Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Technocratic Fascism

Idealism and Disfigurement

“We didn't exactly believe your story.'
Then --?'
'We believed your two hundred dollars.'
'You mean --' She seemed not to know what he meant.
'I mean that you paid us more than if you'd been telling the truth,' he explained blandly, 'and enough more to make it all right.” 
― Dashiell HammettThe Maltese Falcon


The unchecked influence of corporations on the election of candidates calls to mind the financial underpinnings of the Reich wherein the goals of the industrialists and the goals of the state where indistinguishable from one another. This efficiency lead to the economic welfare of the populace as similar to that of receiving a form of monetary bribe to look the other way.

 When it came to the eventual cost of cross influences that become a philosophy of consensus whose aim is ever increasing productivity fated to derail, everyone was responsible, therefore no one was. Shadows and ghosts became victims with names. The shadows armed with a laptop might be at the working end of a puppeteer's set of strings. A reciprocal exchange? I think not. John Adams in a rejoinder to Thomas Jefferson's opinion that revolutions are a necessity for an eventual evolution of a democratic state, stated in essence that the populace must be protected from themselves through the legislation of boundaries by elected officials. He never thought that the foxes would find a way to pay off the farmer to gain access into the hen house. 



My mother used to say that ignorance is bliss and in George Orwell's insight into the collusion of mass media in our similar state of affairs could be echoed by his statement that "ignorance is strength"  A strength garnered by the trivialization of anything that resembles attention toward the issues of the assimilation of undue influence at hand. Preemptive is a word I like.
Preemptive wars, preemptive data mining, preemptive financing of elections by corporations. The rigging of the bag toss game as a recognized from of democratic principles.. Freedom to advantage the odds in one's favor in order to avoid messy dialog with the unwashed. 
One could call the role of mass media a preemptive strategy of editorial purvey controlled by one of  the nation's largest military contractors, General Electric, or Fox News, the home of bald propaganda countered by the propaganda of MSNBC..examples of corporate warfare where the electorate is entertained by their welfare being the gist of trivialized political gossip that deflects from the essence of corruption of the game they reinforce. Hand picked..the short list of experts they deploy corral the illusion that the situation can be fixed while the big fix is in.  A talking game for shills and marks that deals with the effects rather than the causes..a trivialization of the forensic pathology required to remove a cancer from a patient that's already dead. One could call them ventriloquists of a non existent from of idealism  that JP Morgan, Rockefeller and Carnegie had long since slayed a century ago.  The names change but the playbook remains. Both opposing sides juxtaposed against the middle as a negating factor aids and abets the continuation of a ruse hiding in plain sight. 


During the recent collapse of our financial institutions by corruption led to the phrase "too big to fail" being coined and the same could be said for the nation state as an institutionalized nexus of self interest in terms of survival at all costs. The word drone could be the used to describe the apathy that has been carefully cultured in this petri dish or the wafting helicopter down Main Street that tags along with you on your errands in some future efficiency of so called "safety" measures. The populace is not to be trusted with the unconditional, hence the future must be viewed with a preemptive series of fences set up for the productive efficiency of surveillance.as a one way mirror. No smoke required.  
Thus, the rapid ascent of the economic fortunes once termed a miracle for the Reich at that time are mirrored by our own history as a tug of war between the industrialists and the idealism of democracy has slipped underground,greased by the media, hidden by  the arbiters of survivalist philosophies of distractions, entertainments and debates surrounding elections set up as straw dogs to divide up the pie among corporations.
The manipulation of the mass media by Goebbels is matched by corporate interests whose ownership of "public" airwaves has, in large led to, large doses of a form of heroin as a misdirection of attention based upon a prescription of entertainment by technocracy.
Duck Dynasty as a metaphor for the state of the electorate as a one trick pony stereotyped as rednecks pushing the wheels of consumerism in  a running joke. All while we slept....remote in hand.


Twitter and Facebook provide evidence that information does not equate to knowledge or wisdom as a microcosm of the environment where profit has been hitched to economic engines that gather personal data as a reciprocal exchange for access to the systemic selling of the populace.

