To find the center of a thought can I fuse poetry and prose to avoid the stress and artifice of rhyming and meter yet avoid the sloth of stream of consciousness as we call undisciplined wanderings that wander, yes, but in a circle around a focal point that point being the atom what the Greeks thought cannot be cut because it’s the smallest thing yet smallness is not what I seek nor inability to be cut I just seek the center of my thought and I can only visualize a center if I wander in circles for circles have centers and lines do not thus now I wander and wonder what is the center of this thought not these thoughts but this one thought that I’m having in a circle and that idea in the center is that we have lost our memory what I mean by “we” is the conscious surface of this globe also called the biosphere and in particular one part of this self-conscious surface called human and alive and we who recognize it as such and are proud of the sort of apex we imagine we’ve attained and yet it seems we have no memory just as after the age of two no one has a memory of being a baby because one presumes being a baby is so different from everything after that it simply cannot be remembered and the center of my circular wandering thought is that we of the conscious film on the surface of this globe have no memory of what we were and in fact have less memory of that than we have of being a baby because we see daily evidence of babyhood and its preface in sperm and egg yet we see nothing of what led to this we do not see our “mother” or “father” in the larger sense nor cause only effect and so as I continue to ponder and wander in this circle ever mindful that scorn attaches to a wandering mind that wanders too long without “results” I squint and try to focus on the center of my thought and think I see an atom that multiplied many times becomes the atoms of my whole self but in isolation from other atoms has a memory the memory I seek but as those mystics we call particle physicists find that the particle does not submit easily to our glance because we are conglomerations of multitudes of particles and our multitudinous communal particle consciousness creates an interference pattern with the memory of the solitary particle which we deem not conscious anyway and by thus deeming close the door to its memory, so I'm circling and circling but it’s gone I can’t do it I can only guess and wonder and circle and wonder if I should put on saffron robes or “live” my “life” and get “results” some other way some way that the particle conglomeration of myself can see and figure out because I can’t answer the question at the center of my thought and I am barred entrance to my own memory.
Wednesday, September 30, 2015
Monday, September 28, 2015
Putin and Trump on 60 Minutes
Last night's 60 Minutes was
symmetrical: two controversial world figures- Russian President Vladimir Putin
and GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump- interviewed by two hostile
journalist, Charlie Rose and Scott Pelley, who were determined to show the American
audience that they could be tough on powerful men, though these were powerful
men it was politically easy to be tough on.
This is not a defense of Putin or
Trump. Yes, Putin cultivates an aggressive image as the man who will
restore the Russian empire- while he says he just wants secure borders- and
Trump calls for deporting 11 million illegal aliens with no explanation of how
such a move could be possible. Rose and Pelley worked to expose any duplicity in these positions, but they worked harder than they needed to and gave the impression they were motivated, not by a journalistic search for truth, but by a need to improve their ratings.
Rose found it necessary to challenge Putin, not only on policy, but on
every aspect of how the policy is expressed. He questioned Putin on the
Russian incursion into Syria. Putin said Russia is supporting Syrian President Assad and
fighting ISIS, and that the fight against ISIS in Syria should be viewed as a
common fight with the U.S. This is helpful to hear, just so we know the
Russian line, but Rose felt he needed to expose more about Putin:
Rose: But your pride in Russia
means that you would like to see Russia play a bigger role in the world and
this is just one example.
Putin: Well, it's not the goal
in itself. I'm proud of Russia, that's true. And we have something to be
proud of, but we do not have any obsession with being a superpower in the
international arena.
Rose: But you are in part a
major power because of the nuclear weapons you have. You are a force to
be reckoned with.
Putin: I definitely hope so,
otherwise why would we have nuclear weapons at all.
Putin grinned and often laughed at
the questions about Russia's secret agenda, and there must have been millions of people who understood why. I read minds, so I had a
special assist. Putin was thinking: "This man is trying to get me to
admit that Russia is exactly like the U.S., meddling all over the world in a
belief that it is protecting itself. Is Rose trying to make me point that out?"
