Eastern philosophical theories highlight the illusory nature of human existence. For instance, if we look at early Indian traditions, we inevitably recognize that the world has no logical basis for being “real.” Early Hindu thought had various different darsanas, which ranged in thought on a variety of issues. However, conserved across all these different schools of thought is the idea that the world is logically paradoxical. One of the most elementary versions of this paradox is very closely related to Zeno’s paradox of motion. In this thought experiment, the great Achilles is in a race against the lowly Tortoise. Since Achilles is a far superior runner, the tortoise is allowed to start running one hundred meters ahead of Achilles. As the race starts, Achilles quickly reaches the point at which the tortoise has started. However, by this point the Tortoise has progressed another ten meters. Again, Achilles reaches the point where the Tortoise was when Achilles was at the one hundred meter mark, but the tortoise has progressed one meter. This process continues ad infinitum with Achilles arriving at the point where the Tortoise last was, but the Tortoise having progressed a given amount. From this paradox, Zeno draws the conclusion that Achilles will never pass the Tortoise, thus inevitably losing the race (Cohen 2005). This argument at first look appears to be airtight, but also fly in the face of all experience. It is important to notice that within this mental experiment there is an assumption that this pattern, Achilles reaching the point where the Tortoise just was, can continue indefinitely. In essence, this experiment elucidates that it is impossible to come to a certainty about the reality of motion (Cohen 2005).

Still other Eastern philosophies reflect this trend, too. The Buddha’s teaching embodied the illusory nature of everyday religion, and these ideas were developed even more in-depth by later Buddhist schools of thought namely Yogacara and Madhayamika. The main philosophical school, which was in dialogue with the Yogacarins, was the representationalist realists (Siderits 2005). They believe that there is an outside environment, but it is mediated by our inability to directly contact it; rather we always see representations of what occurs in the outside world (Siderits 2005). For instance, while I may see a white sea shell, an individual with jaundice would see a yellow shell (Siderits 2005). The Yogacarins, on the other hand, believe there is no external reality, just internal impressions (Siderits 2005). The representationalist realists created four objections to this idea, which Vashudanhu then refuted (Siderits2005). Their first and second objections are based on the correlation between an event and space-time. However, Vashubandhu answers this objection with an analogy: in a dream there is also spatial and temporal correspondence. In a dream, if one walks into a kitchen where bread is baked, at a time bread is being baked, they will experience the smell of bread. In this situation, reality in the sense of spatio-temporal correspondence is equivalent to dreaming (Siderits 2005). The representationalist realists ask about another discrepancy: if dreams and reality are on the same ultimate level of existence, why is it that dreams do not affect the physical body in the same manner that awake experiences do? Vasubandhu replies that there is a correlation between dream experiences and the body, he says that “wet dreams” are an example of this correlation (Siderits 2005). The last objection to Vasubandhu’s standpoint relies on the agreement between different people on their experiential surroundings. Vasubandhu denies this by claiming that karma creates these inter-personal agreements. Since all beings that come in contact with each other on the same karmic level, their experiences (dharmas) are the same because it reflects their karma (Siderits 2005). The essential nature of Yogacarin Buddhism arises from this discourse between Vashudanhu and the representationalist realists.

Another derivative of Mahayana Buddhism is the Madhyamaka school, whose main proponent was Nagarjuna (Siderits 2005). Nagarjuna developed the idea of emptiness (sunyata) within his writings. He did this by using a combination of the reductio ad absurdum method, along with the concept of dependent origination (Siderits 2005). Reductio ad absurdum involves taking an assumption to a logical end in which it is paradoxical and rejecting the validity of the assumption based on this (Siderits 2005). The theory of dependent origination relies on the concept that everything is a product of cause and effect, in other words, something must arise from something (Siderits 2005). Nagarjuna uses these two tools to show that everything is empty. Due to the fact that origination results from an effect being inherent in a cause, there can be no true reality because if something is to be ultimately real it must only have one property (Siderits 2005). Through this method, Nagarjuna disproves the ultimate reality of movement and also proves the eye cannot see. (Siderits 2005) The end product of Nagarjuna’s logic is ultimate reality not falling into any of the categories of, is, is not, is and is not, or neither is nor is not. The Madhyamaka school’s main goal is for its disciples to recognize the ultimate emptiness of everything and, in doing so, achieve enlightenment.

Lastly one of the main eastern philosophical schools that questioned the inherent essence of positive or negative ethical attributes was Daoism. Daoism is considered a very naturalistic philosophy that disapproves of a large dialectic. In Daoism, the Dao (the path) is viewed as a lifestyle, something that should structure one’s life. There is a very large emphasis on the concept of wu-wei, not doing (Slingerland 2003). Through not doing, one is supposed to be emptying oneself of artificial constructions and letting the essential self emerge (Slingerland 2003). To do this seems obviously paradoxical, but it is based more on a mental level than on a literal level. The important emphasis of wu-wei is not regarding. Regarding in this situation refers to assigning values to things (Slingerland 2003). When one assigns value, it is necessary that an opposite thing arise to define the first value (Slingerland 2003). For instance, without any bad there is no good, without rich there is no poor, and so on. So by doing wu-wei, one is to completely emerge as a natural entity that is able to act in harmony with the will of the cosmos.

While these philosophical theories all suggest that any inherent meaning is absurd, it does not mean that if we take the world we live in as an assumed axiom we cannot create meaning within it using our own selves. For instance, consider a game of Risk, the strategic war game. Outside of the game there are no effects of playing the game, aside from the banter of the players. However, within the game, different strategies and group movements result in varying successes within the game. The success of a strategy is dependent on the rules of the game and the various ways the players respond to them. Thus, while our lives are meaningless outside the context of our lives, we still are within the game and thus must respond to how the game works (rules) and how others strategize. As another example take for instance a fictional game in a scene in David Wallace’s Infinite Jest. Eschaton is a fictional game much akin to Risk, played on a tennis court representing the surface of the planet Earth. The game becomes chaotic when it begins to snow. The snow is outside the scope of the game but this is confusing to those playing the game. Some players do not comprehend this difference and claim that the snow changes the dynamics of the game. An individual then launches an attack and punches another player instead of affecting the map. An authority on the game becomes quite livid and exclaims, “Players themselves can’t be valid targets. Players aren’t inside the goddamn game. Players are part of the apparatus of the game. They’re part of the map. It’s snowing on the players but not on the territory…. You can only launch against the territory. Not against the map. It’s like the one ground-rule boundary that keeps Eschaton from degenerating into chaos. Eschaton, gentlemen, is about logic and axiom and mathematical probity and discipline and verity and order. You do not get points for hitting anybody real. Only the gear that maps what’s real.” This once again represents the important difference between the relative meaning within the game as opposed to the ultimate meaning outside of the game itself (Wallace 1998).

Many existentialists have also made this point. In the work Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre, he fictionally develops his existentialist theory. Within the book, the protagonist, Roquentin, finds himself in existential horror because he realizes that the world itself is indifferent to him. Rather, he sees that his very apprehension is inherent in all that he sees around him. The world itself has no meaning aside from what he gives to it. This idea can be summated as, “existence precedes essence.” Alfred Camus also touches on this issue in The Stranger. The protagonist Mersault is able to live with dualities such as happiness and sadness because he realizes each is fleeting. However, he cannot live with the duality that his life is meaningless while also recognizing that he thinks there is great value in his life (Camus 1982). He decides that this is absurd, but this is because he is taking to different types of truths and assuming that they are equivalent. The truth that he assumes his life is of great importance is relative to the “game” of life. The absolute meaninglessness of it is only applicable outside of the game, while Mersault is actually within the game. Between the two realizations, indeed, there is no real meaning to reality, but that there is in fact meaning within the context of life, we find a grounding of moral meaning. However, this does not give us any reason for assuming different moral precepts.

Another important point is that free will and consciousness are also products of the “game of life.” We must act as if we have free will and consciousness in order to function and even if these things are not real they are convenient fictions. If one were to understand how physical processes determine the future, the individual would need to have knowledge of every particle in the universe. However to do this, an individual would have to recreate the universe because as Alfred Korzybski said, “the map is not the territory.” (Korzybski 1994).There could be no generalizations about the particles in the universe only knowledge of every particle if one were to determine any exact results. Thus, even though these two things are not absolutely true, within the game they are necessary to functioning, and irreducible to their basal elements.

