Domain: orgonelab.org
Stories and comments across the archive that link to orgonelab.org.
Comments · 9
-
Re:CPT = Lorentz Invariance
Please read this:
http://www.metaresearch.org/cosmology/gravity/gps-twins.asp
In short:
According to Special Relativity, since all motion is relative, time should pass slower on a spaceship speeding by Earth (as seen from Earth), but from the spaceship traveller's view, time should equally pass slower at the same rate on Earth, compared to the clock on the spaceship.This might also interest you:
http://www.orgonelab.org/miller.htm -
Re:Doubt is justified
Do elaborate, please.
As you ask so kindly, I will.
Just how much science is bunk, anyway?
Most of astrophysics and climate science, about half of physics, and a small part of chemistry is bunk. Biology is not so much bunk as well as very incomplete.
How do you define the threshold of "most" science?
Science is being practiced within the interpretative context of accepted theories. When such a theory has been falsified, the whole edifice of scientific endeavor built on top of it should be discarded. I am basically looking at what fraction of a particular scientific field is built on top of falsified theory and thereby judge whether it is somewhat or mostly bunk.
What exactly is in the set of ideas you're labeling "science"?
In principle, I view science as the collection of knowledge derived using the scientific method. Science in the Popperian sense, that is. However, in my post I was referring to science as the practice that has emerged: a sadly human endeavor influenced by agendas, funding, strife, and belief that even so poses as the ultimate authority on truth because of its supposed founding in the scientific method.
Since you "know of many clear and unambiguous experimental and observational falsifications of sacred theories and models", please list them or provide links.
For a falsification of Big Bang cosmology, see Halton Arp's work. For one of the many different falsifications of relativity theory, see Dayton Miller's work, a good overview of which can be found here http://www.orgonelab.org/miller.htm For a falsification of the fossil oil genesis theory, look no further than the many deep oil wells the Russians have taken into production. To read up on the proper theory, see here. The list goes on...
-
Re:FCC
Also of Buddhism, another philosophical system that has been very corruption resistant. Which reminds me of a joke. A Buddhist monk goes to a hot dog vendor and says, "Make me one with everything." The vendor says, "That'll be two fifty," so the monk hands him a five. The vendor gives him his dog, but no change. The monk says, "Where's my change?" And the vendor replies, "Change comes from within."
You seem to have a rather low opinion of human nature. I'm just guessing, but would you say that some of your political beliefs stem from being hurt? I won't blame you or think less of you if it's true. Recent economic research seems to show that you are wrong. Take a look at the concept of Inequity Aversion. Most people are averse to inequity, and will incur financial harm to ensure it does not happen to others. Most people resort to selfishness when the system they are in rewards it and does not provide mechanisms for punishing non-cooperation. I say "most" because there are the sociopaths out there who have no aversion to inequity and no sense of empathy.
You may want to take a gander at James Demeo's Saharasia , a book that purports to show the true origins of human violence. The web site has a very good overview of the theory, so you don't need to buy the book. It was recommended to my by Robert Anton Wilson. James was a student of Wilhelm Reich. Conspiracy theory goldmine, right there.
True seekers need to be able to look at themselves without judgment. It sounds like you agree. I've found The Four Agreements to be a helpful. I've met Miguel and he comes across as sincere, even if some of his publicity comes across as, "Buy my book! Buy, buy buy!" Basically the four agreements are:
1. Be impeccable with your word. Don't misrepresent, and don't use your words to hurt yourself or others.
2. Don't take anything personally. Nothing is about you. People act the way they do for internal reasons.
3. Never make assumptions. Don't be afraid to ask for help, but be okay with, "No." Don't assume you know what others think or feel.
4. Always do your best. Rather, know that you are always doing your best, but 'best' will vary from moment to moment.
Anyway, I've got a SUSE install going for our new Sybase-on-Linux testbed, and it's bleating for attention. I think that's enough of a brain dump for one post anyhow. -
Re:Variable lightspeed does not violate relativity
Well, I can not explain things better than the link you posted (maybe you should read it again).
If you read carefully, you can see what his experiment found, and that the validity of those findings has retained support. That others tried to explain the results away is not surprising: obviously relativity has won the war of words and minds. The neutrality of the article is under dispute for a reason. One side would like you to please move along, nothing to see here, which you of course would prefer to do rather than challenge your own belief system. The other side has a word here http://www.orgonelab.org/miller.htm.
A further example is the Venus radar experiment, where a radar pulse was bounced off Venus and the roundtrip delay measured. You can read more about it here http://surf.de.uu.net/bookland/sci/farce/farce_6.
h tml#SEC6. -
The Origins of Human ViolenceNothing in archeology backs up what you say here. Please find me any evidence prior to 4500BC of walled encampments, non-hunting weapons, or mass graves (ok, there is ONE guy who claims to have found one from 10,000BC, but his evidence is very questionable.) Humans are instinctually cooperative, it is in our genes, and it is what makes us as successful as we are. We also have the genes for selfishness, because sometimes that works, but it appears you have a misunderstanding of the way evolution works, and what fitness means in terms of species.