“Brigid O'Shaughnessy: “I haven't lived a good life. I've been bad, worse than you could know.” 
Sam Spade “You know, that's good, because if you actually were as innocent as you pretend to be, we'd never get anywhere” 
― Dashiell HammettThe Maltese Falcon


The NSA having lied to Congress on gathering personal telephone information being collected resulted in a collective yawn which somewhat relates to the general philosophy of more is better, whether it is the rapid cyclic stream of commercialism tethered to what constitutes the health of the nation state or the endlessly increasing amount of fuel required for consumerism to maintain an industrial base which in turn, supports the state as one hand washes the other.





George Orwell would simply observe that this amnesty for the NSA is an example of a big brother looking after your personal welfare by picking your pocket legislated with "secret courts" which no one appears to be disturbed by. This also appears to be evidence Americans exist in a post literate society when it comes to the increased cross coordination between social media, industrialists and government.


All it would take is a slight puff of wind from the a enthralled electorate to tip over the whole shebang into a fascist state as the paramount of efficiency.  Non productive members of this are known identified and tagged and sidelined as an example of all the set pieces are already being in place.


All of this reminds me of the genius that was and is William S Burrough's "Nova Express" that was a walk through the dark mirror of Pax Americana..the mutated idealism that requires the metaphor of a physical deformity denoting the contortions required of the mind in the service of secret courts legislated by a viral and parasitic pathology of control. Of course then there was the infamous set up of contrived evidence for the Iraq "police action", in reality, an undeclared war by the architects of Empire in search of the fuel to keep it at the top of the heap when it came to the conglomerations of mafia protection rackets known as nation states. Disfigurement of both a psychic and physical nature on both sides continue to this day in the waning occupation of Afghanistan,  

"Corridors and patios and porticos of The Biologic Courts – Swarming with terminal life forms desperately seeking extension of canceled permissions and residence certificates – Brokers, fixers, runners, debarred lawyers, all claiming family connection with court officials – Professional half-brothers and second cousins twice removed – Petitioners and plaintiffs screaming through the halls – Holding up insect claws, animal and bird parts, all manner of diseases and deformities received “In the service” of distant fingers – Shrieking for compensations and attempting to corrupt or influence the judges in a thousand languages living and dead, in color flash and nerve talk, catatonic dances and pantomimes illustrating their horrible conditions which many have tattooed on their flesh to the bone and silently picket the audience chamber – Others carry photo-collage banners and TV screens flickering their claims –"

Indeed. Petitioners come and go and the secretive court of judgments on our behalf remains buried under the hubris of a collective fantasy of freedom until we receive an invoice, a payment required to awaken.

Thursday, December 26, 2013

Sidereal Time Versus Spacetime: A Personal Account of An Anomaly


An odd event occurred some days ago that reminded me of a post I had written prior to that event occurring which involved science having confirmed to it's own satisfaction that there are at least ten dimensions to spacetime, and I consequently posed the same postulates to consciousness. Why not?
This post could be a continuation of the last one inasmuch as both are a critique of measurement as more than a tool but as a perennial philosophy. Using imagination as a conceptual platform to launch an assault on rationality as the be all and end all of consideration of experiential realities, perhaps a critique of time itself as a counting exercise is also overdue.
Sidereal time that measures causality as an effect of planetary motion is so ingrained in  experiential definitions of spacial relations reminds me of a sort of quaint constant that that like many constants based on sensory information alone, can lead to the living mythologies of their accuracy demonstrated by the use of atomic clocks as some kind of goofy institutionalized societal lockstep....more related to former agrarian pursuits and now has evolved into productivity for the sake of productivity. A perennial philosophy.
I recall it was Rodney Collin who suggested that within spacetime as an added ingredient to orbital rotation that the circle of sidereal time more than likely resembles a spiral.
Don't get me started on daylight savings time or the invention of time zones whose sole purpose was to keep steam powered locomotives from having a cornfield meet. Pragmatism versus reality seems to be the chapter heading of this subject.
We have all experienced the sense wherein time appears to be accelerated and yet when compared to the passage of mechanical time, the  disparity between the two appears wider than one would think possible as well as the opposite being true where time appears to pass slowly and yet an entire afternoon has vanished.
Of course than it was Gurdjieff who suggested that spacetime is a invention made to delay processes by giving them a multitude on intersecting parallel paths as a delaying process to maintain ( in essence) eternity.
The velocity of a hummungbirds respiratory rate as a spacetime geometry is enfolded into the sidereal respiration of a planetary body or the passge of geological time all of which, as an aggregate sum  compared to one another are not representative of a constant. Of course the measurement of time requires comparisons of a subjective as Einstein said and perhaps as Gurdjieff referred to it as a bending of a medium where the present is allocated to the present and vice versa as a intentional series of impedance.
Then there was the dialog of eventual agreement between Rick Phillips and myself on the lunacy revolving around the concept of "now". One could call this an experiential philosophy.
One morning about a week ago I walked into the kitchen and my daughter began to recount an odd dream involving her brother who had passed away roughly five years ago. The dream was not a visual dream but rather her brother's voice who seemed agitated admidst what could be called signal noise or a bad connection who kept trying to say the same thing over and over without being coherent enough to gain any specifics other than to relate the importance and expressed urgency of someone going somewhere.
 I listened knowing full well I had experienced the same dream at the same time. We then compared notes and it was more than odd that both of us had experienced the same dream without visualizations, revolving around Matt's voice..frustrated and adamant at the same time by the tenor of his voice.
The next day my daughter was rushed to the emergency room where she subsequently spent a week in treatment and recovery from a hidden malady that had suddenly surfaced the day after the "phone call".
How many coincidences does it take for an anomaly? The non local, the local, the same information taking two paths at once regarding someone needing to go somewhere with an underlined sense of urgency?
The measurement of this event would be fruitless and yet as a clue without a grounding rod to connect the dots of causality, it is a demarcation that remains odd if immeasurable.




