscious. As above, so below. So without, so within. Macro/microcosm. The Will and intention of the conscious translating into a symbolic ‘language’ that the Subconscious can work with as it conveys this intention to the machinations of the Collective Unconscious to manifest change via manipulating the probabilities of occurrences in the chaos of the Universe.

Thus we arrive at the sobering conclusion that although this universe contains enough Chaos to allow magic it doesn’t contain enough to permit gross miracles in a hurry.

The magician will need to target events which depend on very small energy or entropy changes and the results won’t often look much like spectacular parapsychology, they will look more like a series of events going somewhat improbably in the desired direction.

Peter J Carroll

Asymmetrical warfare insofar as the universe stopping with symmetrical warfare in terms of breaking you down with people telling you the same thing over and over even when you know they might be right. When the universe changes tactics to asymmetrical warfare against your defenses which need to be broken down and attacks certain strategic points in your psyche at strategically vulnerable times. All to get you to the point where your defenses are finally broken so that you surrender to what you should be doing. Let yourself be tackled finally so that you can line up at the line of scrimmage again and try a new play. Your defenses have to be broken. You have to say uncle. Then and only then can you really start over for real.

The idea of choosing to surrender allowing for a kind of controlled demolition.

Lust for results is pointless. Realizing that it doesn’t matter either way and just stop looking. Again. Give up the wild goose chases so that you don’t miss the pheasant…or the chicken on sale at the grocery store.

Preference falsification.

The halo and horns effect in regards to how our friends and also how we view certain cultures. Also how our experience with and immersion in certain relationships, situations and cultures affect our confirmation biases from moment to moment.

Conglomerating Concepts

2015-05-15T18:57:00.000-04:00

Abraxis. Sublimating Sol et Luna. Yin and Yang. Full understanding / awareness of the self. This leads to the possibility of changing what you desire to change; to integrate as you see fit.

Of course, before you begin to change and integrate, the highest degree of wisdom and knowledge is preferable so that you may change and integrate in the optimal way. Information gathering is crucial for this, but so is the ability to integrate said information in a useful and lucid manner. Clarity of mind allows you to have the requisite mental resources available to apply to both the gathering and integrating of information. This 'integration' involves the analysis of information being received both in terms of itself as newly received meme and in the context of its relationships with all the other concepts which are part of your personal ideosphere. This pondering over new and old concepts will lend to some form of integration even as it may disintegrate previously extant memeplexes in your mind. To do this well, you must be intellectually honest, at least with yourself. Your ego will destroy you if you let it. Whereas I am presently unsure about the theories surrounding the 'self', I currently view it as a desired state of optimally conscious evolution, the fully transmuted alchemist of the mind, if not the body as well.

In the realm of terra mensa one may find both previously visible and occulted 'demons'; those detrimental aspects of one's psyche which if left to 'themselves' will continue to negatively affect the individual's life through their arising in given situations. In other words, the metaprograms that steer one's behavior and thought processes may be redirected for positive, preferable results as opposed to harming the individual. There are multiple mehtods to employ in the achieving / achievement of mental clarity most are successful, or more successful when exercised in tandem with one another. These may include, but are not limited to, different forms of yoga, meditation, breathing exercises, aspects of cognitive behavioral therapy, NLP, and physical exercise.

Once one gains the ability to clear the conscious mind of the constant mental banter which keeps the mind from true, effectively focus then the task of self-analysis is made simpler, though not necessarily easier at all. The ability to clearly focus on all necessary aspects of oneself is a must if one wishes to attain anything near a fully developed self in preparation of the realization of the desired outcomes of the self as opposed to the short-term, puerile desires of the self. The previously mentioned gathering of information is so important for this.

Proper Resilience and False Equifinality

2012-09-14T14:06:00.000-04:00

Here's something old that I thought I had posted, but apparently had not.

I define proper resilience as employing the capability to cope effectively with certain situations that individuals may be conditioned to view as being non-preferential to their individual system by understanding via reason the true severity in terms of existential risks of a situation. All 'non-preferential' situations that do not threaten the survival of a system are contextual in terms of arbitrary preferences of that system.

The only inherent purpose of a biological system, i.e. something that is living, is to survive long enough to reproduce and thus continue the survival of the genes within that biological system. All else is arbitrarily decided upon. This brings us to self-interest - all living systems have as their sole inherent purpose surviving to procreate.

Now particular situations which are not directly existentially threatening may have indirect consequences to our reproduction-purposed survival insofar as those consequences may affect our ability to reproduce with a desirable mate. This said though, we as humans have the use of reason and may hence develop our own arbitrary purposes based on memetic replication and survivability as opposed to genetic replication: we may live on in our creations by way of our minds, not just our loins.

Improper resilience I define as the ability to cope without the proper understanding of why and not using correct reasoning for / or not having the correct reasoning behind the actions and mindset allowing for the coping thereof; employing the capability to cope effectively with certain situations that individuals are faced with without the employment of reason, i.e. 'for the wrong reasons.' Merely responding correctly does not connote correct understanding of the whys and the hows.

Ludwig van Bertalanffy, the man we have to thank for General Systems Theory, termed equifinality for when you may reach the same conclusions via multiple paths. When we employ reason for coping we are taking the 'correct' (well reasoned, logical) path whereas when we do not employ reason our path does not necessarily correspond with reality or logic and so, although we have coped properly with a situation and hence achieved our desired outcome, we have done so via irrational means and thus we are in danger of applying irrational means in the future with different situations.