Rose asked Putin if it's true as some
say that he's a new tsar. Putin laughed and thought, "What a joke! What does he think I'm going to say, 'Yes'?"
Pelley's interview with Trump was
similar, in that you could almost think Pelley was the one running for office. Trump's positions, of course, are ripe for challenge. How, for instance, could the country deport 11 million people? Pelley was right
to point out the fantasy involved. What was striking about Pelley was the smirking and frequent scornful laughter that accompanied his questions, and
the continual charges that everything Trump said was wrong. This was clear, undisguised bias against Trump, unexcused by Trump's shortcomings. It might be more acceptable if Pelley's attack mode were expressed equally towards every candidate, but it isn't. If you go
back to Pelley's interviews with Obama when he first ran for president, you
will not find Pelley demanding to know how an Obama presidency would improve
America's race relations, an implicit promise of the campaign. Now that
race relations in the country are significantly worse than before Obama, would
Pelley demand from Obama that he explain his failure? Not in a million
years, but why not?
All the world's prominent politicians are in a sense frauds, after all, simply because they present themselves as capable of
solving problems that they can't. Prominent journalists are frauds too in the sense that they downplay the excessive power they have. They tell us whom to love
and whom to scorn. But who loves and scorns journalists? Who keeps
them honest?
Rose and Pelley deserve credit for
standing up to powerful men who would intimidate many, but by showing bias and
rudeness to these men, they showed their own susceptibility to the seductions of power.
Friday, September 25, 2015
I read John Boehner's and others' minds
My telepathic abilities are strongest
in the morning, so the timing was good on Friday for watching John Boehner's early
news conference, when he announced his resignation from the House Speakership
and Congress. I should explain to new readers that over the years, in
addition to my native abilities, I've developed techniques to read people's
minds while I watch them live on TV. It has to do with synchronizing
waves on the electromagnetic spectrum (and "cousin spectrums") that
are discrete, but carry similar information. I had very clear reception
Friday morning.
While waiting for Boehner to arrive,
CNN put on President Obama's news conference with Chinese Premier Xi Jinping,
and the President was asked his take on Boehner's resignation. I tuned
out the words (which I often need to do in order to concentrate on politicians)
and watched his face and listened to the sounds (not words) coming out of his
mouth.
Obama is feeling a certain glee that
the other party is in such a mess when his party isn't, but he worries
that his party is next. He worries that if the Tea Party really becomes so
unwieldy that the GOP has to renounce it, a new, more rational GOP may emerge
that no longer serves as a foil to accent Democratic saintliness. Obama knows, as
well, that it isn't just the Tea Party that's messing things up. American and
international politics are one big distraction from what's really going on: the
end game for humans. We spend all our time squawking about
"controversies" handed us by the parties- always having to do with
promoting this or that law that supports someone's world-view- while the real
issue is that, because of our species' undiminished and seemingly
undiminishable drive to conquer all before it, we face a very real extinction
threat. Neither Party talks about this in realistic terms, so any move to
rationalize politics would include Democrats.
Boehner was striking in his sincerity. I don't often say that about politicians. When he said
that he made the decision to resign when he woke up Friday morning, I probed
deeply and it was true. Ditto for the emotions and tears- all genuine.
I was a bit taken aback by the intensity of the emotion. He is
truly upset at the loss of his job away from home, where he had a dominant
position; the media conveyed his words and deeds to all humanity, and everyone
needed him to help run the world. Now the only person who needs him
is his wife when he puts the wrong towels in the bathroom. Poor bastard!
Boehner is not thinking much about how to solve the GOP dilemma; he's just aiming to escape the heat. Other GOP officials I probed are very concerned. I found a consensus in GOP leadership that, with the growing instability of the Tea Party within its ranks, the Party must change.