Sunday, December 22, 2013

Rationality and Imagination

Thoughts On A Obscure Cosmology: The Imaging of Imagination



The Predictability of Mechanics: An Upside Down Valuation of Hierarchies


Does objectivity exist in relation to the UFO problem? Is it measurable as a consequence?
If it is measurable are we using the wrong tools to discern the root of it's manifestations in all their varieties?

So much of what I have written on the relationship between consciousness and the anomalous has been focused on the measurable and I was recently reflecting on this in terms of the fact there is more than one context to all of this and I am as much of a  product of current cosmologies as anyone else in the sense that historically the meaning and context of cosmology as it is currently practiced and how it was centuries ago is a decidedly different affair. 

There is a decidedly existentialist thread in current theory whereas formerly it enfolded individual or the general human experience into theories.

In many posts I have referred to quantum theory and when I was mulling over the context of these posts, I was struck that quantum mechanics is well..mechanical in the sense that it seeks predictability as much as Newtonian principles. With this in mind, the thought occurred to me that perhaps all of this emphasis on rational predictability may be an upside down view of how the situation ( ours in particular)  is framed. 

Is the point of the universe predictability? This is what we seek but perhaps what we seek is illusionary.

The more I focused on this question, the more apparent  was that this matter has been made impossible to entangle due to the vicissitudes of language whether it is written in phrases or mathematically. All of our societal structures are based on predictability. Our languages are based on predictable stereotypes. Pattern recognition requires a stable foundation does it not?

So what if human nature has nothing to do with how the universe operates?

Perhaps this is an example of anthropomorphism run amuck.

An important distinction occurred to me.

We measure realities by rationality and experience the realities by imagination.

The message in the case of one anomaly, that of UFO's strikes this writer as a prime example of this situation. It may be a message that you cannot measure the nature of what is being disclosed, that the universe is a mirror of the imagination and rationality is a fool's errand when it comes to the stuff of a dream and the dreamer that has both physicality and yet is incommensurable, much like ourselves. The approach may be a cosmology foreign to us.

This flux through the locus of a chimera within the anomalous...... in terms of subsisting frameworks of the observer as each , (imagination and rationality ) serve  a seemingly paradoxical relationship of contradictory languages that lodge the subject as a deconstructive agent toward any reconciliation of the two rather than expressing the two as a coherent dynamic. We mistake the tools of measurement by rationality for realities that surround us that are imaginative. The suggestibility potential of any environment underlines this state, or station of organisation.

Perhaps we can call this self hypnosis by measurement, an architecture that does not match experiential consciousness, especially if consciousness extends beyond ourselves that refuses to be set.

Mad Hatter: “Why is a raven like a writing-desk?”
“Have you guessed the riddle yet?” the Hatter said, turning to Alice again.
“No, I give it up,” Alice replied: “What’s the answer?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea,” said the Hatter” 
― Lewis CarrollAlice in Wonderland

No Right Angles In Natural Forms

If you have been in this neighborhood long enough, you already know that the craft and the occupants reported by witnesses come in every conceivable shape, size and form. This may be a clue in of itself that has larger implications than what is simply reported in a astonishing catalog of mirrored conceptual chimeras that reside neither here or there but stand as a sort of indicator, a message that we may have our hierarchy of  valuations between imagining and rationality upside down.