Principles are arbitrary. One develops principles according to a given philosophy which may or may not be based on reason. Reason is not arbitrary. It is a corrollary of an axiomatic basis.

Some of My Music

2012-02-23T18:23:00.001-05:00

I figured I'd share some of my original music with you guys here, if you're interested. Tell me what you think!

Cheers,

Dolf

http://www.reverbnation.com/tunepak/3571424

Present Models Affect Present Outlook

2012-01-25T01:07:00.008-05:00

Thirteen years ago I started writing a book which I titled around the same time, "The Means to Self-Idealization". That's awfully pretentious phrasing for an 18 year old, but it got me thinking about a slew of other creatives and both mine and others' criticisms over the years of their aims and directions (specifically the changes thereof). I realized - possibly for the first time explicitly, at least - that everyone takes their direction (and, once again, changes thereof) from their current model of both reality and, hence, what they perceive it to be and the reality tunnels that are predominant in their view of reality.

The resulting effect of this insight is a necessary viewing anew the judgment I and others have of the work and everyday behavior/thinking of everyone else [poor wording - review later]. Who's to say that Van Halen didn't feel that a new direction was the way to go with the addition of Sammy Hagar after losing David Lee Roth? It also helps in understanding where people may go 'astray' when looking at their change in circumstances in this light. Sometimes people get into some shit and that eventually (sooner or later) leads to in a new reality tunnel from which they view everything else. Whether they are aware of this oftentimes (in my experience with humans) plays a large part into whether or not they attempt to get out of said shit, but the point to be made remains.

In summation, my view now is that we might all benefit from keeping this in mind when critiquing others' apparent changes in behavior/thinking.

As always, comments, suggestions, etc. are quite appreciated and encouraged.

Cheers,
Blessed be in 23

Authors to Read

2011-11-26T04:39:00.003-05:00

I had the fortuitous blessing of talking at length with my brother this evening about books and decided that I (as a compulsive list-maker) needed to make a list of must read material, so I'll begin that task with a list of - in my opinion - must-read authors which thusly ensues:

Robert Anton Wilson
Douglas Hofstadter
Robert Anson Heinlein
Alan Watts
Tom Robbins
Erich Fromm
Lou Marinoff
Thomas Pynchon
Hermann Hesse
Neil Stephenson
Philip K Dick
Kurt Vonnegut
Jay Ramsay
Erik Davis
Howard Bloom
David Boaz
Alvin Toffler
Paul Johnson
Ayn Rand
Umberto Eco

If you, reader, have anyone to add, please feel free to drop a line with your own list as this is merely a beginning off the top-of-my-head roster of authors.
Fortune to all.
Cheers.

From the Beginning

2011-11-11T02:06:00.003-05:00

The first step toward freedom is not fearing or being offended by ideas. Once one has the capacity to ponder a concept without bias then one is able to begin fully exploring the possibilities of that concept as opposed to denying entrance into your internal conversation of any idea which on the face of it appears to be antithetical to your present belief system. Employing a bit of the Pyrrhonistic idea of Epoché in other words. (Cf. Pancritical Rationalism)

This allows one to increase the depth of ones philosophical palette. This, in turn, furthers the philosophical 'opportunities', so to speak, one may pursue, which enriches the routes one may take to fulfilling the desire of a satisfying, productive and successful life.

More Fauxetry

2011-08-05T02:22:00.003-04:00

I'll hopefully turn this gibberish into a song here soon.
Working title(s) is(are): To rue a lost love in the 21st Century / Song for the lovelorn 21st Century boy

When I meet my friends at a 100 year old bar
And they all ask me how you are
Imbibe some local craft beers
Wondering what happened over all the years (I'm getting fat and going gray?)
Regardless of what they say...
Going home to myself and my thoughts
Playing some (glorious) hits of the 80s thinking lots
About what went wrong. Playing those old songs
From childhood
From the old neighborhood
When we all stood
Straight and should, could - would
Do everything we said we were going to
Having and doing it all with you
Right there to share
Aw, I should just give it a rest
Bon Jovi said it best:
"I'll still be there for you"
And sometimes, after some grog,
my memory's jogged
and my being gets bogged
down and backlogged
with the times we had
flooding back in a peer-to-peer torrential influx
of reminiscence,
downtrodden nostalgia
and I give in and check your blog
And for what.
Anti-ism
Check your E-prime meter.
What is and never was will never be.
Or according to those who claim to know.

Holons and Politics

2011-03-29T14:01:00.004-04:00

I've been giving a lot of thought to the application to my political and philosophical belief system of the concept of holons - the idea described by Koestler as the fact (at least by my lights) that systems are both self-assertive and autonomous as well as integrative parts of yet higher systems.

The self-assertive aspect of my brand of libertarianism - of taking responsibility for ones own actions and destiny - but always having a nagging question of how effective / efficacious the whole political system ties in with the integrative reality of living in 21st Century Western society; the reality of being dependent upon other individuals and groups, organizations, et al.

How does this correlate with the optimization techniques (both internal and external) of the occult and related esoterica? In my case specifically: alchemy, chaos magick and psychology, philosophy, etc...