When we consider human ethics, we often think in the terms of a specific spatio-temporal slice. This slice is representative of a certain point of time and also a certain limit of space which our focus bounds. However, this view is flawed. Ethics has continually changed throughout the course of human history. This phenomenon has been noticed by Karl Marx. His analyses of class structure as a commonality among human society clearly elucidates the ever-changing nature of human ethical theory (Guignon 1995). While the recognition of this phenomenon shows a great deal of mental acumen, how Marx applied this observation to the generation of his own ethical theory is problematic. Marx claims that through an empirical analysis of the changing ethical theories throughout history, he can extrapolate how future ethics will come about, and in what form they will appear. However, by making this statement he is creating a self-reflexive loop that is irresolvable by logic. For instance, the Russian Revolution was influenced by Marx’s writing, and because of this, whether or not history would have taken this course without Marx’s theories having been known is an unsolvable issue. Thus, when Marx makes a claim about the future of ethical and societal trends, he is affecting them by the very fact of claiming them as eventualities. The self-reflexivity of predictive claims makes them almost improvable and thus inconsequential. This means that to generate a framework for ethical theory, which can be used to understand ethics, it must not make any predictive claims, as this causes a self-reflexive logical loop. Instead, ethical theory should be examined in hindsight to attempt and recognize the conserved patterns across all historical timelines.

If we stop to remember Crowley’s assertion that, “Do what thou wilt is the whole of the law” we can see that this is not a predictive statement but rather a maxim by which individual’s live. To update the assertion, it should be put into the form: by doing what one thinks is best and trying to craft the world in this manner, an individual is fulfilling their ethical obligation.

John Stuart Mill’s utilitarianism relies on the idea of the greatest happiness for the greatest number of principle. Essentially, the central maxim is the greatest happiness principle claims that one should act for the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people (Mill 2005). However, because we have previously come to conclusion that meaning is not an inherent thing, we must realize that the definition of what causes happiness is malleable and relies on a specific set of circumstances. From a purely biological point of view, happiness can be defined as reproductive success and continued existence. From a societal point of view happiness can be defined as trying to reach the ideal of the views that a society holds relative. Thus the sum of these two types of happiness would be biological viability along with the capability of achieving what society has deemed to be happiness. So, one should act to promote the most biological viability along with what society deems to be happiness.

The question then is, how can this idea be reconciled with Crowley’s statement? The response is found in the field of memetics and genetic evolution. The term meme arose from Richard Dawkins’ work with genetics, and it is generally accepted to mean a basal unit of an idea that can be transferred from person to person. These memes are posited to act as mental analogues to genetic material. Assuming that this is correct, ideas can replicate throughout a culture and also be eliminated by the culture in the same manner that poor genes are removed from the gene pool. In this situation, natural selection would be analogous to the sum total of individuals who reject a meme, meaning that the most prominent meme has the widest appeal and the most socially transferable nature. Thus, when every individual decides to act as they want and try to impose their preferences upon others, their actions come in to tension. One of two things can happen at this point: first, an individual can change their behavior to preserve themselves, and second, they can try to force this viewpoint onto the other. This can obviously come to physical harm or just a change of opinion and action. However, through this process we see an analogue of evolution. If we view each interaction as an example of memetic change, and the meme that is most fit will always be adopted because it is the most useful for the specific set of circumstances, then gradually the population will come to be dominated by this viewpoint, just as an unfit mutation will result in the selection against the unfit organism. Then, if circumstances change and there is a shift in the usefulness of one meme, gradually another will arise to assume its niche. As such through acting as one wants, the net result is a societal trend towards the most happiness for the most individuals.

Crowley’s statement very closely mirrors Nietzsche’s assertion of the will to power. Nietzsche focused in Thus Spake Zarathustra on the idea of the ubermensch, an individual who crafts their own goals and does not obey the morals of others (Guignon 1995). This suggests that because the ubermensch creates their own morals they should be able to do what they will themselves to do in all situations. By doing this, they are crafting their own existence and forcing themselves upon the world (Guignon 1995). What Nietzsche fails to realize, however, is that the ubermensch/man dichotomy is a false one. All individuals craft their own life and force themselves upon the world by the very act of passing moral judgment. Just because an individual may share the views of others does not mean that he is wrong, just that at that point in time a greater number of people are being served usefully by a certain ethical paradigm, and that is why it is so widespread. Thus, if we remove the distinction between these two types of men, we end up with Crowley’s initial statement that, “Do what thou wilt is the whole of the law.”

In conclusion, although life is inherently meaningless outside of itself, since all human beings are within the system, meaning can be ascribed. Also, because any predictive ethical theory is self-reflexive, it is incapable of ever making claims about the future that are verifiably true or false. Finally, through the process of memetic and genetic evolution, if every individual was to follow Crowley’s maxim, the net result would be a greater happiness for the most individuals.

Sources
Camus, Albert. The Stranger, trans. Joseph Laredo, 1982.
Carruth, Hayden (1964). Jean-Paul Sartre. ed. Nausea. New York: New Directions.
Cohen, Mark. (2005) Readings In Ancient Greek Philosophy: From Thales To Aristotle. Indianapolis.
Crowley, Aleister (1978). The Book of Lies. New York: Samuel Weiser.
Mill, John Stuart, Utilitarianism, ed. George Sher (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1979). IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 2005.
Science and Sanity An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics, Alfred Korzybski, Preface by Robert P. Pula, Institute of General Semantics, 1994, hardcover, 5th edition
Siderits, Mark. “Buddhist Reductionism and the Structure of Buddhist Ethics.” Indian Ethics: Classical and Contemporary Challenges. Edited by P. Bilimoria, J. Prabhu and R. Sharma. Abingdon, UK: Ashgate, 2005.
Slingerland, Edward Gilman. Effortless Action: Wu-Wei as Conceptual Metaphor and Spiritual Ideal in Early China (Oxford University Press, 2003).
The Good Life, edited by Charles Guignon (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1999).
Wallace, David Foster. Infinite Jest. 1st. ed. Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company. 1996

Joe Chiarenzelli is the editor of The Gadfly Press. He has degrees in biology and philosophy from Saint Lawrence University. His honors thesis was on the subject of Cosmetic Psychopharmacology. Joe graduated in 2011. He now lives in Potsdam, New York, and frequents bars in order to goad people into arguments. The Gadfly Press endeavors to publish articles, stories, poems, and sayings which will provoke, intrigue, and most importantly, cause people to stop and think.

A neuro-imaging study shows that personal values that people refuse to disavow, even when offered cash to do so, are processed differently in the brain than those values that are willingly sold.”Our experiment found that the realm of the sacred — whether it’s a strong religious belief, a national identity or a code of ethics — is a distinct cognitive process,” says Gregory Berns, director of the Center for Neuropolicy at Emory University and lead author of the study. The results were published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.

Sacred values prompt greater activation of an area of the brain associated with rules-based, right-or-wrong thought processes, the study showed, as opposed to the regions linked to processing of costs-versus-benefits.

Berns headed a team that included economists and information scientists from Emory University, a psychologist from the New School for Social Research and anthropologists from the Institute Jean Nicod in Paris, France. The research was funded by the U.S. Office of Naval Research, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the National Science Foundation.

“We’ve come up with a method to start answering scientific questions about how people make decisions involving sacred values, and that has major implications if you want to better understand what influences human behavior across countries and cultures,” Berns says. “We are seeing how fundamental cultural values are represented in the brain.” …

Read more here.

Plato & Aristotle (Portait by Raffaello Sanzio)

Via ScienceDaily:

Children could learn valuable lessons in moral citizenship, such as making moral judgements and informed choices, through taking part in philosophical dialogue, according to researchers at Strathclyde. A study of more than 130 primary and secondary pupils found that taking part in practical philosophy sessions improved the children’s listening skills, gave them greater respect for other people, encouraged them to consider other perspectives and ideas they may not otherwise have thought about and helped them analyse problems so that they are thought through before making decisions.

The sessions, following an approach known as Community of Philosophical Inquiry (CoPI), involved pupils being given a stimulus such as a picture, a piece of writing or a piece of music and being asked to come up with questions prompted by it. A question was chosen and a structured dialogue followed, facilitated by a teacher trained in CoPI.

