Becoming Over Being. Becoming Over Being. Om! (repeat)

America's Mantra (with obeisance): Becoming Over Being. Becoming Over Being. Becoming Over Being. Om!

This is the American shibboleth that proscribes the reality of here and now as never sufficient unto itself. Always the future; seldom the present, never ever,right now. And accordingly we invariably equate our becoming to the elixer, the grail, the greener-grass promise of growth. Perpetual growth, as in the state of forever growing but never being quite being grown(up?).

Other cultures, it is true, predicate the future in terms suggestive of our idea of growth but we seem to have a lot more invested in the very essence of growth. Wall Street and it's coterie of talking heads use the word as a verb, a noun, an adjective, almost as benediction. As does official Washington. No president would consider a State of the Union address without growth this, growth that and then more of the same. Nor should we expect any absence of this utterance to go unnoticed. Markets would surely crash, panic and woe would abound; we'd have an unknown future to behold without the soothing balm of growth.

Maybe it's in our genes; our very RNA as Americans. A look at the past reminds one why 'Go West Young Man', Eminent Domain and 'Westward Ho'! are so us. Always a new place to go if the old place grows stale or the soil goes sour or if the sheriff proves troublesome without realizing a pathology, perhaps fugue, is manifesting itself. These frontier behaviors of ours may well be ancestor to our contemporary mania for unlimited growth and our low esteem for present reality.

Other, older, more settled cultures don't exhibit this pathology, but instead have a provincial predisposition to be suspicious of all beyond the shire or county of residence. In fact, in our insistence on modernity and progress we unwittingly reveal our own nature as "provincials" in that we also fail to look beyond the moment. The great bastion of our provincialism is our Mecca, the Big Apple, Gotham,a.k.a. New York City. Its minions regard the five boros as the known world and Manhattan Island from the Nineties to the Battery as the shining City on the Hill. "Beyond this place, there be dragons!".

Unfortunately, our homely provincialism casts a worldwide shadow. Cloistered in their towers monkish growth mongers in finance and academe cobble-together and promulgate a world that is always in the act of becoming and never just is. Sort of ironic that United Nations Headquarters was established in such a village.
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Unlimited growth makes perfect sense if you are a metastasizing cancer cell but not for a viable nation. ibid

Technology: The Last Refuge of Scoundrels

Patriotism, has long been, as Samuel Johnson notably opined, the traditional last refuge of scoundrels. Nowadays, a new refuge for the breed has become extremely popular: Technology.
Having about exhausted the hectoring effect of the old standby, **patriotism**, this new kid has been brought up from the minors and groomed for stardom.

And what a brilliant choice it has turned out to be! Look here, doesn't everybody just love technology; Bigscreen,wideangled,megapixel,supersized,hybrid,jetpropelled,catscanned and defibrillated? Give us more of it! And they will; for a price. And the price may well be dehumanization, not bargained for but hidden in the fine print.

The latest candidate for the Bollix Prize in desperation technology is in itself a clone of a bad idea. This tidbit describes the twisted grandfather of today's horror show. Note:

"...as the war went on the Germans put more and more faith in technology, launching rocket bombs at a time when they could serve no purpose but the creation of a spirit of vengeance, illustrating how blind to total reality one may become...
Ideas Have Consequences by Richard M. Weaver










wikipedia
Nazi Buzz Bomb

Seven decades later another desperate state reaches for a technology fix that will only serve to guarantee undying animosity throughout a strategically sensitive region.













Drone Plane
wikipedia
Much as the Nazis did earlier, we station civilians in remote outposts who attack targets by guess, hunch or rumor and are as likely to kill innocents as not. Monitoring unmanned drone planes by remote control removes the operator from reality and responsibility. Reports come to us from former bomber pilots expressing remorse over the impersonal aspect of their efforts in regard to civilian casualties. At least these airmen were usually in harms way during the sorties they flew. Not so our minions in air-conditioned comfort in Las Vegas, blithely blasting whole families to oblivion, concerned mainly with promotions, chicks and off duty casino play.









Operative Unit

military.com

As the cost of our overseas adventures increases dramatically, pressure also increases to get whatever new technology is available that will give the best return for the (borrowed?) money. As a result our guys begin to resemble Star Wars Troopers and present about as much of the human aspect as their cinematic predecessors.

Alas, the enemy they encounter operates at about as low-tech level as is humanly possible, and is exceedingly hard to detect despite the GeeWhiz gadgets abounding. I mean, a twenty year old local girl jihadist wearing a cummerbund stuffed with C-4 explosive; what chance does a Star Warrior have? They won't fight fair.

And why do they hate us?



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Maybe it's Crazy Glue: Redux

"The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic."
John F. Kennedy

We are slowly coming to the realization that the glue that holds it all together is drying up and losing it's grip. For over two hundred anxious years we have told ourselves that we, among nations, are unique. That elsewhere lies the "old-country",the great unwashed, those "lesser breeds without the law", and the hopelessly out-of-date

.This glue helped us to tame a wilderness, destroy one people and enslave another, fight our innumerable wars for property and/or money and made us rich. But it seems to be drying up folks, starting to let go and peel away at the edges...slowly, now faster.