My bent is typically to view all of this in terms of systems theory, which is why I believe the concept of holons seems to help explain things a little better to me.

Any insights would be greatly appreciated in the comments.

Cheers

Random Musings on a Slow Workday

2011-03-22T19:39:00.005-04:00

With all the progress that has been made in the maths and science over the last century, it is increasingly important to have writers who can explain these, oftentimes complex, new ideas to the lay public in such a way that real understanding can be had by all.

Better communication of these ideas can more easily result in individuals or groups working in other fields becoming aware of these things which may turn out to have implications for their field and vice versa.

As specialized fields develop more and more obscure jargon to explain more and more complex concepts, the need for 'translation', as it were, back into more universally understandable language increases. This can allow for the possibility of interdisciplinary cross-pollination. In other words, we need more James Gleicks.

New Moon Rising

2010-08-18T00:21:00.004-04:00

A real quick update: We here at alchememetic are working on a new feature for your long forgotten blogspot cul-de-sac - interviews with *living* people. Our immediate focus will be on regional thinkers and doers and other internet-catchword-types.
Stop back soon (and soon is a very relative term at alchememeticillusionectomy...)
Cheers,
Dolf

Values

2010-05-03T16:25:00.005-04:00

Applying systems theory and the like to looking at our systems of belief and our overall philosophy so that we may 'perfect' them and clarify them. This allows us to make sound and consistent decisions in our daily lives.

Studying systems theory with this in mind helps us with identifying the organizational structures of our ideosphere. It helps with understanding what fundamental concepts we employ in deciding which more complex concepts we choose to believe, as well as which are inconsistent with our fundamental principles.

Once we identify our value system we may further look to see why we make the choices we do and whether these are consistent with our belief system as we claim it to be. Our actions truly illustrate what our actual values are.

It must be noted that these actions are by no means congruent with our stated values. Our stated values, those which we may only superficially think we hold, are nothing but stated values if, when it comes time to act accordingly or not to said values, we choose the latter. Thus, actions speak louder than words.

Random thoughts

2010-03-12T18:34:00.004-05:00

When holding a conversation with someone on a topic of which you know little or none, approach it from the standpoint of learning something new. I don't think I so much as understand better by way of metaphor, but I do prefer to attempt to find metaphors to clarify in the speaker's mind what exactly they mean when they speak of whatever it is they are speaking of. This leads them to more clearly understand what it is that they think of in regards to a particular subject; they are forced to clarify the concept in their mind in order to pass it on to me with even sufficient clarity. This allows for higher fidelity in the attempted transmission of the meme(s)(plexes) from their mind to mine. You, the presently benighted party, are more likely to get more information and less noise via the channel of communication than you might otherwise have.
Those who attempt to transfer knowledge to others without fully understanding what it is they are talking about ultimately do themselves a disservice by (memetically) misrepresenting concepts due to their (at least implicit) claim to contextual expert authority. This further can lead to an internal reinforcement to themselves that they grasp those concepts better than they actually do, therefore digging themselves into the proverbial hole.
To combat this one might say that it is possible to think and speak in E-prime in such circumstances, avoiding generalizations ('All generalizations are dangerous, even this one - Dumas) and admitting fallibility as well as fully reasoning something through whilst not insisting on and taking the tacit approach of not being wrong at all costs, being honest with oneself as well as others for, as they say, 'The truth heals clean.'

The Gray Area

2009-06-22T19:07:00.004-04:00

So often people like to take the ambiguous, complex aspects of reality and attempt to make them black and white in their heads. This can lead to many problems as this constructs mental misrepresentations of reality and thus they are unable to properly deal with things as they really are. This goes back to the problem of one not dealing with reality as it really is and the problems that stem from that.

'The psychic task which a person can and must set for himself, is not to feel secure, but to be able to tolerate insecurity, without panic and undue fear.' -Erich Fromm The Sane Society p. 174.

The Abyss of Freedom

2009-06-22T00:31:00.003-04:00

Writing in terms of style hinders your writing altogether. 'Style' implies delimiting factors with parameters and confines within which you / your piece must stay. All else is verboten and thus your piece is denied anything which might enhance it if it falls outside this prefabricated construct. Style, in my approximation, is best employed in the capacity of inspiration. I.e., a blues-inspired section or piece; an impressionist-inspired piece, etc.

This advice would go for all forms of creativity. Everything from musical composition to cooking; film-making to interior design.

As in all aspects of life, specifically, creative endeavors, strictly speaking, to 'left brain thinking' or 'right brain thinking' is missing a whole world of possibilities – the key whole-brain thinking: applying all of the intellect that one has developed throughout their lifetime, but also conjuring and incorporating all of the experiential / emotional factors which make up what one is.

Just as culture benchmarks ideas, individuals benchmark concepts that over time become fragmented and disorganized. 'Reflection' is an important practice and can be energized if used as a period for reintegration of all the concepts one has accumulated – a sort of defragging and reorganizing of both gained concepts and emotionalized experiences. This, once again, conjures whole-brain thinking – combining the intellect and the emotions; left and right brain.

'With all the possibilities at [Debussy's] disposal, and conscious habits blocked, he came to confront what Stravinsky later called “the abyss of freedom.” Thereafter he complained of a paralysis of the imagination. In 1909 he wrote to Caplet, “No, it is not neurosis, or hypochondria either. It is the sweet sickness of the notion of having to choose among all conceivable things.”' -Music in the 20th Century, W W Austin p.33.