Dr Claire Cassidy, a Lecturer in Education at Strathclyde, led the research. She said: “Doing practical philosophy in this way provides children with tools to enable them to participate as active citizens…

Read more here.

One thing we can be certain of is that capitalism will end. Maybe not soon, but probably before too long; humanity has never before managed to craft an eternal social system, after all, and capitalism is a notably more precarious and volatile order than most of those that preceded it.

The very existence of Occupy Wall Street suggests that the end of capitalism has become a bit easier to imagine of late. At first, this imagining took a mostly grim and dystopian form: at the height of the financial crisis, with the global economy seemingly in full collapse, the end of capitalism looked like it might be the beginning of a period of anarchic violence and misery. And still it might, with the Eurozone teetering on the edge of collapse as I write. But more recently, the spread of global protest from Cairo to Madrid to Madison to Wall Street has given the Left some reason to timidly raise its hopes for a better future after capitalism.

Rosa Luxemburg, reacting to the beginnings of World War I, cited a line from Engels: “Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism.” In that spirit I offer a thought experiment, an attempt to make sense of our possible futures. These are a few of the socialisms we may reach if a resurgent Left is successful, and the barbarisms we may be consigned to if we fail …

Read the rest at Jacobin

Most Westerners who become fascinated with Zen Buddhism are intrigued with its reputation as an anti-authoritarian, freedom-loving, individualistic tradition. Books by excellent writers like Alan Watts popularized an image of Zen as a very relaxed, go-with-the-flow type of religion. But even a brief visit to a typical Zen temple is enough to make us painfully aware of the difference between hype and reality. Life in real Zen temples, in fact, is often so structured, regimented and heavily regulated as to quickly dispel the romanticism created by much of the literature about it. Far from being a hippie rendition of Buddhism, Zen discipleship can be demanding and severe.

But sometimes even misguided stereotypes are born from seeds of truth. Enter 15th century Japanese monk Ikkyu Sojun, who was truly as free, wild and allergic to authorities as advertised.

For Ikkyu, Zen was not a spontaneous calling. Rather, he stumbled upon it as an alternative to being murdered in infancy. Given that choice, Zen training didn’t seem so bad after all. Ikkyu, in fact, was the illegitimate son of the emperor of Japan, and the object of several conspiracies aimed at thinning out the ranks of potential candidates to the throne. In an effort to have his life spared, his mother entrusted him to a Zen monastery when he was only 5 years old: not the most fun-filled scenario for a little boy, but clearly more appealing than having angry assassins slicing you to pieces.

His early life was extremely tough since the training he received from the Zen monks was brutally stern. Despite some serious bouts of depression in this joyless environment, it became quickly clear to his teachers that Ikkyu possessed an amazing intellect, and that his grasp of Zen was unparalleled. But the fact that he excelled in this setting didn’t mean he felt at home in it. Despite genuinely loving Zen (or perhaps because of it), he was less than thrilled with the spiritual bureaucracy of the temples. Also, many of the priests bugged him: too many political games and too much time spent courting the favor of rich patrons. And so when the day came when his master presented him with a certificate of enlightenment—which was both a great honor and the necessary document to begin climbing the Zen hierarchy—Ikkyu promptly decided to wave goodbye to a monastic career and burned it.

This doesn’t mean he had given up on Zen. Far from it. In his thinking, it was the entire Zen establishment that had abandoned real Zen by turning it into a dogmatic parody of what it was supposed to be. Life in the temples was stifled by too many rules and not enough fresh air. The so-called professionals of Zen were in Ikkyu’s eyes a bunch of posers—too busy acting “spiritual” to be able to really taste spirituality in its rawest forms. Some people believed Zen enlightenment could only be found among clouds of incense in silent meditation. Ikkyu, on the other hand, found sake-drinking and wild sex more to his liking. As he put it in his poems, “The autumn breeze of a single night of love is better than a hundred thousand years of sterile sitting meditation.” Or, even more bluntly, “Don’t hesitate: get laid—that’s wisdom. Sitting around chanting sutras: that’s crap.” Driven by an uncompromising thirst for life, Ikkyu became a wandering monk, testing his Zen insights far away from the seclusion of the monasteries, and earning the nickname of “Crazy Cloud.”

The point of his erotic escapades and wild adventures was to suggest that the “sacred” is nothing other than regular life experienced with 100 percent awareness. Or perhaps, sake-drinking and inordinate amounts of sex didn’t need any justification at all other than the fact that they were a hell of a lot of fun. Ikkyu didn’t give a rat’s ass about what the religious authorities of his day thought of him anyway. But in the course of his travels, Ikkyu managed to influence great numbers of artists, poets, calligraphers, musicians, and actors in such a way that his ideas left a deep mark on the development of several Japanese art forms for centuries to come. Even his love life came to be celebrated through the ages, since his relationship with Lady Mori ended up being among the most famous romances in Japanese history.

But since good old Ikkyu was a man who loved paradoxes, when a civil war had destroyed most Zen temples in the country, he came to the rescue of the very institutions he had ferociously criticized. Just when the future of Zen seemed in peril, he was able to enlist the help of the many acquaintances he had met during a lifetime of travels and mobilized them into rebuilding some of the key temples throughout the country. So, oddly enough, much of modern Zen owes a huge debt for its existence to a man who preferred the company of hookers to that of monks.

Larry Yang

Buddhist Meditation teacher Larry Yang writes at the Huffington Post:

As we already are feeling divisiveness of current politics and upcoming presidential elections…

As we feel into pain and complexity of people holding seeming irreconcilable values which actually harm each other, on topics like the economy, immigration and same-sex marriage…

As even people’s intentions for doing good in the world, whether through nonviolent dissent, or simple holiday shopping to provide for a family’s happiness is met with pepper spray and handcuffs…

Now more than ever we need our Mindfulness Practice.

We need the Freedom that Mindfulness invites for us — the freedom that we do not have to follow the unconscious patterns of acute reactivity. We need to remember that it is possible to notice deeply what is happening, understand it with some wisdom, treat it with some of the compassion inherent in our humanity, and move into responses and actions that are of benefit — that is, to move toward that which lessens suffering and creates happiness, not just for us as individuals, but us as a collective world.

Our Mindfulness practice, whether it is on the cushion paying attention to the emotions and thoughts that weave between the breath and bodily sensations, or whether it is in the world paying attention to our actions and behaviors which emerge from our emotions and thoughts, is always a reminder that in order to change any unhealthy or harmful patterns — in order to transform any suffering — we have to first become aware of the patterns themselves. We cannot change anything that we are not aware of. This is also true of our collective transformation into a culture that meets the needs of greater numbers of people and beings: We first have to become deeply aware of the conditions that we are living within, and then that will guide us into transforming the world into a better place to live…

Read more here.

Many people seem to think that anarchists are proponents of violence, chaos, and destruction, that they are against all forms of order and organization, or that they are crazed nihilists who just want to blow everything up. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. Anarchists are simply people who believe human beings are capable of behaving in a reasonable fashion without having to be forced to. It is really a very simple notion. But it’s one that the rich and powerful have always found extremely dangerous.

At their very simplest, anarchist beliefs turn on to two elementary assumptions. The first is that human beings are, under ordinary circumstances, about as reasonable and decent as they are allowed to be, and can organize themselves and their communities without needing to be told how. The second is that power corrupts. Most of all, anarchism is just a matter of having the courage to take the simple principles of common decency that we all live by, and to follow them through to their logical conclusions. Odd though this may seem, in most important ways you are probably already an anarchist — you just don’t realize it.

Let’s start by taking a few examples from everyday life:

If there’s a line to get on a crowded bus, do you wait your turn and refrain from elbowing your way past others even in the absence of police?

If you answered “yes”, then you are used to acting like an anarchist! The most basic anarchist principle is self-organization: the assumption that human beings do not need to be threatened with prosecution in order to be able to come to reasonable understandings with each other, or to treat each other with dignity and respect.

