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29/1/05 Weeks go by and the realm of general grokness changes not at whit. Our capabilities, specialist understandings exponentially building on each others' specialist blocks, are seen as bringing us ever closer to perfect particularity. Commensurately, our general immersion in the actuality of life in general becomes increasingly irrelevant. As long as we can count on a minimum concert of general concensus within the realm of academia, for instance the "big bang" theory, we will be as ignorant tommorow as we are today. Sure, we have gone from earth-centric to sol-centric to galactico-centric, to ultimate-centric conceptions of the 'universe'; but we have travelled no distance. We still live on a finite planetship within the gravity-well of our sun. Were we to imagine a multi-generational self-supporting spaceship, it could either be internally or (w)holistically complete. We presently inhabit the latter, and the former is directly related to our ability to comprehend and contain complexity. Here we are, the most trinket rich yet broadly repressive bunch ever - one would almost think that our capacity for distraction is a form of brain damage; or perhaps that alcohol, caffeine and tobacco are ill-advised majority drugs-of-choice. However it is, they continue The Crackdown on Dissent while the Left seems left without a unifying vision; and action without basis is basically no action at all.
I think that I had just turned twelve. My life had been uprooted from my mid-western temporality (which I can honestly and literally claim as I was an army brat) and replaced by the first year of many in Ottawa, Canada, and living on a road known as "The Driveway". A man came to our house that I did not know, by accent was obviously American, and a friend of my dad's. I suppose I must have been in a particularly receptive state. I was mowing our tiny though Escherly sloped patches of grass, or perhaps just sweeping up, when this stranger appeared and directly asked a question. In my experience, introductions precede interrogation. Also, remember, I was receptive; probably due to Saturday Morning Teen-Mindlessness compounded by Saturday Night Dreams. So, when this out-of-context unknown man posed his personal ponderous salutation to me, I was and still am kerfluxed. He asked: Retrospectively, that was my second koan. I can rememagine my school bus driver, some nine months earlier, dedicating his morning to making my first ride to school a memorable one. As I clambered on, still unfamilliar with my private school accoutrement and feeling quite un-Missourian, he asked me where I lived. Proudly, and as certainly as the Show Me State would have me do, I said "The Driveway"! He said: "Whadd'ya ... live inna tent??" The entire bus-full-burst into laughter. My first koan. Red-faced and humbled I took my place (hmm). Receptivity driven home. (well, later, actually.) Receptivity to ideas that have been beyond conception form the basis of intelligence. In other words, my ability to create fresh perceptions is directly related to the exponentiality of the previously absorbed conceptions, and my ability to perceive them. Watching an A&E program describing the jail guard business, as I presently write, I am stunned by the (semi-official as of 2002 I think) figures. Rather flatly stated the United States of America has the highest per capita incarceration rate in the world. Six million people, projected to rise to ten million by 2010. There are not enough exclamation points to provide emphasis to this self-evident disobviation of the American Experiment as it is presently embodied. Making a conservative estimate that each imprisoned person has ten significant relationships of varying importance, there are sixty to one hundred million American humans that know a jailed human in their own country. Add to that the one million-odd guards, five hundred thousand parole, probation, food, logistical and transport services, and so fifteen million "relatives". Total so far: seventy-five to one-hundred and fifteen million "complicit" Americans. Ah, yes, and there is also the acronym soup of "intelligence" services, border guards, local, state and federal police forces, as well as all the bureaucratic supports they require. Let's not forget the combined armed forces. Woah. One could almost make a case for recognizing the U.S.A. as the world's first Capitalist Gulag. So firmly entrenched that toleration of dissenting voices can actually be 'allowed', and 'used' to reinforce the apparent rightness (sic) of the moral majority; ethical considerations similarly marginalized and largely accepted as such.
 5/1/05 I've been pressurizing myself lately. Love, life, and liberty, loom large; largely landgold mines('). The end of abuddhas eats it's tail, brupps, and is abuddhas. As so well encircled by Eliot, lineated by Mark, grokked by Cyndy, and pulled together by Dave. I would like to mention Craig's Booknotes especially muchly. A weblog as fine as the best has been decompressed due to Googlian site-persistence - a search keeps linking to a moribund urlian empire, and causes me to wonder whether Google would stoop to redundancy to increase ad-page impressions; by reload, re-search or redirection. Are Googles (a newly accepted verb) and Goebles not eerily similar? Excuse me again! Of course, Google has been a leader in accessibility and popularization of the ideaweb. Goebles only perfected how to manipulate it. Yes, I mentally blew up over the holidays and went way over the top with a combination "messiah complex" / "conspiracy theorist" reaction to the untenable. Do not, however, discount the fact of 'harmonic techtonics' and optimized weather lethality as potential means to the Capitalist end. You may well discount my ability to be objective. I know too much. Gaia Day 2005 |