-A definition of information overload in the creative process?

In the words of Damien Rice: 'So Here It Is'....

2008-11-15T01:20:00.003-05:00

More fauxetry for all four of you. It is an incomplete work so (feign caring) check back to see its evolution.

I will not love you only for your body
I will not love you only for parts of your body
I will not love you only for access to your body
I will not love you only for your mind
I will not love you only for parts of your mind
I will not love you only for access to your mind
I will not love you only for what you think of me
I will not love you only for what I think of you
I will not love you only for what others think of us
I will not love you only for what others don't realize in us
I will not love you only for what has happened
I will not love you only for what I want to happen
I will not love you only for what I hope will happen
I will not love you only for what I treasure that has already happened
I will not love you only for what can never happen
I will not love you only for what will never happen
I will not love you only for what has never happened
I will not love you only for what has yet to happen
I will not love you only for what I can make you be
I will not love you only for what you can make me be
I will not love you only for what we can make others be
I will not love you only for what we can make the world be
I will not love you only for your potential
I will not love you only for our shared potential
I will not love you only for yor existence
I will not love you only for your presence in my life
I will not love you only for how you can complete my life
I will not love you only for your gaze
I will not love you only for those moments when we are the only two in the world
I will not love you only for how you look at me the way only you do
I will not love you only for how comfortable we may be together
I will not love you only for how good we are together
I will not love you only for what you say
I will not love you only for when we are silent together
I will not love you only for our shared interests
I will not love you only for our diametric oppositions
I will not love you only for our shared experiences
I will not love you only for our similar experiences
I will not love you only for our parallel lives
I will not love you only for our parallel dreams
I will not love you only for our shared virility
I will not love you only for our shared vividness
I will not love you only for your tastes
I will not love you only for your lack of taste
I will not love you only for your talents
I will not love you only for how you perceive
I will not love you only for how you say what you say
I will not love you only for your misperceptions
I will not love you only for your adorable imperfections
I will not love you only for your abhorable imperfections
I will not love you only for your silly understatements
I will not love you only for your grave misunderstandings
I will not love you only for your mistranslations
I will not love you only for your perfect synchronicities
I will not love you only for your perfection
I will not love you only for your imperfection
I will only love you because I love all of you, regardless, and that is more proof of love than you will ever get anywhere else. And that is proof of love in its purest, simplest form. The only form in which it lasts eternally, all else is naive bullshit and/or attempted-panty-dropping buncombe.
But when I pose the question: Will you choose ghost or will you choose life? You will choose death.
And when I pose the question: Will you choose him or will you choose me? You will choose him.
It is because you have a deathwish and do not want life; the life that I would bring you. You will suffer all your days and I tried...

Mot Juste in Fauxetry

2008-10-27T23:59:00.006-04:00

I went down to the studio today (my third place as the textbooks would call it now) to do some mental health improv shredding in the key of A and found this while leafing through a notebook of music I've been working on for an upcoming album over the last few months.

Still working on further actual posts in re of whole brain thinking, priming, mental clarity, and the new concepts subprogramming and the fallacy of (mis)scaling. Keep an eye out, but don't hold your breath either.

Enjoy my rambling poetry (or as I call it, fauxetry).

cheers.

Mot Juste

Eldritch ether of my childhood waking dreams

On the outer lip of sleep’s spiral-funnel-abyss

Of non-, un-, meta-, sub-, supra-consciousness

Of the ages since the dawn of man

Of my life since my conception

Of the reality of my day since daybreak

To this point

To this now

To this ever present, everlasting moment

Which is always here

In this bed

Underneath these blankets

The intimate warmth of superficial safety

Guarded from the suicidal tendencies

Lurking beyond my mattress

Haunting my halls

Stalking this eldritch ether of mind and experiences

Isolated

Apart

All

Any

One

Two

Infinite

Unable

To consummate as all

As us, them, me, you

Perfection is striven for

The closer I get the further I am from you all

Raising awareness and pints…and expectations

…And falling short, flat, face down

The pitiful chakras in the soles of those whom

I lay beneath, trampled and tread upon

I will always see you for more than what you are

I will paint you as a rose-

Colored

With my infatuation; delusional

Only to end with distance in time and geography

Hopeless Utopian romantic dreamers

Will forever grasp for coals too hot to handle

Never waiting until they have cooled

And then it’s too late

Sucker

Again you shall starve, writing a recipe to die for

And a song to forget

And a song to forget you by

Forgettable as any

Who said ‘Alchemists should stick to the laboratory’?

Stop venturing about young Fool

Lest the Devil take you back to the Tower

Initiation never ends, just youth, just chance, just this life

Mere opportunities

Sheer logic

Would tell you

Give up, turn inward, the outside is too much effort

They don’t want you and they don’t believe you anyway

Helpless quixotic debutant: go fuck yourself

And stick to what you know

Go eat out the Muse and drink from her font

She’ll at least pat you on your head afterwards

Give and give and give and give

Never take

And blame them afterward

Born under certain stars

It rains…in perpetuity

A solemn cloud to match a solemn shadow

Tempus loquendi, tempus tacendi;

And I never get it right; silence when communication is apropos

And the other way ‘round

Wending abysmally down wrong-ways

Ah, but consistency is a virtue!