I found no consensus on how to change it, but the leadership might consider how the Democrats saved themselves in a radical fashion with the Democratic Leadership Council which, at the end of Ronald Reagan's presidency, deemed that the Democratic Party was too far to the left to survive as a national party and moved it sharply to the right on welfare, trade and foreign policy. Public fights were picked with prominent liberals like Jesse Jackson to ensure that voters knew the Democrats had moved to the right. It worked: Bill Clinton was elected, and the benefit to the Party has continued through Obama.
The GOP seems now too far to the right to survive as a national party, so some action is required. GOP leadership might go one of two ways: continuing the GOP embrace of the Tea Party and accepting the resulting chaos as the dues of holy war, or definitively rejecting the more extreme far-right social positions in a public way, possibly by removing the following from the 2012 national party platform (https://cdn.gop.com/docs/2012GOPPlatform.pdf):
1. [Gay marriage] We reaffirm our support for a Constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman.
2. [Separation of church and state] We support the public display of the Ten Commandments as a reflection of our history and of our country’s Judeo-Christian heritage, and we affirm the right of students to engage in prayer at public school events in public schools....
3. [God against gun control] We acknowledge, support, and defend the law-abiding citizen’s God-given right of self-defense...This also includes the right to obtain and store ammunition without registration.
4. [Abortion] We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children.
As noted, no one is proposing such
moves yet, no doubt because of the struggle entailed, but clearly something has
to give or the 2016 GOP convention will be an exercise in self-destruction.
I'm still picking up lots of stray D.C.
thoughts about Boehner's resignation (if I leave CNN on in the background I can
surf thoughts). Everybody is confirming that no one but Boehner knew he would
resign when he did. The entire U.S. government was surprised.
Is that good or bad?
Yesterday President Xi thought about Boehner and decided, "It's not my problem," but the founder of his party, Mao
Zedong, wrote, "Everything under heaven is in chaos; the situation is
excellent."
Of course, chaos worked for Mao.
It doesn't work for everyone.
Monday, September 21, 2015
My lIfe, in installments
Chapter 1. Does God have a sense of humor?
It's true, as retired English teacher and blogger D.L. (who has kindly offered to post my stuff while I'm without a computer) wrote (http://laskenlog.blogspot.com/), I lived in The Haight in San Francisco in the late '60's and had quite a vibrant following. I would sit on a stool in coffee shops and just talk...about politics, culture, telepathy, and people would fill the place to listen. I only read someone's mind once in public; it brought too much attention and made me uncomfortable. I stopped speaking about telepathy too. I guess at the present stage of my life I'm ready to open up a bit.
The '60's was a visionary time because nothing was happening, so you could only see things coming and be visionary. Now many of the speculative futures we talked about are arriving, and a visionary can see dramatic change either now or in the near future, inspiring a popular sci-fi genre of near-future stories (e.g. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, which could come true just about any time, judging by the real-life adult version: the 2016 presidential campaign).
After a middle-class childhood filled with longing to be a member of the Bloomsbury Group instead of throwing the Green Sheet onto driveways in Woodland Hills, I started off as a hopeful undergraduate at U.C. Berkeley with a girlfriend and visions of a literary life. She and I watched Mario Savio speak on the Sproul Hall steps, urging us, among other things, to use whatever words we wanted, "bad" or otherwise. Mario asked everyone to raise a fist in solidarity. I did not raise my fist, as I could already say "fuck" and "shit" if I wanted to. She raised her fist. Conformist!, I raged within. The next week she broke my heart by sleeping with every man she met.
I had thought I had a grip on life, but I had no grip on anything.
My major was English Lit., which I liked, but I couldn't understand what contribution to society, or to literature, the graduate studies made. I loved reading Jonathan Swift, for instance, in my undergraduate class, but I found that graduate students do not read Swift- they read critiques of Swift, followed by a career of reading critiques of those critiques then writing one's own critiques of the critiques. Who reads this stuff, and why?