Our natural state is bewildered anxiety if taken away from the bar located at the tavern of distractedly purposeful intoxication. You can determine this for yourself just by looking who is falling off a bar stool while in the thrall of increasingly and quietly desperate entertainments..that drown out  doubt. Our species comes to mind...something is eluding us as we sink into a stupor. The more we apply this architecture of mistaking measurements with right angles, the deeper into a pit we descend that is knocking at the door at 3am trying to inform us that our house is on fire...Nonetheless...

“Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle.” 
― Lewis CarrollAlice in Wonderland

Measurement As A Process of Imagination



 I suspect the mind is a non local agent that has nothing to do with rationality and the physical brain is a local lens that is constantly measuring. Without imagination, we would cease to be functional. We would not be conscious by missing a required and key binding agent of translation, and of course this would also mean that measurement is subservient to imagination, therefore it is true that rationality is based on the imaginative process that creates the contingent nature of forms as intermediaries,whether it is math or language...  that the intermediaries have no existence in of themselves without the imaging process of imagination.

An Illusion of Objectivity: Imagining Ourselves As A Measurement That Creates Experiential Realms

The lesser death of sleep and the greater death of physical death itself and what is between them is the creation of a container that colors what could be called a clear, colorless medium without scent by imagination. The loss of the container perhaps releases what has been embryonic as a distinction of what is necessary for the nature of the exercise which is disclosure.


There seems to be a requirement of disclosure of endless possibilities in order for them to be existent, the requirement of imagination in a dream wherein we create a container ( as in the observer effect) that , in turn, creates reality as an individuated exercise that serves in of itself, as a measurement as a mirror or witness to a process of disclosure by interpenetration. One hand washes the other.The scope of our mirroring or serving in mediumship  within imagination is a distinction within infinite distinctions of a disclosure that is ceaseless without the confines of space time. We imagine ourselves to be what we are.




Yet none of this has anything to do with rationality. Perhaps no two individuals see the possible alike and this is more pronounced when the container is removed from measurement..an imagined "heaven" or delimited environment of an observer effect that feeds equally on itself in a dream that dwarfs the dreams within the lesser death of sleep.

“But I don’t want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can’t help that," said the Cat: "we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad."
"How do you know I’m mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, or you wouldn’t have come here.” 
― Lewis CarrollAlice in Wonderland

Lately, it seems to me the drop within a river does not vanish when it reaches the sea when considering more than one state we occupy at this station or state, and that differentiation is expansive rather than contracting. As far as I know nothing seems to be shrinking unless we apply the rationality of measurement as a navigational behaviorism as the natural world shrinks around us due to this...upside down determinism.


Friday, December 13, 2013

Consciousness and Counting Beyond Three Dimensions



Simulations of Ten Dimensions

This could be considered a post as an extension on Biocentrism which was covered in another previous post. Dr Lanza asks why we focus on the origin of the physical universe when the origin of consciousness may be related to ( as a equal mystery) to the origin of what was once called time now called space or for those who have a hard time wrapping one's head around the idea of space being time, some call it space time. Dimensionality as a transit line of time. Or is it a sphere?
None the less, in the post comparing consciousness to thought wherein it could be possible that thought is an adaptation to local conditions that serves as a veil for the true nature of consciousness, I suggested that we tend to think of thought as three dimensional inasmuch as if it so that it is confined to the physical brain. Whereas evidence is growing that this is not so. If thought as we know it is simply a tool rather than what it describes, consciousness itself may reside elsewhere not only in three dimensions, but perhaps ( as this essay posits) in as many as ten. If thought is a descriptor, a rubric of navigation by reference, then material objects may be simply descriptors as well which are also as holographic as thought. Are both as viewed from a higher geometry of dimensions, one and the same? A singularity with fractional attributes when seen in only three dimensions?

http://www.nature.com/news/simulations-back-up-theory-that-universe-is-a-hologram-1.14328