Everyone believes they are capable of behaving reasonably themselves. If they think laws and police are necessary, it is only because they don’t believe that other people are. But if you think about it, don’t those people all feel exactly the same way about you? Anarchists argue that almost all the anti-social behavior which makes us think it’s necessary to have armies, police, prisons, and governments to control our lives, is actually caused by the systematic inequalities and injustice those armies, police, prisons and governments make possible. It’s all a vicious circle. If people are used to being treated like their opinions do not matter, they are likely to become angry and cynical, even violent – which of course makes it easy for those in power to say that their opinions do not matter. Once they understand that their opinions really do matter just as much as anyone else’s, they tend to become remarkably understanding. To cut a long story short: anarchists believe that for the most part it is power itself, and the effects of power, that make people stupid and irresponsible.

Are you a member of a club or sports team or any other voluntary organization where decisions are not imposed by one leader but made on the basis of general consent?

If you answered “yes”, then you belong to an organization which works on anarchist principles! Another basic anarchist principle is voluntary association. This is simply a matter of applying democratic principles to ordinary life. The only difference is that anarchists believe it should be possible to have a society in which everything could be organized along these lines, all groups based on the free consent of their members, and therefore, that all top-down, military styles of organization like armies or bureaucracies or large corporations, based on chains of command, would no longer be necessary. Perhaps you don’t believe that would be possible. Perhaps you do. But every time you reach an agreement by consensus, rather than threats, every time you make a voluntary arrangement with another person, come to an understanding, or reach a compromise by taking due consideration of the other person’s particular situation or needs, you are being an anarchist — even if you don’t realize it.

Anarchism is just the way people act when they are free to do as they choose, and when they deal with others who are equally free — and therefore aware of the responsibility to others that entails. This leads to another crucial point: that while people can be reasonable and considerate when they are dealing with equals, human nature is such that they cannot be trusted to do so when given power over others. Give someone such power, they will almost invariably abuse it in some way or another.

Do you believe that most politicians are selfish, egotistical swine who don’t really care about the public interest? Do you think we live in an economic system which is stupid and unfair?

If you answered “yes”, then you subscribe to the anarchist critique of today’s society – at least, in its broadest outlines. Anarchists believe that power corrupts and those who spend their entire lives seeking power are the very last people who should have it. Anarchists believe that our present economic system is more likely to reward people for selfish and unscrupulous behavior than for being decent, caring human beings. Most people feel that way. The only difference is that most people don’t think there’s anything that can be done about it, or anyway — and this is what the faithful servants of the powerful are always most likely to insist — anything that won’t end up making things even worse.

But what if that weren’t true?

And is there really any reason to believe this? When you can actually test them, most of the usual predictions about what would happen without states or capitalism turn out to be entirely untrue. For thousands of years people lived without governments. In many parts of the world people live outside of the control of governments today. They do not all kill each other. Mostly they just get on about their lives the same as anyone else would. Of course, in a complex, urban, technological society all this would be more complicated: but technology can also make all these problems a lot easier to solve. In fact, we have not even begun to think about what our lives could be like if technology were really marshaled to fit human needs. How many hours would we really need to work in order to maintain a functional society — that is, if we got rid of all the useless or destructive occupations like telemarketers, lawyers, prison guards, financial analysts, public relations experts, bureaucrats and politicians, and turn our best scientific minds away from working on space weaponry or stock market systems to mechanizing away dangerous or annoying tasks like coal mining or cleaning the bathroom, and distribute the remaining work among everyone equally? Five hours a day? Four? Three? Two? Nobody knows because no one is even asking this kind of question. Anarchists think these are the very questions we should be asking.

Do you really believe those things you tell your children (or that your parents told you)?

It doesn’t matter who started it.” “Two wrongs don’t make a right.” “Clean up your own mess.” “Do unto others …” “Don’t be mean to people just because they’re different.” Perhaps we should decide whether we’re lying to our children when we tell them about right and wrong, or whether we’re willing to take our own injunctions seriously. Because if you take these moral principles to their logical conclusions, you arrive at anarchism.

Take the principle that two wrongs don’t make a right. If you really took it seriously, that alone would knock away almost the entire basis for war and the criminal justice system. The same goes for sharing: we’re always telling children that they have to learn to share, to be considerate of each other’s needs, to help each other; then we go off into the real world where we assume that everyone is naturally selfish and competitive. But an anarchist would point out: in fact, what we say to our children is right. Pretty much every great worthwhile achievement in human history, every discovery or accomplishment that’s improved our lives, has been based on cooperation and mutual aid; even now, most of us spend more of our money on our friends and families than on ourselves; while likely as not there will always be competitive people in the world, there’s no reason why society has to be based on encouraging such behavior, let alone making people compete over the basic necessities of life. That only serves the interests of people in power, who want us to live in fear of one another. That’s why anarchists call for a society based not only on free association but mutual aid. The fact is that most children grow up believing in anarchist morality, and then gradually have to realize that the adult world doesn’t really work that way. That’s why so many become rebellious, or alienated, even suicidal as adolescents, and finally, resigned and bitter as adults; their only solace, often, being the ability to raise children of their own and pretend to them that the world is fair. But what if we really could start to build a world which really was at least founded on principles of justice? Wouldn’t that be the greatest gift to one’s children one could possibly give?

Do you believe that human beings are fundamentally corrupt and evil, or that certain sorts of people (women, people of color, ordinary folk who are not rich or highly educated) are inferior specimens, destined to be ruled by their betters?

If you answered “yes”, then, well, it looks like you aren’t an anarchist after all. But if you answered “no’, then chances are you already subscribe to 90% of anarchist principles, and, likely as not, are living your life largely in accord with them. Every time you treat another human with consideration and respect, you are being an anarchist. Every time you work out your differences with others by coming to reasonable compromise, listening to what everyone has to say rather than letting one person decide for everyone else, you are being an anarchist. Every time you have the opportunity to force someone to do something, but decide to appeal to their sense of reason or justice instead, you are being an anarchist. The same goes for every time you share something with a friend, or decide who is going to do the dishes, or do anything at all with an eye to fairness.

Now, you might object that all this is well and good as a way for small groups of people to get on with each other, but managing a city, or a country, is an entirely different matter. And of course there is something to this. Even if you decentralize society and puts as much power as possible in the hands of small communities, there will still be plenty of things that need to be coordinated, from running railroads to deciding on directions for medical research. But just because something is complicated does not mean there is no way to do it democratically. It would just be complicated. In fact, anarchists have all sorts of different ideas and visions about how a complex society might manage itself. To explain them though would go far beyond the scope of a little introductory text like this. Suffice it to say, first of all, that a lot of people have spent a lot of time coming up with models for how a really democratic, healthy society might work; but second, and just as importantly, no anarchist claims to have a perfect blueprint. The last thing we want is to impose prefab models on society anyway. The truth is we probably can’t even imagine half the problems that will come up when we try to create a democratic society; still, we’re confident that, human ingenuity being what it is, such problems can always be solved, so long as it is in the spirit of our basic principles-which are, in the final analysis, simply the principles of fundamental human decency.

Well, it has to be admitted that my cousin Sorcha has a point. A powerful point. Not the sort of thing that I would have been inclined to explore on my own unbidden. But that’s what friends are for, I guess. To prod you along some paths you would never have even considered, left to your own devices.

Here’s where the hole ugly mess began:

Photo, allegedly of the dog Parrot moments before being shot to death by police.

I received a copy of this photo last weekend from an FB friend and as a dog lover was immediately horrified.  As a kid I grew up with dogs — lots of dogs.  Probably the best, most loving and loyal animals on earth. I’d long ago come to see dogs as man’s natural companion and most trusted comrade. My nerves just could not handle the image of a so-called “law enforcement officer” crushing the spine of a beloved family pet. I blanched at the nightmare of a child discovering this photo haunt the web, eternally memorializing the brutal killing of his best friend — the best friend that would have done anything to protect him, but whom he himself was powerless to help in his hour of need.

The accompanying text was spare. It described this officer backing a frightened family pet named Parrot into a corner, pouncing on the hapless creature and applying the full weight of his body to the animal’s back before it was corralled to a concrete pen where another officer executed the creature at point blank range with his service revolver.

In the context of a stream of videos and text updates on the various Occupy protests throughout the company, I assumed (though was not told) that a protester had brought the animal along, either not wanting to subject the poor beast to the intolerable neglect and lonliness that his/her long absence would create, or maybe even as some stype of service animal like a seeing eye dog.  This time the cops had gone too far, I thought.