I decided that college was irrational and I had youthful impulses to change things. I considered starting a movement to revolutionize college so that it would be a better fit with the youthful mind, at least in language arts. But Mario stole my thunder with his call for freedom to say "fuck" and "shit," inspiring a mass movement to support the Anglo-Saxon's thousand year struggle to speak the mother tongue.
Fear of not being a college graduate compelled me to get my bachelor's, but I fled academia after graduation. The '60's were in full swing, a combination of nihilism and hedonism. There were two types of hedonist. The ideological hedonists had a belief system to support their proclivities, which held that all you need is love at the dawn of the Age of Aquarius. The plain hedonists just sought pleasure while admitting they didn't know if they were entitled to it. I was in the latter group. I found that a message of nihilism is only acceptable if it's funny. Well, I'd better back up and define a nihilist. A nihilist is someone who doesn't think the universe is funny. A funny nihilist is someone who thinks it's funny that the universe isn't funny.
I started to wonder if God had a sense of humor, and this started to seem to me the central question about God and existence. Not that I already had decided there was a God, but it seemed to me, given the dire need in our universe for things to be funny, that if there were a creator god of our universe and it turned out this god did not have a sense of humor, that would be incredibly bad news.
After extracting my B.A. from the system I started my speaking career, but I became obsessed with the question of God's sense of humor, if any, and I left home to search the world for wisdom on the question. This blog tells tales from my adventures, as well as stray political thoughts, and, for the first time, I will openly discuss my telepathic abilities and reveal some useful tidbits.
All the best,
Harry the Human
Saturday, September 19, 2015
Act now! Free screenplay from Harry the Human!
This synopsis gives the basics for a
blockbuster screenplay, and I'm giving it away! Just tell me you used it and
made the movie happen, and that will be reward enough for me!
Best, Harry the Human
The Day the World Froze in Terror because it looked in a Mirror
A screenplay by (...your name here...)
Synopsis: In a solar system remarkably like our own, a humanoid
civilization develops on one of the inner planets, just as ours has on earth.
On this planet, the humanoids have evolved external, mechanical abilities much
more rapidly than internal mental abilities, especially those related to its
subjective quality of existence. In fact, this humanoid culture has so utterly
neglected its internalities that their Spellcheck recognizes only
"externalities." God-like external powers are suddenly developed by
the humanoids, including the ability to genetically recreate themselves in
whatever form they wish, except they have no idea what they wish, because they
are weak on internalities. Ancient cultures, rich with internalities, dissolve
in front of everyone's eyes, with no agreed-upon replacements (cameo of their
version of Joseph Campbell on his death bed, crying, "We need new myths;
the old myths are dead!"). In laboratories all over this planet scientists
report to wealthy patrons and governments on their progress towards a
scientific re-creation of humanoids that will, presumably, be happy, since
they'll be programmed that way, while the archaic populations soon to be
displaced are diverted with scripted "controversies" about ideology,
competition between races (soon to be genetically re-written anyway), sexual
practices, etc. In their version of what we might call "Roman
circuses," the futureless humanoids are encouraged to distract themselves
with the fake controversies, war, innovative drugs (illegal, to create the
illusion of free will and cover their true purpose) and to watch lots of TV.
In the most powerful nation on this planet, which we'll call Lemon
Drop for security reasons, general dysfunction due to overwhelmed and
distracted government leads to ever increasing dissatisfaction at all levels of
society, such that the government of Lemon Drop- a corporate/state hybrid- gets
together with other governments and plans a fake war, intended both to
distract their respective populations from their impending replacement by
enhanced humanoids, as well as to, well, kill a lot of them. The leader of
Lemon Drop is a liberal icon, something of a ploy because he pushes aggressive
military moves harder than anyone. As we encounter this leader, he wants his
military to conduct a high-profile attack on a far-away country engaged in a
vicious civil war, in which none of the parties is an ally of his country- a
sure means of igniting the tinderbox this world has become. To the leader's
surprise, and to the surprise of many of his advisors, his proposals for
aggression are forcefully rejected even by his core supporters, and he has to
withdraw them, for now. The “democratic” process of choosing a new leader
approaches and it becomes clear that the centuries old political structures
will buckle under the strain of realities their founders did not envision. To get the war up-and-running in time to
distract the population from the political dysfunction, agent provocateurs muddy
the waters, giving the lame-duck leader's aggression cover, and the world
devolves into a chaos of fighting. There is no center to the humanoid culture.