Thursday, December 12, 2013

A Conflagration Of Props



Fire and Ice

Many have said that with the passage of time memories become the tracings of a dream in that the mirror is suffused with clouds, impressionistic renderings and the scattered images in the household of the mind, that become as furniture as an adjunct to a dwelling. I was consuming mile after mile underneath my frozen feet across the icy pavement on my way home from Montana. The old van began to swerve, and then began to spin, tumbling down a steep embankment, end over end until it rested on the driver's side. The engine compartment had caught fire and the flames rose close enough to my clothing that I had to pull my way out of the passenger side which now faced skyward. The deep snow drifts swallowed my legs up to my knees and running while being held in place by the thick packed snow, I looked back to see the van engulfed in flames. As I reached the edge of the highway, the van exploded in a blueish-orange fire ball.
All of this had taken place in what seemed to be a matter of moments. I stood in the wind alongside of that long forgotten highway and the silence, the isolation of that pin point on a map underlined as it had many times in the past, I was utterly on my own. A wave of panic flushed through me as I reached into my coat pocket for my wallet, only to recall I had left it propped on the dash by the windshield. Now it was dust.
I stood there for several minutes watching the flames, the soot and the wreckage against the white snow. I had no choice, the roads were empty, not a single car had passed..I had to begin walking, to what or where I had no idea.    
As I trudged along the icy shoulder trying not to fall, I thought about what happened in terms of this sudden and severe twist of fate and it boiled down to that in less than a moment, all the props of civilization had been violently erased and this having landed on me miles from nowhere.
Against the glare of the snow and the mist being driven across the road, I thought I saw some sort of building that was nearly buried in the landscape. As I slowly made my way in that direction, I could see that this drift was actually a roadside cafe. Opening the door, the same silence greeted me. Not a soul was in sight although all the empty tables, the stools the counter were arranged for the arrival of guests. A fellow came out of the kitchen and I explained my situation. Oddly he seemed very matter of fact as if this sort of thing was a common occurrence and he called a tow truck to gather the smoking ruins of my van, explaining that leaving it there would result in a very expensive fine which seemed more than a little abstract at the time.
The driver of the tow truck arrived and we returned to van that had seemingly melted back upon itself. My identification and wallet had returned to dust. In explaining this to the tow truck driver, I could see he was shrugging off the fact that he would not be paid. When we returned to town, his family awaited him in a restaurant as I tagged along fairly sheepishly, and he paid for my meal, and also advised me that I could pay him back when and if I ever returned home. He reached into his wallet and handed me some cash as we parted company and dropped me off at the bus station in the middle of this small town. Human kindness, empathy and how it was dealt with such a matter of fact way filled my thoughts as I looked out the window of the warm bus and passed the scene of my refugee status, the stain of the fire remained painted on the ice crystals on the drifts. Soon it would be Christmas, soon I would be surrounded by friends and family. Perhaps it was a lesson to be learned, perhaps it was an accident, perhaps that tow truck driver had faced a similar and abrupt twist on his own highway. I have forgotten his name, the name of the town, the faces, the details but an impression remains, as if a collage had been set into motion that had arranged itself to once again place me a ledge, to look past details, nagging minutia to experience a meal that had sustained me while I was dropped into a state of suspension with a paltry few seconds.
A dream of arrangements, and yet that day was a marker set on a conflagration..and has informed this transit of contingencies since and as I age, some events appear to me as if heaven sent as if misfortune was applied to indicate I was being paid attention to. Was I ? The fact that this kindness of a stranger stands on its own two feet without any baggage makes it a demarcation within a vivid dream, a memory....
A lesson in humility

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Dyatlov Pass: An Indelible Mystery


Moving from the mysteries of thought in regard to consciousness, or the merry tunes of self harvesting warfare, or the the dreams of planetary sentience, I thought for those unacquainted with more hard core mysteries, the Dyatlov Pass Incident remains curiously suspended where it ended with the discovery of nine bodies. A provocation without the usual arc of a story line. Theories float past without being tethered to causality having every plausible and implausible eventuality resulting in an entanglement lodged between the paranormal and homicide  A closed and ironically cold case frozen literally and metaphorically in the machinations of dreams.

Courtesy of the ever curious Fortean Times.

http://www.forteantimes.com/features/articles/1562/the_dyatlov_pass_incident.html

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Consciousness Versus Thought.