And the Greeks have their crowbars and Preparation-H

Platonic

Ha! And I use to be Aristotelian

And now the Neoplatonists want me

Born under certain stars

23 of them to be exact

And the Universe’s synchronous sense of humor…

…Yes, and there is that

And you can only achieve T.A.Z. with an instrument in your hand

Goose eggs!

And George Washington wrote: ‘No wife, no horse, no mustache’

No girl, no money, no style.

Mot juste.

Harnessing the Irrational

2008-08-20T21:08:00.005-04:00

Been away for awhile, if anyone noticed. Yeah, didn't think so. Either way, I've been busy doing more concept formulation and active discussion and less composition, but I did want to throw up a quick post for the purpose of keeping myself focused on Alchememetic Illusionectomy, if only in the back of my mind.

Anyway, I've been working on the idea of using reason to harness our irrational side of the brain so as to use it in rational ways; i.e. using reason to take advantage of irrationality. This seems to be on the face of it the basis for systems such as alchemy and goes along with the concept of the yin and the yang. Basically, I'm talking about the marriage of the rational and irrational and understanding the equally worthy aspects of both.

We employ reason everyday in our lives as I've often spoke of before. But we also employ emotion and intuition as well and this can be tricky. Pure emotion often will lead us in the 'wrong' direction and we tend to make 'mistakes' when we go along merely with our emotional responses to circumstances.

When we have an emotional response to something, but before acting upon it we employ reason we can head off a lot of misery by seeing the long-term effects that our strictly emotional responses could have led to if we had acted solely in accordance with them. We become reactionary and inconsistent.

I'm especially looking into how this can be applied to creativity and quotidian life, but until I have the time to fully and more articulately go on further I hope that you may have your on thoughts and feel free to share them.

No Wife, No Horse, No Mustache...Ewige Blumenkraft, vol. XXIII

2008-07-27T21:16:00.004-04:00

We have made you a creature neither of heaven nor of earth, neither mortal nor immortal, in order that you may, as the free and proud shaper of your own being, fashion yourself in the form you may prefer.

Pico della Mirandola Oration on the Dignity of Man.

More older stuff...
23 September 2007
Pico, quoting from the Hermetica, states the same thing as modern day existentialism, Objectivism, and even LaVey's version of Satanism, that man is free to make his own choices and fashion himself as he pleases. What remains is for man to gather the knowledge and resources to make the optimal decisions and fashion himself in the best way possible for himself - requiring the development of purpose - which is not inherent in him at birth. Man is not born with purpose, he may choose to develop one for himself...or not.

Good and evil are not axiomatic. These concepts can only exist via self-referential consciousness. The lack of good and evil's existence as fundamental axioms does not negate the possibility for a code of ethics and morality; indeed, our survival requires it.
Strive for intellectual honesty, intellectual integrity, and intellectual courage. This is the only way in which you can fully develop your personal philosophy in such a way that it will (to the fullest extent possible) be developed logically and clearly.

How Far Have I Really Come?

2008-07-24T15:35:00.003-04:00

Found this sitting on the hd the other day. Hmm...I don't know if I really agree with all of it, but I was reading a lot of wierd shit at the time. Enjoy.

6 December 2004

Man has no intrinsic, inborn, fate-determined destiny or purpose. You make your own purpose. All existence is one (as above, so below; micro/macrocosm); we are only different because our self-reference allows us to negate and realize our being, our subjectivity. Increase awareness and understanding. Gain knowledge and learn to properly connect it and conciliate it. Tap into your divinity. There is no supernatural, just aspects of nature which are not widely understood. God is the infinite, the nameless – that which cannot be understood given the holistic nature of God – everything is ‘God’, being is ‘God’, infinity is ‘God’. We are just different patterns of the same energy as everything else. These patterns create systems, subsystems, and metasystems. Look at the similarities of the physical patterns against information patterns. Dreaming as reorganization of memes (or ‘filing away’) and the mind coming up with stories to explain why you are thinking what you are thinking (compare with the plasticity of the brain). Transform negative experiences into something that furthers you, makes you grow. Altruism breeds victimology.

Appreciate your challenges. Transform yourself: Extropian Alchemy.

Mind expansion!

Higher awareness – being aware of life and of living!

Realizing your subjectivity, and even more profound, realizing you are the unknown Other to everyone else, or more specifically in everyone else’s subjective perceptions. Other people have their interesting views of you that you are unaware of. They see you as something you are not. You are what you do, your actions, and what you have done. But the majority of people have no idea who you are, let alone what you have done which makes you who you are, and furthermore, you to yourself are something different than what you do.

Sartre, by saying that you are who you are through your actions (I presume) is implying that that is who you are to everyone else. Quite on the contrary, you have the intimate knowledge of your thoughts (whether acted upon or not) and also your unique subjective perception of the world and thusly, are a much different person to yourself than you are to others. And on top of this, every other individual has their own unique perception of you whether it be from different shared experiences with you, hearing different stories about you, meeting you at different times of your life (or day for that matter). This, to an extent, references to the question of who we are: the ‘every changing “I”’.