Scott Olsen, victim of police violence

I know — this was a sick, sick notion. The whole world had seen a participant of Occupy Oakland, 24 year-old, 2-tour Iraq War veteran Scott Olsen shot in the face by overzealous police in California.  You may well say, “What kind of pervert are you, Liam, that you care more about a mere DOG than a human being?!”

I don’t blame you or disagree with you necessarily. That is essentially true; my reaction was indeed a reflection of the bizarre, inverted distinctions I maintain in my various relationships with humans and animals.

Like I said, I grew up considering dogs to be my closest, most loyal friends. My father was an expert at picking family pets. My mother nicknamed Dad “St. Francis” because of the uncanny rapport he had with all sorts of animals. He really did radiate an almsot supernatural calm among them that could lead to the most anamolous sights you’re ever likely to see outside of a Pixar(tm) animation.  At one point he had somehow trained our two Labrador Retrievers to calmly (if inquisitively) accept the unfettered prescence of a parakeet hopping about the living room floor.  Believe it or not, those dogs NEVER molested the bird.

And this is precisely where the pardoxes enter the story of the photo above. Three paradoxes, really.

Read the rest of these menacing meditations at Dystopia Diaries

Michael Martin makes a few good points regarding the claim that without religion there is no basis for morality:

Is Theistic Morality Necessarily Objectivist?:

Let us assume for the moment that the Biblical position on rape is clear: God condemns rape. But why? One possibility is that He condemns rape because it is wrong. Why is it wrong? It might be supposed that God has various reasons for thinking rape is wrong: it violates the victim’s rights, it traumatizes the victim, it undermines the fabric of society, and so on. All of these are bad making properties. However, if these reasons provide objective grounds for God thinking that rape is wrong, then they provide objective grounds for others as well. Moreover, these reasons would hold even if God did not exist. For example, rape would still traumatize the victim and rape would still undermine the fabric of society even. Thus, on this assumption, In this case, atheists could provide objective ground for condemning rape–the same grounds used by God.

Let us suppose now that rape is wrong because God condemns it. In this case, God has no reasons for His condemnations. His condemnation makes rape wrong and it would not be wrong if God did not condemned it. Indeed, not raping someone would be wrong if God condemned not raping. However, this hardly provides objective grounds for condemning rape: Whether rape is right or wrong would be based on God’s arbitrary condemnation. On this interpretation, if atheists can provide no objective grounds for condemning rape, they are no worse off than theists. However, as we have seen, there is no reason to suppose that they cannot provide such grounds.

Read more here.

In mid-April 2011, the Chinese government prohibited on TV, films, and novels all stories that contain alternate reality or time travel. This is a good sign for China. These people still dream about alternatives, so you have to prohibit this dreaming. Here, we don’t need a prohibition because the ruling system has even oppressed our capacity to dream. Look at the movies that we see all the time. It’s easy to imagine the end of the world. An asteroid destroying all life and so on. But you cannot imagine the end of capitalism.

They are saying we are all losers, but the true losers are down there on Wall Street. They were bailed out by billions of our money. We are called socialists, but here there is always socialism for the rich. They say we don’t respect private property, but in the 2008 financial crash-down more hard-earned private property was destroyed than if all of us here were to be destroying it night and day for weeks. They tell you we are dreamers. The true dreamers are those who think things can go on indefinitely the way they are. We are not dreamers. We are the awakening from a dream that is turning into a nightmare.

We are not destroying anything. We are only witnessing how the system is destroying itself. We all know the classic scene from cartoons. The cat reaches a precipice but it goes on walking, ignoring the fact that there is nothing beneath this ground. Only when it looks down and notices it, it falls down. This is what we are doing here. We are telling the guys there on Wall Street, “Hey, look down!”

So what are we doing here? Let me tell you a wonderful, old joke from Communist times. A guy was sent from East Germany to work in Siberia. He knew his mail would be read by censors, so he told his friends: “Let’s establish a code. If a letter you get from me is written in blue ink, it is true what I say. If it is written in red ink, it is false.” After a month, his friends get the first letter. Everything is in blue. It says, this letter: “Everything is wonderful here. Stores are full of good food. Movie theatres show good films from the west. Apartments are large and luxurious. The only thing you cannot buy is red ink.” This is how we live. We have all the freedoms we want. But what we are missing is red ink: the language to articulate our non-freedom. The way we are taught to speak about freedom— war on terror and so on—falsifies freedom. And this is what you are doing here. You are giving all of us red ink.

There is a danger. Don’t fall in love with yourselves. We have a nice time here. But remember, carnivals come cheap. What matters is the day after, when we will have to return to normal lives. Will there be any changes then? I don’t want you to remember these days, you know, like “Oh. we were young and it was beautiful.” Remember that our basic message is “We are allowed to think about alternatives.” If the rule is broken, we do not live in the best possible world. But there is a long road ahead. There are truly difficult questions that confront us. We know what we do not want. But what do we want? What social organization can replace capitalism? What type of new leaders do we want?

Remember. The problem is not corruption or greed. The problem is the system. It forces you to be corrupt. Beware not only of the enemies, but also of false friends who are already working to dilute this process. In the same way you get coffee without caffeine, beer without alcohol, ice cream without fat, they will try to make this into a harmless, moral protest. A decaffienated process. But the reason we are here is that we have had enough of a world where, to recycle Coke cans, to give a couple of dollars for charity, or to buy a Starbucks cappuccino where 1% goes to third world starving children is enough to make us feel good. After outsourcing work and torture, after marriage agencies are now outsourcing our love life, we can see that for a long time, we allow our political engagement also to be outsourced. We want it back.

We are not Communists if Communism means a system which collapsed in 1990. Remember that today those Communists are the most efficient, ruthless Capitalists. In China today, we have Capitalism which is even more dynamic than your American Capitalism, but doesn’t need democracy. Which means when you criticize Capitalism, don’t allow yourself to be blackmailed that you are against democracy. The marriage between democracy and Capitalism is over. The change is possible.

What do we perceive today as possible? Just follow the media. On the one hand, in technology and sexuality, everything seems to be possible. You can travel to the moon, you can become immortal by biogenetics, you can have sex with animals or whatever, but look at the field of society and economy. There, almost everything is considered impossible. You want to raise taxes by little bit for the rich. They tell you it’s impossible. We lose competitivity. You want more money for health care, they tell you, “Impossible, this means totalitarian state.” There’s something wrong in the world, where you are promised to be immortal but cannot spend a little bit more for healthcare. Maybe we need to set our priorities straight here. We don’t want higher standard of living. We want a better standard of living. The only sense in which we are Communists is that we care for the commons. The commons of nature. The commons of privatized by intellectual property. The commons of biogenetics. For this, and only for this, we should fight.

Communism failed absolutely, but the problems of the commons are here. They are telling you we are not American here. But the conservatives fundamentalists who claim they really are American have to be reminded of something: What is Christianity? It’s the holy spirit. What is the holy spirit? It’s an egalitarian community of believers who are linked by love for each other, and who only have their own freedom and responsibility to do it. In this sense, the holy spirit is here now. And down there on Wall Street, there are pagans who are worshipping blasphemous idols. So all we need is patience. The only thing I’m afraid of is that we will someday just go home and then we will meet once a year, drinking beer, and nostaligically remembering “What a nice time we had here.” Promise yourselves that this will not be the case. We know that people often desire something but do not really want it. Don’t be afraid to really want what you desire. Thank you very much.

One idea he presented was that humans were the only “sinners” out of God’s creation, and are therefore the only ones that require a savior, but he considered other possibilities as well.

“If there are extra-terrestrial intelligent beings at all, it is safe to assume that most of them are sinners too,” Weidemann said. “If so, did Jesus save them too? My position is no. If so, our position among intelligent beings in the universe would be very exceptional.”

If other life forms exist in our universe, he said, we should try to understand why Jesus chose to save those from Earth over other civilized life forms from other planets.

Did God reserve His grace solely for Earthlings and abandon the rest of the intelligent creatures in the universe? If not, how did God deal with the sin problem on multiple planets?

One possibility he mentioned is that God-incarnate visited each of the civilized planets and saved each of the races that inhabited them separately.