Today I felt the urge to entertain myself and perhaps entertain you as a reader to explore one of many impossible things. At times, this impetus has no origin I can recall but this is a post about a state that has no name, no specific location, no permanence or describable origin. Yet as I write this I have the title of my previous blog in mind, intangible materiality. I remember that when Mac Tonnies first recommended it on his own blog, many were flummoxed by the title. What does this mean or portray? The simple answer is that the title was a surrealist portrayal of consciousness.


Much progress has been made in the study of self organizing living systems, that as all things we consider is essentially the work of a certain artistry of information melded with the packets of terms that are as genetic material for memory, a word here, an image there. The mind is such a living and self organizing system that informs the brain as much as the body and vice versa.
I remember a lecture by Krishnamurti who posited that consciousness is in advance of the expression of a thought as a matter of causality. This statement seems benign in of itself as a curious thing to say but it begs the question of what lies beyond thought as a precursor in the navigation of this temporal existence as a   state contingent upon reliance, entanglement and expression. I recently watched a fascinating documentary on HBO that followed the transformation of a poet through the stages of Alzheimer's, and it was patently observable that he possessed consciousness without memory. This is a subject that the late Ram Dass ( the former Dr Richard Alpert) covered in his book "Grist for The Mill". Thoughts seem to be comparable to the work of an artist, but not the artist his or herself posed in a trans-personal state of being that could be considered a tapestry, a sculpture or the work of brush strokes.


Yet, the work is thought to be direct, as if to state "I am what I have created" which to this writer appears to be an error in logic, as odd as that sounds.
I also recall how Ibn Al Arabi dissected the term imagination. His view was that the term was entirely misunderstood. Imaging versus how we term imagination. He posited that images are contingent. Their manifestation into a shared cognition of physicality has more than one state which, in turn is best represented as a spectrum and he used the example of dreams that are as much of a isthmus between thought and consciousness as we are an isthmus between physicality and the non sensate. The mirrors we are occupying  reflect something else entirely. What attracted me to his modality of viewing reality as a matter of mirrored multiplications of a singularity, was the opposition's method of dividing and separating everything. This, of course with even a modicum of critical consideration is patently false. They extract this or that without seeing the contingent nature of any manifestation whether it is a frog or consciousness.


The branch of expression of surrealism brings to mind a symbolic painting of our situation. It was a creature clad in armor clutching a rose.
It seems to this writer that one attribute of consciousness beyond thought that has been side stepped is that it's attributes would seem to require more than three dimensions. Quantum physics has obliquely touched upon this mystery, and yet isn't it remarkable that the glue that has stuck us in a adaptation to this environment would seemingly want to over-ride this as if the Demiurge of the Gnostics or the the Rainbow Angel  as described by the People of The Garden to be rather manipulative, to take potentiality and steer it by torpor imposed biologically for the sake of the planet's digestive system. Gurdjieff touched on this as well describing it as a physical organ that was implanted as to place us in state of suggested self hypnosis. Why this is so was to avoid the calamitous result of our species realizing their situation in light of the forgoing metaphors.


Consciousnesses without memory, not requiring the adjunct of thought as an adaptation of self description has the veneer of a work of art perhaps as surely as a gallery displays or as Borges described this, a library whose books are variants in infinite number each distinguished by a misplaced word, a missing comma, a transposed sentence.
The brilliant short story named "William Wilson" by Edgar Allen Poe comes to mind. The protagonist's self image sets out to murder him.
Indeed.
  

Sunday, December 8, 2013

One of The Best Books I Have Read


This review says it all.

A native of Lincoln, Nebraska, Loren Eiseley began his lifelong exploration of nature in the salt flats and ponds around his hometown and in the mammoth bone collection hoarded in the old red brick museum at the University of Nebraska, where he conducted his studies in anthropology. It was in pursuit of this interest, and in the expression of his natural curiosity and wonder, that Eiseley sprang to national fame with the publication of such works as The Immense Journey and The Firmament of Time.In All the Strange Hours, Eiseley turns his considerable powers of reflection and discovery on his own life to weave a compelling story, related with the modesty, grace, and keen eye for a telling anecdote that distinguish his work. His story begins with his childhood experiences as a sickly afterthought, weighed down by the loveless union of his parents. From there he traces the odyssey that led to his search for early postglacial man—and into inspiriting philosophical territory—culminating in his uneasy achievement of world renown. Eiseley crafts an absorbing self-portrait of a man who has thought deeply about his place in society as well as humanity’s place in the natural world.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/515290.All_the_Strange_Hours

Saturday, December 7, 2013

A Current of Ennui and Ambivalence.