In their "natural" form, the humanoids do not survive the
evolutionary crises that, for instance, the Vulcans famously survived en route
to becoming the intellectual, possibly autistic and remarkably moral humanoids
we understand them, fictionally, to be. Perhaps there is a sequel where Vulcans
discover Lemon Drop and place it in receivership.
Suggested opening and sub-plot: Establishing shot of ivy covered
building; push-through upper window into the study of Dr. Owatta Gooh Siam,
professor of philology at Dorkchester University, who has discovered an
algorithm for processing ongoing news events on his planet which produces
remarkably detailed and accurate forecasts. One of these forecasts relays that
the forces that want to start a war and general mayhem sufficient to serve as
cover for re-creating the humanoids are not at all done with their mischief.
Dr. Siam realizes that it is up to him, and him alone, to stop the nefarious
plot from unfolding. But how? Dr. Siam decides to write a manifesto for an underground movement of others who have uncovered the truth. He disguises the manifesto as a
fictional work of sci-fi/horror, not hard to do, and makes a sham offer to give
it away so someone can get rich off it and in the process disseminate the
truth. As it happens, an enterprising hack picks up on the story and makes a
bundle, the humanoids are replaced with the new models anyway, and Dr. Owatta
Gooh Siam ends up penniless under a piece of cardboard on skid row.
Thursday, September 17, 2015
The big GOP debate
By the time the major debate with Trump et al came on at 8:00pm, I
had watched two hours of the B list debate (see next post) and my
telepathic energy and curiosity had waned, though there were a few interesting
aspects to report.
It seems now that any candidate who has spent time as a
front-runner, e.g. Trump and before him Jeb Bush, must pay by becoming overly
familiar and vulnerable to being toppled. Trump felt the difference and
tried to counter it, though the network, hungering for Trump's past outrages,
did not help him. CNN moderator Jake Tapper brought up Trump's attacks on
Carly Fiorina's face, while the cameras broadcast that face to 25 million
viewers so that we could all watch her struggle. But Trump, sensing the
top-dog dilemma, was not in the mood to play that card, and backed out with,
"Carly, I think you look beautiful," immediately after which he
wondered if that sounded lame, if he would be left high-and-dry by attempts to
be civil.
Fiorina is using Bush's setback and the possible weakening of Trump
to shine a bit. During the "face" segment, she felt like a vice
was squeezing her soul, but she showed some strength in getting through it, to
her advantage. From her psyche all I could pick up was a blazing drive to
win, but one of her handlers was present, and I read a concern that Fiorina
should not use verbs like "crush" and "destroy" so much.
There were some interesting moments during the Iran deal debate
when I gathered that all the candidates and media figures have received the
word that no one, whether a supporter or detractor of the deal, is to depict it
as an oil deal, though that is what it is; any peace involved will be the peace
oil companies need for drilling. Because the climate change debate is
coming to the fore, giant oil deals are not inspiring to the public.
Better to argue about nuclear proliferation than oil drilling.
I honestly had trouble staying awake towards the end of the three
somewhat pointless hours, though one bright spot got my attention: Ohio
governor John Kasich delivered a lecture about the use of ad hominems by the
candidates, urging a civil discourse. Almost in telepathic unison, every
other candidate thought, "Shut up, you asshole!"
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