Read entire article at the Christian Science Monitor

In “Is Myth Dead?” in The Immanence of Myth, I talked about some of the misconceptions that exist between what falls under the purview of science, and what belongs instead to myth, or as it is more commonly known, narrative. And it is a direct result of misconceptions discussed there that we see a constant glut of so-called “science” articles making claims such as “neuro scientists say that evil no longer exists,” (Slate article) or “neuroscience versus philosophy, taking aim at free well.” (Nature.com article). Let me use these two articles as an example of what is actually an epidemic issue that needs immediate and complete overhaul.

The Slate article is considerably more egregious than the latter, as it presents a singular interpretation as the only possible answer to a very complicated question that has challenged the best humans minds throughout our sordid history.

However, both are unified in this particular detail: they depend on a materialist presupposition at the outset and then using this model as a self-evident proof of materialist claims. I know that sounds somewhat abstract, so let’s look at the position posed by these articles directly.

Is evil over? Has science finally driven a stake through its dark heart? Or at least emptied the word of useful meaning, reduced the notion of a numinous nonmaterial malevolent force to a glitch in a tangled cluster of neurons, the brain?

Yes, according to many neuroscientists, who are emerging as the new high priests of the secrets of the psyche, explainers of human behavior in general. A phenomenon attested to by a recent torrent of pop-sci brain books with titles like Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain. Not secret in most of these works is the disdain for metaphysical evil, which is regarded as an antiquated concept that’s done more harm than good. They argue that the time has come to replace such metaphysical terms with physical explanations — malfunctions or malformations in the brain.

Of course, people still commit innumerable bad actions, but the idea that people make conscious decisions to hurt or harm is no longer sustainable, say the new brain scientists. For one thing, there is no such thing as “free will” with which to decide to commit evil. (Like evil, free will is an antiquated concept for most.) Autonomous, conscious decision-making itself may well be an illusion. And thus intentional evil is impossible.

It would seem that for every benefit neuroscience gives us, it puts us back an equal amount when it comes to our sense of personal agency. Or, contrarily, I can stab you in the eye and say my brain made me do it. And since we’re all mechanical beings, if my kidneys start to go, I’ll just carve yours out of your back.

Granted, society — a meta-machine, if you will — can and should lock me away in either event as a means of self-defense. So functionally, there’s no difference.

But functionally there is no difference between determinism and free will to begin with. That’s not the point. This is a misappropriation of science for myth-making.

A note about the project of science, before we look at the particular philosophical quandaries raised by these articles,

Simply, as the great French mathematician Laplace once told Napoleon Bonapart, “Sire, God is a hypothesis I do not need.” And indeed, science and religion should not be seen as antagonistic; they just do not need each other, as they ask questions and give answers within very different ‘modes’ of ‘knowing.’” (The Origins of the Universe, Lurquin.)

His point relates specifically to the cleavage of religion and science, but it is equally relevant to this discussion. Although the history of science, religion and philosophy are all intertwined, and the project of Western philosophy is more closely aligned with science, it has been some time since the two had similar goals.

It is at this point that we can return to the particular issue at hand, as the free will vs determinism argument is irrelevant to scientific enterprise, but very relevant to how we look at the world. Philosophy in many instances is meta-mythology. Rather than posing an example clothed in the engaging narrative of the specific, it instead looks for the abstract. But make no mistake, for the most part, it is dealing in mythology.

Ultimately, one side or the other — free will or determinism — isn’t upheld by “discoveries in neuroscience.”

Why? The underlying premises of the article are specious on two accounts: idealism vs. materialism and free will vs. determinism. In both cases we’re talking about conceptual carts and horses. Attribute “cause” to one side, “effect” to the other; or similarly, “primary” and “secondary.” We are the ones attributing value. We are the ones myth-making.

This kind of thinking is easily outmoded by models in both science as well as philosophy the past 50 years, so this isn’t a case of neuroscience having outstripped philosophy or the other way around. Rather, it’s a case of the article writer trying to paint a picture, and attempting to use science as a cover for some bad literature.

It is maybe somewhat ironic that both of these arguments are silently penned atop a myth that goes back to Descartes, that old yarn about mind / body dualism. As I said, this way of looking at the world has mostly been done away with as an accurate model, neatly dividing mind and matter. What we have instead is an admittedly more willy-nilly view of consciousness that calls to mind the paradoxical existence of light simultaneously as wave and particle. I would ask that the writers of these articles use modern philosophical models to frame the modern scientific discoveries their espousing, rather than a framework grounded in the 17th century.

Should we consider light to behave as a wave or a particle? Well, it depends on how you look at it. The same can be said of our minds.  (Note that I didn’t say “is light a wave or a particle.” Both of these things are models.)

Is our consciousness intrinsically tied to the electrochemical goo inside our skulls? Yes, it certainly seems that way. Can we thereby reduce all issues to a quantifiable, strictly behaviorist, materialist, (even positivist) science, and finally “solve” all philosophical quandaries through scientific measurement? Hardly.

To explain why would take us on a long journey through the history of both the past 100 years in science and philosophy. We might consider some major steps along the way to include the works of Neils Bohr, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Jacques Derrida, Werner Heisenberg (though let’s be honest: nobody truly  understands Quantum mechanics,) and of course Albert Einstein. The questions relevant to this particular inquiry seem simple enough, but they remain as perplexing today as they were in the age of the Ancient Greeks: what is the nature of mind? what is the nature of matter?

It is a criticism of ventures in this direction that such questions often lead to semantic arguments. We are no longer concerned with such “fluff,” the modern consumer of pop science literature clearly wants “hard answers.”

Semantic arguments are not necessarily just semantic arguments. Our presuppositions about consciousness, how we define it, how we define concepts such as “will” or “freedom,” are far more important than neuroscans when it comes to our consideration of whether our actions are “free” or “determined.” It is highly probable that our our nervous system has made up its mind about something before we become consciously aware of that decision — or so neuroscientists tell me — but that is merely “passing the buck” as they say. (For non-English natives, that idiom means “deferring responsibility.” I’m told that idioms are “bad writing” because they don’t translate well. So there you go.)

Within the context of the conundrum of consciousness, free will seems merely a footnote. What these articles, and those like them, seem to be proclaiming is actually this: “Philosophy and myth are dead. Long live science.”

Few would argue that our consciousness is brought about by brain and nerves, but the question remains, can we have a unified theory of mind and matter, or must we continue to think of carts and horses? Is it our language itself that creates this delineation, which says “my body,” as if it was a bio-mechanical walker that my brain is floating in, and within that, a mind. (And within that? It’s “turtles all the way down.”)

Pop science likes to pretend that we are just around the corner from “answering” such questions, as if they can be answered without posing another framework that needs exploration. The truth is that we’ve instead fallen far off the wagon, having lost any sense of the intellectual history that has brought us to this point.

In other words, in the long tradition of wrestling with these questions, we’ve continually confused the role of myth and the role of science. The nature of mind is not measured, it is explored, just as the realm of experience is not weighed but rather felt.

Richard Feynman made a speech on “cargo cult” science that I’ve mentioned here before that nevertheless seems relevant to point out again.

I think the educational and psychological studies I mentioned are examples of what I would like to call cargo cult science. In the South Seas there is a cargo cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes land with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they’ve arranged to imitate things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head like headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas—he’s the controller—and they wait for the airplanes to land. They’re doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn’t work. No airplanes land. So I call these things cargo cult science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they’re missing something essential, because the planes don’t land.

Of course, the neuroscience that articles such as these are pointing toward are “real” science, so this is even more treacherous ground for the unwary. They are drawing unscientific conclusions from scientific research. This, as I’ve said before, is the realm of myth—and that is well and good, except for when we fool ourselves into mistaking the metaphor for reality. We are then, in some ways, no different from the fundamentalist Christian that takes the Bible for literal truth. (Those who think that I am trying to somehow tarnish the name of scientific exploration should refer back to “Is Myth Dead?”)

If we posit a premise: we are biological robots, from that we can — no, must — build a myth. But whether we are “just” biological robots, or whether it is a magical thing, that falls to the simple aesthetics of the myth we’re constructing.