The American Myth is the glue that binds us when all else is failing. But if we no longer believe the stories and legends, the sensed rightness of all that we are and do, does that mean they delaminate and fail? Or will new myths pop up to replace the old? Happened elsewhere, lots of time. Early Japanese Shinto v. Buddhist traditions, Fourth Century Rome, Berlin 1930's, come to mind. Got to keep those stories coming because, alas, No Myth...No Nation.

Now it's been a hundred years of ever improving propaganda from print, to radio, to movies,-TV and lately the web that have provided generations of slick liars and earnest boosters a high podium to dissemble and reinforce the American mythology. All terribly effective; sell soap, and sell the stories of nationhood with the same voice.But they oversold it, folks, big time. Got caught up in their own success and went over the top. And now, finally, people are slowly, ever so slowly, waking up to the Big Lie.

We are not unique, never were. We are not all good and wise and noble. Too many pictures, too many reports have surfaced of too many nasty deeds done in our name all over the place for too, damn long. Too much money sticking to the hands of too few of us and too many lies about why that is. Folks are not as ready as they once were to drink the cool-aid or believe the half-truths and absolute fictions ever so slyly promulgated; about why things need to be this way.

On some level, mostly subconscious at this point in time, Americans know the game is up. That the powers that be are not leveling with us. The information sneaks in stealthily that everything is different from what we are told. That things will not be returning to what we've known in the past... ever. All sorts are wild and bizarre statements and actions will be the new norm for the nonce.

Without information free from spin and slant people will thrash around for guidance and direction. A lot of this will be frightening for many, certainly unpleasant, but not unexpected after several generations of disinformation serving as truth. Anything we are told these days, particularly on the very best authority, best forget it and keep digging around. Somewhere beyond the noise is the truth.

So suck it up, friends, a new day is here and what hope there is will come from our own wise instincts of what's best for us.

" Nothing will see us through the age we're entering but high consciousness, and that comes hard. We don't have a good, modern myth yet, and we need one.
"Robert Johnson

Democracy: The Pall Over Freedom That ...

Makes dancing, whoring, drinking, and hanging with riff-raff, less joyous and more de'classe'.

This very thing, democracy, we vend mercilessly to a mostly reluctant world was used by the Founding Fathers to 'calm' the free spirit in the 'lesser' classes after the Revolution.

So why is that a bad thing? Maybe there was way too much of that stuff happening at one time but we're past all that! So what's the point?

The point is how we got to be the way we are now and could we have been a different, happier, freer people if we had not been fobbed-off into a fantasy world of self-improvement and civic discipline called democracy.

The common folk were anathema to the new masters, the Founders; their life styles held in low esteem. There were few exceptions among the Fathers to this class bias and in some cases they exhibited downright loathing. For example:

Alexander Hamilton found Americans "vicious" and "vile".

Samuel Adams, "a torrent of vice".

John Adams: "Indeed, there is one enemy who is more formidable than famine, pestilence and the sword". His comment on the fitness of the average American. "I mean the corruptness which is prevalent in so many American hearts, a depravity that is more inconsistent with our republican governments than light is with darkness".

The rulers feared sex slightly more than drink as a distraction from their vision of docile, productive, well-behaved subjects. This from the staunchest friend of the common people amongst the Founders, Thomas Jefferson, on why the common man should be discouraged from visiting Europe: where,'' he is led by the strongest of all human passions, into a spirit for female intrigue,...or a passion for whores..."

It would appear then, the Founders actually feared and despised the concept of democracy but used it as a device to subtly control the masses, or rather to encourage them to self control, sans a large degree of personal freedom. Of course, they themselves would have no part of it... this democracy business. Fit only for the rabble, you see.

After the Revolution and during nation-building every barrier to the voting franchise they could devise was erected to exclude the people. Gender, males only; Race, white males only; Property ownership; all were requirements for the privilege of the ballot. John Jay infamously quipped,"Those who own the country ought to govern it." Thus, every opportunity to approach or influence the seat of power was kept from the common people.

This elitist spirit prevails even today in the bizarre Electoral College barrier between us and our direct vote for the Chief Executive.

Just a few years after the end of a bloody war waged partially in response to onerous taxation by the English Crown, the new elites resorted to the same tactic. A tax was levied on the production of alcohol to make it harder for the masses to obtain it cheaply, and thus, discourage drinking. The Patriots had reacted to the Crown levies with rebellion as did the farmers who made the whiskey. The result: more bloodshed, as the militia was called to force the taxation on the new (small 'p') patriots.

For a definitive, in depth, study of the history of the choice we've been offered between personal freedom or democracy, see, A Renegade History of the United States by Thaddeus Russell. Professor Russell has gone past the bounds hagiographers seldom dare cross in examining the covert motives of the Founders and what we may have lost as a result.

I Once Knew a Man Who Knew a Man...