, , 

“All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.” 
― Noam Chomsky

Do you ever have the impression that you are the subject of a brainless battering ram?
Undoubtedly, we occupy a society of extreme consumerism with sports as the underpinning of an unspoken religion that seeps into nationalism, empire building and faddish up-selling being sold as necessities. The era of the underground culture once ripe in the 1960's was conquered, by these same forces, in order to make it a commodity easily defined, with recognizable attributes, which always reminded me of the domestication of wild bores, now waiting to be sheared. I was reading an essay on the opening of graves, a sort of scientific desecration of human values. Artifacts and personal items taken to be viewed as if they had no valuation other than to compile some sort of abstract list that would lead us to understand our forebears, as if materialism was a form of mediumship. It may not tell us much as to the mindsets of those who arrived here before us but  it says a great deal about our own society in the objectification of humanity. I think all of the above now applies, or so it seems to the anomalous that seems also to be reduced to brand names proffered by the brokers in mass communication.  All we seem to be missing is a laugh track.

“The whole educational and professional training system is a very elaborate filter, which just weeds out people who are too independent, and who think for themselves, and who don't know how to be submissive, and so on -- because they're dysfunctional to the institutions.” 
― Noam Chomsky

What is really galling to this writer is the lack of self doubt, the lack of recognition that this seems to be more of a commentary on our human environment than it does the equal and missing recognition that none of us really know much about anything that matters, so creativity is channeled into a proverbial force field of terms that have no meaning, no correlate to consciousness and it's strangeness and yet..the mills of reductionism and stereotype roll endlessly. What is produced is completely simplified, easy to understand tone deaf bullshit. We need a Noam Chomsky to do for the subject matter of the paranormal to reveal the manipulation of media. Pre-selected experts used to domesticate the subject matter to steer it into the safe harbors of fringe lunacy. Is it any wonder we have a sort of theory of relativity when it comes down to this subject matter inasmuch as everything but the kitchen sink is treated with the patina of respectability?
I beginning to suspect something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
I can only speak for my own observations but lately it seems the writing associated with, and the treatment of anomalous subject matter has reached a benchmark that is essentially a nadir of diminished content. I wrote and posted the short exercise of "Black Mountain" as a response to the environment of today in regard to the fact we have the freedom to write as we wish on subjects that cast a mirror on our own mysteries of existence ( as temporary as that is) and yet we have self imposed roadblocks of silently fierce resistance to go outside of our own comfort zones that results in ennui and ambivalence which strikes this writer as well.....striking. Why is this so? Is this a misreading resulting from an increased lack of ambition toward my own efforts?
 No man is an island as they say
This blog as well as it's predecessor, Intangible Materiality, has some 645 posts that began in that used anomalous phenomenon as a platform to explore issues beyond the confines of the events themselves, specifically consciousness, which at the time, was a theme no one had taken advantage of, which always struck me as ridiculously short sided. The two ends of the stick, the observer and the observed, the two sides of the same coin were separated in nearly every commentary as if the phenomenon had a life of it's own that bore no relation to those who witnessed or experienced it.
This was especially true when it came to the awful term of UFO as a phenomenon that was riddled with conspiracy theory, para-politics and comic book fantasies. It was packaged peddled and sold as entertainment. It still is.
Has any of this undergone a transformation of paradigms..remember when that term was all the rage?
The answer for most is the same as it was when this blog began, as if the subject matter was under the thrall of self suggestion or self comforting containers that have no linkage to either science or imaginative or creative ways of looking at the subject from new angles.
Two readers who have visited here in the past requested that the two extended essays that are posted below this one be re-posted. One looks at the UFO situation from a twist on exobiology. The other looks at the same subject from the purview of ghost phenomenon. One inspiration in this entertaining of oneself  by originating this blog was Mac Tonnies, now long since gone who also was a regular reader here. For a brief period of time I was hopeful that the subject would undergo a renaissance of creativity but perhaps not surprisingly ( in hindsight) this was not to be.
For a relatively brief period of time, I decided to participate in forums only to find myself in the midst of a comic book convention, full of self appointed experts with closed minds. So much for that.

Another apt quotation..

“Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it's from Neptune.” 
― Noam Chomsky



Paul Kimball, who remains in the processing of a second UFO documentary, began to exhibit a great deal of ambivalence not so much toward the subject matter but to the  lunacy surrounding it. His blog was dismantled and he has largely faded away..he is now largely occupied with low budget independent film making. His views on art and spiritual matters in terms of a living universe have been largely ignored and he appears to be boxed in by the very marketplace he participated in as a "producer", which is to say the least, unfortunate.



Nick Redfern became the Stephen King of paranormal subject manner, as an investigator brought forth an astonishing number of books in a relatively short period of time, but I found myself dissuaded by more innuendo than cogency, although the work itself remains laudable as a matrix of factoid assembly that serves as the crust for more profound mysteries. Yet his venue is our society and as a creatively disruptive force, he uses the language of society to push it's buttons. He poses no real or imagined threat to the embellishment of mythos.


NIDS whom I had correspondence was disbanded...Rich Reynolds at UFO Iconoclast appears to be more more frustrated in his own way than hopeful in regard to the same issues of how others approach the subject, while promoting Roswell theory which seems to indicate a strong ambivalence in of itself  as to approach which could be worded as biding time by simple provocation hoping something interesting will appear in the net..but this was not to be. The question that seems to seep into my mind in consideration of this state of suspension asks "When does exploration fall into self parody?"  Does this self parody resemble another?
Art for art's sake? A sort of examination that becomes a facial tick, a rut that digests itself in diminishing nutritional content.

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum....” 
― Noam ChomskyThe Common Good


As many know the self labelled "Dream Team" to create a revisionist scenario for Roswell assembled by Kevin Randle to correct the errors of his previous output self destructed by means of it's own inability to avoid the limelight when it came to misfired attempts to corral what is a myth, largely resembling a homicide without any bodies so the kitchen sink was thrown at it covered with the patina of exaggerations...fade to grey.


The fascinating mix of John Keels intellect has yet to be replaced and sadly he died alone in poverty and became essentially a hermit in his later years which again, seems to underline the entire thread that holds this post together. If you do not want to play the game in a manner that upends the security of channeled sheep, then be prepared to pay for it. Or have nothing with which to fend for oneself in terms of how we define profitable undertakings, and yet in the trade of intellectual curiosity, he produced the focus of strangeness into our daily affairs on a philosophic level akin to Robert Anton Wilson. What did he receive in return, to be buried ( Like Wilson) under the rubbish heap of recycled hubris.

So here in its proper context is my survey of 'The Black Mountain" of ennui and ambivalence..


You have your freedom, now what? The incommensurable gift of a entire living universe is in our care here, not there and there is either freedom or no freedom at all to do as we determine here. No extraterrestrial nor God nor the get out of jail free card offered by religion will suffice in the place of humility. Blood in on our hands and in freedom there is no punishment or reward in this. Respect for life versus denial and no other worldly detective can force a confession. A beautifully horrific mountain to clamber upon and these cleats are our own creations..pushing against the pull of gravity of our animal inheritance as predators, of this world and others, even the next that awaits us. We sit encamped at the edge of the universe and think on these things and every second is counted either as an embrace or a revulsion toward our freedom as mountain climbers who are also poor swimmers. We cannot dwell here. We must move on, one of us suggests not having any indication of what lies ahead. Even the most microscopic lint in our shoes contains this fabric of a landscape, far from any point in claiming refugee status when we came to this point willingly despite our claims that attest otherwise. Frozen bodies are strewn up the mountainside awaiting what we know not inasmuch they were and are us, no one else. Some were murdered, some starved to death, some lost their balance, some became lost all in the name of freedom. We pay dearly for this experiment of freedom but what is the alternative? What would we have extraterrestrials or the Gods do? Freeze us in the amber of a perfect summer day whose eternity is the void? You tell me, he said. I know no more than they and they no more than me as to the summit which could be a beginning to the end or the end of this beginning in suspension, measured by the crunch of our shoes on the ice sheets. Freedom and frost bite clings to us. To know what those flickering lights are that dance further upward on the crevasse, what do they portend?
Strange dreams cocooned in sleep await us tonight, perhaps that is their reflected light we see above us along the escarpment....One of us mentioned motility, the various stages in freedom of movement in evolution as one that expands space as we traverse it. Another.. said everything must be paid for either willingly or be prepared to have our pockets picked.  A smile of recognition spread among us, nothing further was said.