Are we really the same ‘I’ that we were ten years ago? Firstly, our cells regenerate every seven years (or so), so technically our bodies are not the same, but our minds, though having taken on many more memes are along the continuity/continuum (as far as an autobiographical ‘narrative’ of experiences, et cetera). But I pretty much believe that our minds are the product of our brains (bodies/soma) and so henceforth, discounting the mind/body duality. So, are memories/memes somehow made physical when ‘recorded’ in our brains? If this is so, then our memories must be copied to newer cells (check on the factuality behind this as in neurons and neuronal connections) before the cells are replaced. [Sounding a bit too much like Dianetics (engrams and such)> find out how much more physiology/neuropsychology has discovered; ‘electric patterns/neuron-firing patterns’].

If all you do is self-directed, how can you feel like you are living? One action can change how people think of you completely. Up until you do a particular action people may say that they ‘Didn’t think you were “capable” of doing it.’ Of course, this can have positive or negative connotations. So who are you really? You are many people; you are many possibilities. On a daily basis, most people tend to act according to probabilities, but that in turn is more often than not a form of laziness; continuing along patterns of mere existence and fortifying the status quo.

I am not here trying to proselytize the reader into chaos or anarchy, but saying rather to find positive purpose in ones life so that one may move towards something better – to improve as opposed to just staying the same way, which is never as optimal as it could be (tautological? – is it possible to be more optimal?)

Experiences can create memes because they replicate the situation in objective reality into a mental state in the brain. This mentalization can then be conferred to another brain i.e., replicated.

What is the relation between experiential memes and fundamental memes? Experiential memes can possibly be viewed as a combination between memes and qualia. Fundamental memes are irreducible, and are the foundations on which more complex memes are based upon, or at least enabled by.

Y2K As A Cultural Benchmark Pt. II

2008-07-16T19:05:00.003-04:00

Just as sociocultural currents influenced the technological implications of the 19th-Century, so too did the sweeping sociocultural tidal waves of the 20th-Century affect the evolution of the technology we employ everyday now in our quotidian lives. And just as art influences life and vice versa, technology too influenced life and vice versa.

The practical applications of technological developments direct the way in which they are designed. These practical applications may be different from user to user, i.e. the government, the military will use certain technologies many times in much different ways than civilians will in their daily lives; businesses may use certain technologies in different ways than NASA, etc.

The 1990s with the 'Tech Boom', or the birth of the Information Age, saw the beginnings of the fruition of many, many technologies trickling down to the lay person. No longer was it necessary to educate oneself to a staggering degree in order to fully immerse oneself into the realm of personal computers and the burgeoning internet. Gone were the days where only the wealthy and electronically-inclined were able to build hi-def home stereos and theatres. Just as the Industrial Revolution brought high-speed travel, electricity and long-distance auditory, telephonic communications to the masses, the Information Age brought PCs, video games and satellite television to the luddites - technology used and embraced by everyone from retired seniors to elementary school children.

So how did this new state of affairs affect and infect culture? The technology boom of the 20th-Century was by no means instant or universal, but you can find Toyotas and Michael Jackson cassette tapes in Third World villages the world over. The Cold War's military forces brought plenty of technology to these remote regions and so did the growing phenomenon of globalization.

In the smoldering ashes of the fallen Soviet Union, the door was opened for the West and its investment capital to move into previously verboten territory making new strides in the increased availability of cheap labor and the subsequent lower production costs.

As with anything viewed as change, whether the particular point of view deems it as good or bad, there are those who see more negative than positive aspects in the new state of affairs. Not that their fears are totally unwarranted every time: nuclear warfare threatens us to this day, new diseases arise with stronger immunity to our medicinal countermeasures, global finance is at the whim of a growing international market affecting all corners of the world, terrorist backlashes (sometimes referred to as blowback) from groups ranging from suicidal fundamentalist Muslims to jaded fundamentalist 'pro-life' Christians to crazed, homegrown activist-zealots (be they of the animal-rights, racial supremacist or other ilk).

One such fear stemming from the unique situation we have become accustomed to as a result of our modern-day digital world was the so-called 'Y2K' scare. This particular circumstance involved the date change at the beginning of the new millennium when the dates of computer software would traditionally have rotated on a two character year format from '99' to '00'. As you can see, this problem would have resulted from computers representing the year 2000 as the year 1900 by default - as all computers (electronic at least) up to this point had all existed in one century, the 20th.

I will take for granted here that everyone reading this will remember vividly all of the possible apocalyptic scenarios peddled on all of the nightly news programs(and by that time the twenty-four hour news channels as well for that matter).

As the urgency to change code in all possibly affected software increased, businesses large and small from banking conglomerates to independent business owners, and government agencies and offices hurried to update all their software and operating systems to show the four digit year and thus avoid any possible breakdown in the immense system of res digitalis on which we had all come to depend.

Even with the lumbering bureaucracies of the US government, the updates were completed in time and the earth did not crumble even as we clinked glasses over the familiar melody of Auld Lang Syne. Yet another Eschaton had failed to be immanentized. Sorry, Nostradamus...I guess.

In the wake of this largely non-event, a subconscious affirmation of our abilities to avoid Frankenstein-like self destruction by way of our own technological developments arose. We had dodged a bullet which we had accidentally, or unknowingly, fired at more vital organs than our feet. As the decade wore on the first generation to be totally immersed in internet culture started to grow up. In a few short years cell phones became as prolific as blue jeans once had, and quicker nonetheless.