"I once new a man whose father was born when Jefferson was president of the United States."

This interesting, if somewhat prosaic statement, actually holds a wealth of historical promise. In fact, the man I knew, c. 1940, was my great-grandfather at about age 90. His father was born in 1803 during Thomas Jefferson's first term. Looking at the past in this manner demonstrates that three individual lifetimes link someone living in 2011 to almost the entire time span of our Republic.

I consider this simple chronological approach to history as using what might be regarded as giant steps through the wilderness of days keeping the past from us. Consider:

That 1803 man might have known a woman who also had known an elderly grand-parent and that person's parent was born when Shakespeare was writing King Lear and MacBeth in 1605 . Thus the addition of only three more human existences gets us back to the Golden Age of the Elizabethan Era. So now we have just six people and the continuity covers almost five hundred years of Western history.

Add three more long lived ancestors; it's 1415 and the English forces are victorious over the French at the Battle of Agincourt.

Just three more and, viola!...it's 1215 and Magna Carta!

In summary:
Three human lives starting with the author's own in 2011 covers US history back to the founding fathers.

Six lives takes us to Shakespeare.

Nine to Agincourt.

and twelve lifetimes...the Magna Carta. The beginning of much we hold dear in the history of the West.

I've only touched upon our own Western History. Scholars and history buffs everywhere might use the same technique to retreive their own ages from what appears as a dauntingly remote and arcane past.

The Winner, Still #1,is...Wow! Check Out #10,OMG

As most of us know or are not terribly surprised to learn, Christianity is number 1 in religious adherence worldwide and, although somewhat reluctantly these days, many do acknowledge Islam to be #2. So how come next to nobody knows what number 3 is? See chart for the big surprise and then ask yourself how 1.1 billion people can be ignored or denied equal standing when referencing religious adherence.

Thanks to Adherence.com for doing the accounting while keeping in mind all numbers are approximate. If the ranking of the Secular/Nonreligious/Agnostic/Atheist folks at #3 is a surprise; what rounds out the big ten at #10, is astounding. Slightly ahead of Spiritism and Judaism, is, what on Earth!, Juche, official religion on North Korea; 19 million admirers and growing; so who knew?

Charts from Adherence.com

1. Christianity: 2.1 billion
2. Islam: 1.5 billion
3. Secular/Nonreligious/Agnostic/Atheist: 1.1 billion
4. Hinduism: 900 million
5. Chinese traditional religion: 394 million
6. Buddhism: 376 million
7. primal-indigenous: 300 million
8. African Traditional & Diasporic: 100 million
9. Sikhism: 23 million


10. Juche: 19 million
11. Spiritism: 15 million
12. Judaism: 14 million
13. Baha'i: 7 million


14. Jainism: 4.2 million
15. Shinto: 4 million
16. Cao Dai: 4 million
17. Zoroastrianism: 2.6 million
18. Tenrikyo: 2 million
19. Neo-Paganism: 1 million
20. Unitarian-Universalism: 800 thousand
21. Rastafarianism: 600 thousand
22. Scientology: 500 thousand

Tribute to a Gutsy Guy: Julian Assange

{Re-posted as a reminder the Web is hosted by Corporate Spiders eager to not displease bureaucrats, politicos or the military. The illusion of freedom and privacy is chimerical. A fatwa has been issued on the head of Julian Assange, dead or alive.}

Guardian photo

firetown
Internet Shut Down as Egypt Braces for Huge Protests http://nblo.gs/dzqLJ

firetown
Search Warrants Executed in the United States as Part of Ongoing Cyber Investigation http://nblo.gs/dzqLK

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The Internet / The SoapBox
We communicate via the web at the sufferance of the system. When we are no threat, perceived or actual, we are allowed to continue our harmless pursuit. The instant this usage is perceived as a threat to the elite; it ends. So keep on blogging; keep on ranting and raving, keep uttering anything that comes to mind, you are harmless by definition.

The much touted use of the net as a force majestueuse in the recent Presidential contest was pure chimera. If it really threatened to be anywhere near decisive, it would have ceased to be. Make no mistake, a culture that can fight 2 1/2 wars without provocation and with borrowed money, can pull the plug on all we hold sacred in a thrice if sufficiently challenged.

Societies love to be admired as generous and tolerant if the cost is small. The web today is no more than a soapbox was in Hyde Park, or Washington Square in the past. A leather lunged orator could bray to the crowd or to the wind as long as able but only as allowed by elites. Stray for an instant from the permissible and a minion of the law would call you down. And perhaps kick apart the soapbox for good measure. See Google v. China for splintered soapboxes.

So what is different today? Have people become nicer, friendlier, less murderous with the advent of the web? Not noticeably so, maybe a little worse. What is the corpse count by violent death in the couple of decades since Al G. or somebody set all those internet electrons in motion?

If you seek independence anywhere in web-land remember the Web is all Corporate and Corporate is all Government; ad nauseam. Wikipedia

Posted by Robert Magill at 11:25 AM