This is where our myths begin — which is why I feel such fire in regard to getting these ideas out there to you. I recognize that most people don’t understand the importance or relevance of immanent mythology. Hopefully our work these past few years — and in the coming years — will make that clear enough that many others will take up the work, as they are in other disciplines that are gradually becoming aware of the greatest mystery of all: the narrative is not an afterthought. The narrative is everything.

Occupy: Social Supernova?

It’s an anti-capitalism thing. No, it’s an anti-war thing. No, it’s a civil rights thing.  No, it’s a desert topping. No, it’s a floor wax.

Ever since the Occupy movement began garnering mainstream media attention there has been an energetic, maybe even desperate, debate to define the significance of thousands of people from all over the nation spontaneously gathering in America’s large urban centers, decrying the rapacious criminality of the establishment — all sans identifiable figureheads or fixed policy programs.

Yes, from the start it was clear that, in its broadest outlines at least, this thing was a passionate rebuke to parasitic Wall Street types.  Whatever that may mean in actual practice, it’s definitely not a formulation consistent with laissez-faire economics a la the Koch brothers’ Tea Party. So not surprising that most right wing analyses approached the topic with a dismissive laziness. They’ve crafted fear into a formidable electoral weapon and are well familiar with the coward’s first law of dealing with Truly Scary Things:  avoid real contact.

That general approach, however, is hardly the exclusive resort of the right wing.  It is, in fact, the universal reaction of all establishment types across the board. Witness the White House’s statement about the Occupy movement.

And that is the point most interesting to me, as a recovering Obama zombie.  Not so much that His zero-ness is not even trying to swim with the raw, powerful populist currents churning within Occupy, but that those on the institutional left are not doing a helluva lot better.

Analyses during the early, pre-mainstream exposure pretty much focused around the creeping sense of unease felt by veteran activists when confronted with the informal, unpolished and unfocused demeanor of some demonstrators.

While I’ve only become really engaged with public affairs recently, I identify most closely with this group of commentators.  They may have much more extensive pedigrees of activist involvement than I, but we all share one key characteristic:  a relatively simplistic linear model of the world. Something akin to a cold, impersonal, mathematical dogma bound by a rigid series of theorems and acceptable logic that is fatally dependent upon the artificially constricted environment of 2-dimensional Euclidean space. Just as where A + B = C and C = 2A, then A = B, when social outcomes are a function of the implementation of policy programs by formal authorities, all movements seeking to affect social change must have designated leaders and a fixed platform of specific policies.

Elegant notion, that, no? Makes a man feel superior. Powerful. Easy able to comprehend the vast workings of the society around him and have a decisive impact. ‘Cept it don’t quite work that way in the real world.

Read the rest of this reductive rumination at Dystopia Diaries

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In the latest episode of The Infinite and the Beyond, we talk about late Llewellyn author Scott Cunningham in A Corner in the Occult. Many Pagans and or Wiccans often find Scott’s books on their journey as Pagans. Many find his books on magick and religion uplifting and at times pertinent to their growing views on life and existence.

We also look into the idea of human flourishing and happiness and how to create it in one’s life. Are you happy? Are you flourishing? How would you define and list your values and virtues? Would you say that they are serving you and your life beneficially? Learn about virtue and Eudaimonia and how your life lives up to the teachings of Aristotle and other philosophers. See how some of the new virtue systems found in modern Paganism stand in comparison to a tried and true system which comes from Plato as we find an elementary way to update it for modern use.

Later in the show, I read listener email and we look at the history of the five elements in The Essence of Magick. Find out where the five elements of western occultism come from and how they came to be used in ritual magick. And to close we discuss suicide, assisted suicide and how they exist in relation to Paganism. Have you ever had someone in your life kill themselves? Have you ever known someone who died of a terminal, debilitating, and/or painful illness? How do the issues associated with suicide and assisted suicide relate to Paganism?

To message the show please go here.

In 1970 Amar Mahant [of New Delhi] left his job, family and friends to dedicate himself to his religious beliefs. In 1973, the clerk raised his hand in honour of Hindu deity Shiva – and he hasn’t put it down since. It’s now been 38 years.

Amar’s followers claim his sacrifice is a beacon of peace, while others say he has given up the use of a limb in order to separate himself from the pleasures of mortal life.

Amar’s sacrifice has turned his arm into a useless stump of flesh and bone, with a gnarled hand and unclipped fingernails hanging from the end. He says he experienced years of excruciating pain in order to follow his beliefs, but the pain has now passed. What’s left of his arm is now stuck in the bizarre position, atrophied after years of non-use.

Devotees of Hinuisim will often undergo incredible acts of self-sacrifice, sometimes involving starvation or vows of silence. Many of Amar’s followers have followed suit, raising their own arms for years and even decades.

From 1957 to 1958, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. penned “Advice for the Living”, a feature for Ebony magazine in which he answered readers’ questions on everything from the atom bomb to capital punishment to dating and how to catch a nice young man. (Make sure you have the “radiating personality, a pleasant disposition, and that feminine charm
which every man admires.”)

King recommends playing gospel music rather than rock, as rock ‘n’ roll “so often plunges men’s minds into degrading and immoral depths”. He tells how to gain self confidence. His admirable strategy of love and passive resistance seems to function a bit strangely when put to use in situations such as when a friend hits you on the head with an iron pole.

Albert Camus, 1957

Did the Soviet foreign minister have a hand in the death of famed french writer Albert Camus? Via AFP:

Famous French author Albert Camus, who died in a car accident in 1960, may have been the victim of a Soviet plot, new research suggests.

Italian academic Giovanni Catelli, an eastern European specialist, put forward the theory in the pages of the Italian daily Il Corriere della Sera. On Monday it was greeted with scepticism among other experts.

He noted that a passage in a diary written by Czech poet Jan Zabrana, published as a book, was absent from the Italian translation.

According to Catelli the missing paragraph concerns a meeting between Zabrana and and a Russian KGB contact.

“I heard something very strange from a man who knew lots of things and had very informed sources,” Zabrana writes in the unexpurgated version.

“He said the road accident that cost Albert Camus his life in 1960 was organised by Soviet spies. They damaged a tyre on the car using a piece of equipment that blew out the tyre at a certain speed.”

[Continues at AFP]

My name is R. Talmadge Lacy and I was born on 12/13/1979. (12 = number of Apostles + Jesus = 13) // (1+2+1+3+1+9+7+9=33) 33 is called the Christ vibration for reasons that are mysterious and weird. On top of all that my dad was a carpenter and my mom’s name is Virginia: (Virgin)ia.

Now what exactly makes me the “Anti”-Christ? Well according to mainstream Christianity, Christ is something separate from yourself; an external authority figure one must submit to in order to be saved. I, however, do not believe in this model of Christ. You might even say I believe the exact opposite is true. Now I’m not the first or only person to hold this point of view — from Jewish mystics to gnostic Christians, many have associated the Messiah (the morning star) with our personal consciousness. Thereby by the light of consciousness every man & every woman was likened to a star — therefore one must follow one’s own highest light in order to become one with God. This is Resurrection.

Furthermore, one will find this is in keeping with the narrative found in the Bible … According to the serpent in Genesis (commonly associated with Satan) upon eating the forbidden fruit, the naked hippies will ‘awaken’ and become like God. And let’s not forget Lucifer means ‘light bearer.’ As far as being the ‘Prince of Lies,’ consider that all I have said is in fact FALSE as a written word is not a word, but an image of an idea one hath spoken. Therefore I have no use for Truth; I just want a LIE that will deliver unto me: ANARCHY, CHAOS, SEX, DRUGS & MONEY.

SURPRISE!! You were expecting maybe Keanu Reeves? Well, let’s get down to business.

• ANARCHY. To be blunt, the Apocalypse is happening right now underneath our very noses. To be sure it is the battle between Good & Evil, but such generic and malleable terms do us little good; instead let’s use the terms ripened & unripened souls. And to be precise let’s call it the battle between the animal & Man •OR• the beast & God.