Everything from instant messaging to instant bill payments became a way of life for more and more. Harddrives became more capacitous and processors quickened at an incredible rate (and continue to). And size decreased making it feasible to hold 2 gigabytes of information on your keychain for a few hours' wages. The ability to carry thousands and thousands of high-quality audio tracks in your pocket, to check your myspace page and take pictures with your phone.

As we said before, life influences technology and technology influences life and hence, culture in general. It seems that our successfully overcoming the Y2K dilemma has renewed our confidence in mankind's ability to overcome both problems in nature with our technology and our technolgical problems with our intelligence and increased awareness. We now live in an age where the generation is living which doesn't know life without complete digital immersion, just as our parents were the first to lack the ability to understand life without television.

The implications of this fact are numerous, but specific cultural tremors are already being felt: the total marketization of all Western sub-cultures. A phenomenon which was already moving in full force starting in the '80s with rock and pop music continuing to partition further down the rabbithole of subgenera and subsubgenera and the increase in them to steal more and more market share from the broader more sterile powerhouse acts. The '80s saw the last of the true giant hit makers such as Aerosmith and Bruce Springsteen. Underground music in all broader genera of rock and pop (and the rise of rap/hip-hop) served as alternatives to the sterile, formulaic corporate rock and pop.

Just as punk had sought to rebel against the overproduced, over-indulgent arena rockers of thh '70s, the New Wavers and alternative, college radio bands of the '80s on into the '90s flew largely under the radar - but not necessarily without any success or attention.

The '90s saw recording technology become available which was both affordable and easy to operate with which musicians could record themselves and feasibly distribute their do-it-yourself recordings on a wider scale through tape trading and thankless touring. In turn, a sort of fetishization with low quality but seemingly more genuine recordings set in and soon the alternative became the norm, much as it usually does.

The moral of the story, of course, is not who got big or who sold out, but rather the way in which technological growth allowed for a new dynamic to take hold of an industry and bring us closer to the unique situation we experience today.

And where we are today is a total commodification of every tappable subculture from dance-rock to violent, mysogenistic hard-core rap, from Swedish black metal to 1001 subgenera of techno. That which was risque just in the Reagan adminstration now will not raise an eyebrow. The free-wheeling flower children of the '60s are now becoming grandparents and the freaks who dressed in all manner of bizarre regalia for Cure shows are now sending many of their children to college (and more Cure shows).

A cultural benchmark has definitely been set and has it served a real purpose insofar as the cultural evolution of society as a whole is concerned? Have we made progress as a result or are our standards for a modicum of 'decency' merely watered down due to oversaturation of 'offensive' behavior and media products?

The '60s's cultural revolution is now trivialized (if it wasn't then) and the adament please for universal LSD usage didn't really do much to change the overall consensus reality outside of certain isolated echo chambers. This naive beseeching for a tuned in, dropped out world may have been responsible for some actual, progressive change, but many aspects have merely morphed into casual facets to the normalities of bourgeois humdrum.

It must be noted however that many in the '60s revolution did, after the fact, turn inward to further their personal growth journey and reformulate their approach to changing the world. These individuals who retained an ability to continue their maturation have effectively promoted actual paradigm shifts in an array of sociopolitical aspects. Everything from medicine, politics and academia to the subtle overall views on all things previously underground.

The groundswell in changing perspectives has slowly, but definitely, affected the shift in what is thought to be 'normal'. The forward momentum with which erstwhile avant garde memes have taken hold in the cultural vocabulary and the whole constellation of accepted behaviors and style is definitely a legacy of those subcultures and countercultures of the 1950s and 1960s.

Recap of the Last 2.5 Days of My Life...Not A Live Journal (Calm Down)

2008-07-16T04:57:00.003-04:00

We are all time-travellers insofar as we all progress with time. It is always the eternal now. We always have the past with us in our present in terms of recall.

Self-analysis's usefulness is limited by our understanding of the fundamentals of our philosophy. If our premises are false, our logic is not in line with reality...hence, wrong decisions; poor judgment.

The more accurate our understanding of our fundamental, basic philosophical keystones are, the closer in line with reality our value judgments may be. Otherwise we risk false equifinality which leads, or can lead to, future poor judgment due to faulty implementation of reason / logic.

When we can (through, oftentimes painful, journeys through the fires of Chapel Perilous) face our demons and conquer them, only then can we start to understand and implement the art of living. We cannot conquer our demons without first facing them. All too often we decide to give in to their 'will' and 'run with the devil' as opposed to standing up to them and knocking them down so that they can no longer hinder our progression and our evolution as individuals. This act of standing our own ground will usually be rather difficult as it is foreign to us and uncomfortable as hell (terminology meant literally), but there really is (in my experience) no other way to reduce these (formidable in actuality) 'demons' which hinder our everyday lives and every subsequent value judgment (i.e. every decision we make) and, hence, how we live our lives.

This may not have the intellectual impact on the reader that it should, so please go back and re-read this last paragraph because every decision, and hence, every act one performs, is based on your philosophy. The problem tends to be that most peoples' philosophy is not delineated nor is it clarified or articulated to an extent that said individual's understanding of oneself is sufficient for actual understanding of overall reality, specifically the reality one finds oneself in.