The animal has an instinct for hierarchy; to divide people into two classes: leader & follower. Each type is destructive for their respective reasons. Followers are destructive because of their willingness to be manipulated by leaders: fighting wars or engaging in mindless consumerism or just generally ignoring the pain of suffering of others are but a few examples. Leaders are destructive because they have no vested interest in anyone’s well-being other than their own. However, Man, having transcended the animalistic instinct, being possessed by consciousness and following his highest light (God within You), is synchronized with others on higher mental levels. Indeed, Man, by virtue of consciousness, possesses empathy and embodies all moral principles without the need of “authority figures” to enforce ‘good behavior’ because he understands the intrinsic value of love thy neighbor as thyself & do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Anarchy then becomes the only logical conclusion for Mankind! But do not try to join the revolution — that’s impossible. Only try to realize the truth – there is no revolution. Then you’ll see it is not the revolution you have joined — it is humanity. You are already monarch of your own skin — your inviolable freedom waits to be completed only by the love of other monarchs. Thus, the only possible society is that of lovers. The only possible society is that of lovers.

•CHAOS. In studying turbulence, chaos scientists have realised that apparently a-causal phenomena in nature are not only the norm, but are measurable by simple mathematical equations. A successful magical act causes an apparently a-causal result. A properly executed magical release of energy creates a wave form (visible by Kirlian photography) around the magician causing turbulence in the aetheric space.

And by being aware of that process via the Collective Unconscious we can have a more direct influence ON that process thereby allowing us to perform even more spectacular mind-blowing feats. To wit … The promise made in Matthew 21:21 by Jesus is literally possible because REALITY is a living hologram that is manipulated by Consciousness via quantum fluctuations.

Basically the Collective Unconscious is how we’re all connected telepathically. So by tapping into this ‘cloud of consciousness’ we can influence the behavior of others to our own benefit. Think of your desire like a puzzle and the actions of individuals as the puzzle pieces. One piece fits another and another culminating in a butterfly effect that makes your desire a reality when all the pieces are ‘put in their place.’ And yes, I know the pieces fit, because I watched them fall away.

Freewill has not been neutralized because the Collective Unconscious itself confirms we are all one consciousness experiencing itself. “As the individual becomes more collective, the collective becomes more individual.”

All of this is just a more complicated way of saying that by following your highest light (God within You), you are synchronized with others on higher mental levels … even with REALITY itself.

• SEX. The concept here is “SEX-HYPNOSIS.” Now we all know what regular hypnosis is — the induction of an altered state of consciousness by means of guided meditation. Self-hypnosis means you guide yourself through meditation to achieve an altered state of consciousness. With sex-hypnosis we use sex as the means by which we meditate to achieve an altered state of consciousness.

The altered state of consciousness we wish to induce is something like a hyper-lucid dreamworld. The idea is this ‘dreamworld’ is the gateway to the Collective Unconscious. The symbolic key to opening the gateway to the Collective Unconscious is the 3rd EYE. Therefore we have sex in the name of the 3rd EYE. So as a matter of convenience we call the 3rd EYE “MONITOR.” We have sex in the name of MONITOR.

• DRUGS. The 3rd EYE has always been associated with the pineal gland, and although no conclusive findings have been made; the pineal gland has been implicated in the production of DMT. However, it matters little if DMT is produced in the pineal gland or even how much DMT the body is capable of producing, because fundamentally we use sex-hypnosis to tell the mind to start hallucinating, and through this rabbit hole in our heads we wish to fall into the abyss (or “void”) of the Collective Unconscious. To leave earth and dive obliquely between those spaces that Lovecraft celebrated in his nightmare tales.

• MONEY. In the beginning there was no money; only the primal flow of energies that constituted the balance of power i.e. the trade of Light. But as relentless logic made all possibilities apparent it was decided a representation of Light could be made. And so it was done; a first Dollar, and it was called Art & it was good.

WANTED: Females interested in experimenting with sex hypnosis. Religious affiliation not important. I also hope to establish a NEW CALL for contemporary artists to invent “radical new forms” & apolitical ART. For us, there is no “tradition.” The symbols and myths of history’s sects, orders, and faiths, are constructs, useful fictions, “games.” By ripping mystic techniques and sensibilities from their traditional “occult” contexts and applying them to the concept of “PLAY,” Consciousness absorbs itself in synaptic fury – spewing out the genetic code of a new posthuman language. • verbum fiat • If interested please contact me via Facebook (R. Talmadge Lacy) or email (Talmadge613(-at-)gmail(-dot-)com) •• Satan loves you. > >

New data from polling firm Gallup shows that out of all the religious groups in the U.S., Muslims are most likely to reject violence, followed by the non-religious atheists and agnostics.

Through interviews with 2,482 Americans, Gallup found that 78 percent of Muslims believe violence which kills civilians is never justified, whereas just 38 percent of Protestant Christians and 39 percent of Catholics agreed with that sentiment. Fifty-six percent of atheists answered similarly.

The survey was designed to measure religious and non-religious attitudes toward violence 10 years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Perhaps most tellingly, 92 percent of Muslims surveyed said they did not believe any Muslim in their community had sympathy toward al Qaeda terrorists.

When Gallup put the question a bit more pointedly, asking if it would be justified for “an individual person or a small group of persons to target and kill civilians,” the responses were a bit more uniform. Respondents from nearly all groups were widely opposed to such tactics, with Protestants and Catholics at 71 percent against. Muslims still had the highest number opposed, at 89 percent. Seventy-six percent of atheists were also opposed.

Public Policy Polling released the results of a survey today that included the question: “If God exists, do you approve or disapprove of its performance?” Fifty-two percent of the 928 respondents approve of the job the Almighty’s done while 9 percent disapprove. So about half the public isn’t too thrilled with the way God is handling, well, everything.

Seventy-one percent of the American public approves of God’s handling of the creation of the universe, 56 percent approve of (his? or her?) handling of the animal kingdom, and even 50 percent like the way he manages natural disasters.

Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman moderates an entertaining two-hour conversation in London between Julian Assange and Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek, discussing the broader meaning of Wikileaks, the media, and “the attack on the public use of reason”. Thanks to Zizek, the discussion also veers between everything from dirty jokes to Stalinist propaganda to Psycho to the rumors linking him romantically to Lady Gaga. Things get going about ten minutes in.

Writing for n+1, Rob Horning concocts a frightening, fantastic, and thought-provoking essay on how we live today, connecting the reign of “fast fashion” companies such as Forever 21, social media such as Facebook, and 21st century capitalism’s demand that workers market and reinvent themselves endlessly:

I’ve always thought that Forever 21 was a brilliant name for a fast-fashion retailer. These two words succinctly encapsulate consumerism’s mission statement: to evoke the dream of perpetual youth through constant shopping. Yet it also conjures the suffocating shabbiness of that fantasy, the permanent desperation involved in trying to achieve fashion’s impossible ideals.

Despite apparently democratizing style and empowering consumers, fast fashion in some ways constitutes a dream sector for those eager to condemn contemporary capitalism, as the companies almost systematically heighten some of its current contradictions: the exhaustion of innovative possibilities, the limits of the legal system in guaranteeing property rights, the increasing immiseration of the world workforce.

Just as fast fashion seeks to pressure shoppers with the urgency of now or never, social media hope to convince us that we always have something new and important to say—as long as we say it right away. And they are designed to make us feel anxious and left out if we don’t say it, as their interfaces favor the users who update frequently and tend to make less engaged users disappear.

How did this happen? By seeming to mitigate the problems that neoliberalism creates by shifting economic risk onto workers, social media has been able to colonize the collective consciousness. Facebook, fast fashion, and the like provide new mechanisms of solace, quantifying our connections and influence (and thereby making them more economically useful to us) while enhancing the compensations of consumerism by making it seem more productive, more self-revelatory. Though we may be only one of a thousand friends in everyone else’s networks, that never seems especially important when we’re in the midst of posting new pictures.

In turning to social media for comfort, we’ve become happily dependent on digital devices, as we have come to rely on the accelerated rate of communication and exchange they facilitate. They offer us chances to articulate, evaluate, and augment who we are while archiving our identity-making gestures as a collection we can later fawn over and curate. The archiving makes the self seem richer and more substantial even as it makes it more tenuous. Our identity can never be so strong as to render any particular gesture negligible; it is cumulative at the same time that it is totally discontinuous. This has the effect of allowing everything we do to seem either significant or irrelevant, depending on which view suits our needs. The online repository has gradually become the privileged site of the self, the authorized version that redeems the frustration and desperation incipient with the provisionality of work life, that corrects the errors and discourtesies we commit in our confrontations with the physical world.

Read the full essay at n+1