Y2K As A Cultural Benchmark Pt. I

2008-07-13T21:03:00.006-04:00

What would humanity do without the differing degrees of apprehension felt concerning the next apocalyptic lunch date with the Eschaton? How would we survive without the vague possibility of not surviving looming on the flip-side of the desktop calendar?

When we run out of specific time frames for the fruition of our myriad existential risks, what then shall we have to fret about as a species? Specificity is the key distinction regarding this phenomenon as we shall always retain plenty of factors which threaten our race. The lurking fears will always haunt us pacing just outside our door: nuclear destruction (mutually assured), epidemic, extraterrestrial invasion (via life-forms or supersonic projectile matter), supernatural reckoning per prophecy or otherwise, etc.

The date 1 January 2000 stood to play this role of possible global disaster and waited impatiently to wreak havoc upon our power grids and digital fiat money stores (i.e., our bank accounts). As we approached this milestone, turn-of-the-century event, we raced against time to update our operating systems and governmental databases to ensure that massive cybernetic haywire did not ensue thus rending useless the technological achievements of the entire 20th-Century and triggering the distress that having to adapt to a lifestyle known all so well to our quite recent forebears would lead to.

Indeed when the proverbial clock struck midnight, the celebrated ball dropped much less clumsily than our collective jaws as we exhaled a great sigh of relief, albeit in amazement, wary though it may have been. And on into the 21st-Century we headed full of apprehensive hope as a resurgence in our possible capabilities to technologically survive ourselves was reawakened after our Space Age, Promethean dreams had been slowly sobered due to the natural course of events playing out according to a different script than the sci-fi writers had envisioned (with notable exceptions such as William Gibson coming to mind).

The accrued time-binding of human knowledge logically led to the Industrial Age, and furthermore, had led to sociopolitical restructuring as an offshoot of the cultural ramifications thusly resultant thereof. The previous governmental dichotomies of the Eastern and Western world of the Enlightenment had been totally reworked both due to imperial colonization of the former and the uprising of democratic, humanistic, individualistic revolutions in the latter.

Philosophically, the Lockean movements for individual freedom had led to the classical liberalism, which in one form or another, affected much of the Occident and America as well. In the United States especially, this libertarian, though specifically Calvinistic, push for 'the American Dream' coupled perfectly with scientific, technological breakthroughs which ushered in industrialism. This state of affairs led to gigantic corporate entities wielding power previously unseen by nongovernmental organizations (the addition of a phenomenon known as corporate personhood further complicated this matter).

Immanuel Kant gave way to Hegel and before you knew it, Marxism is born. The Marxist ideology was picked up by disenfranchised, yet-to-be-unionized American dreamers of the Industrial Revolution giving birth to the union.

In Russia, the Axis shipped a sealed boxcar containing a 'plague bacillus...more deadly than any bomb' (Churchill's words), Lenin, who promised 'bread, land and peace' to the war-weary, disenchanted people and communism had a breeding ground ripe for the taking. An Oktober Revolution later, the Czar was unthroned, a dictatorial authoritarianism was instituted and the Soviet Union erected itself. By the 1940s a treaty signed in another German train was broken and the major powers of the world were in heated worldwide conflict again.

This time around, of course, the Russians did not accede to their Teutonic neighbors and Stalin teamed up with Roosevelt and Churchill to fight a multi-theatre full-scale war against the Nazis leading to the ultimate victory in Europe thanks to Hitler's decision to pull a Napoleon qua Operation Barbarossa. The ensuing political and geographical dynamic turned into a geopolitical chess game the likes of which Great Britain's eternal sunshine had never known.

The ideological differences once swept under the carpet for the purpose of defeating Hitler were now no longer confined to academic debate. The US arose with peerless hegemony in the realms of financ, production, and hence political, not to mention military power. The Soviet Union on the other hand with their own ideas of national sovereignty and individual liberties (or lack thereof) began jockeying for position as the benefactor of the world.

It took until the Berlin airlift and multiple violent national takeovers until the US realized the new state of affiars - they were now th leading proponent of 'democracy' and their erstwhile allies, the Soviets, were now trying to outbid them for the future of this new world.

Compounding this issue was the fact that the European empires were now in shambles all over the world. The race for hegemony now became a bit of a bidding war, cold though it may have been - usually, over which newly independent countries would choose to side with whom: puppet states of either the democractic ruling power or the socialists.

This led to scores of engagements over hitherto unknown nations and innumerable amounds of covert operations by the CIA and the KGB and their allies' counterparts. Every possible measure was employed by both sides, and the technology boom which the Second World War had launched did nothing but gain momentum as the competition heated up on both sides.

Global hegemony in a nuclear age called for further and further capability to strike first and have as much intellignece on the other side as possible. Von Braun's rocket program in Nazi Germany evolved into the Space Race, ushering in the new age, and with it new possibilities.

Von Neumann and Shannon et al. brought us number and information theory, eventually the personal computer as well as communication theory leading to that crowning achievement, the World Wide Web.

It must be noted that the military-industrial complex Eisenhower warned us about was not the sole progenitor of Western technological revolution as Stuart Brand of the Merry Pranksters and the whole '60s movements in hallucinogenic, antiwar fuelled cultural backlash were and are heavily responsible for the direction so many of those technologies took once in civilian hands. This is not to mention the influence of the sometimes utopian visionaries like R Buckminster Fuller and the science fiction and underground writers of the '50s, '60s and '70s.