How could non-reproducing eusocial creatures such as drone bees develop if evolution only promoted competition? Evolution works on the level of the species and selects for traits that help the entire species survive. Cooperation is the most effective strategy whenever there is both local abundance and local scarcity, which is most of the time in this world. Competition is only most effective in cases of absolute abundance or absolute scarcity.
Look at anthropological studies of tribes that have had little contact with western culture. You will find they are cooperative in nature, non-violent and non-competative. This is the largest part of our original nature, and our competative side is very small.
Where did violence and competition come from, then? Here's one theory. Yes, James DeMeo was a student of notable weird dude Wilhelm Reich, but his scholarship is impeccable. His theory is that violence originated when we developed agriculture, settled down, built up a surplus and a more complex society, then got hit with massive climate change and famine. Before that, when famine hit, we just moved on. When the Sahara, the middle east, and central asian regions dried up, people had the surplus and organization to move on their more fortunate neighbors en-mass. At first said neighbors took them in, but as the climate change accelerated, they became unable to help. For the first time in history, masses of humans fought other humans.
You had a generation of post traumatic parents raising a geenration of brain damaged children (starvation does that to a kid.) This locked that small violent, competative part of our nature permanently into our culture. It is as if we are in permanent famine mode. But it is not the entirety of our nature.
DeMeo's proof is complex and thorough. He researched nearly 3,000 cultures worldwide, and found a clear pattern. The further a culture originates from the epicenter of violence, the less heirarchal, violent, and competative traits it has. Unless you are completely attached to your worldview about the origins of human violence, I suggest at least reading the summary with an open mind. Perhaps what he says is true, perhaps not, but it at least gives a different theory than "Nature, red in tooth and claw," which is unsatisfactory to me as it does not account for all the evidence.
As Lao Tzu said,
When the Tao is forgotten, there is righteousness.
When righteousness is forgotten, there is morality.
When morality is forgotten, there is the law.
The law is the husk of faith,
and trust is the beginning of chaos. -
Re:Just great
I think you might be wrong. This is a controversial isue, but there is quite a bit of evidence supporting the idea that there was very little human on human violence prior to about 4500 BCE. There were no fortifed villiages, and no armor. There were weapons, but none that were only for killing other humans, such as swords. We occasionally find human remains from before 4500 BCE with apparant weapon related injuries, but they could be hunting accidents or crimes of passion. There is one widely touted mass grave, ostensibly from 10,000 BCE, but this was dated by the rock it was buried in. It was carbon dated at around 4,000 BCE, however.
One theory to explain the beginnings of human on human violence is outlined in the book Saharasia by James DeMeo, Ph.D. of the Orgone Institute. He has shown through research of over 3,000 previous cultural anthropological studies that there are essentially only two cultures in the world: the warlike and the peaceful. The warlike culture began in response to a widespread climate change in the Sahara-Asia region, resulting in humanity's first experience of mass famine. He traces historical human migration patterns, and shows that the warlike culture spread from the Sahara Asia region, starting at about the same time as the climate change.
In the intereset of full disclosure, Mr. Demeo is a student of Wilhelm Reich, M.D., and the Orgone Institute is Dr. Reich's creation. Reich had some pretty out-there theories (but so did many other geniuses, like Nikola Tesla) and some people consider him and his students crackpots. -
DeMeo's "patrism" doesn't hold water
You might want to note that the article you linked to is a teaser for a book whose table of contents includes an appendix titled "HIV is Not the Cause of AIDS", a view he shares with few people except Falwell and Mbeki. He's also written a book about "orgones", some sort of pseudoscientific chi energy thing. (I became suspicious when I noticed a white American blaming all the ills of humanity on Africa and Asia, and singling out England in particular as a last European bastion of "matrism".) Not such an intellectual it seems. But, lest you rightly accuse me of attacking one work on the faults of another, I've read his article and I can poke some big holes in it:
- We have no reason to believe violence is something that developed in humans. We see all sorts of other animals, from beetles to chimpanzees, being mortally wounded in fights over mates. When a new lion becomes leader of the pride, he kills all the cubs so he can impregnate the lionesses with his own genes. When times are tough, groups of primates will systematically attack and kill other groups of their own species to reduce competition. Why should we think humans haven't been doing the same things from the start?
- The dessication of the Sahara 6000 years ago was certainly not the first severe multi-generation length drought humans have experience in (say) the last 20000 years. Why did this drought supposedly lead to the spread of patrism where previous droughts did not?
- Many of the practices he lists as belonging to "patrist" societies--no matter how horrible they seem today--can be explained by the advantages they provided to societies of the time they were introduced. For example, female genital mutilation (removal of the clitoris) and the female premarital sex taboo both make it less likely that unmarried females will have children; in those societies, mothers without husbands were a drain on society. The incest taboo served (and still serves) a purpose, as any high school biology student can explain: sex between close relatives increases the likelihood that a disease-causing recessive gene is expressed in the offspring. (See the European royal families for numerous well-documented examples. Is it just chance they had so much hemophilia?) Slavery provides numerous benefits for the people commanding or owning the slaves. Contraception and abortion not only allow unmarried females to prevent unwanted children, but also allow even married ones a control over how large a family they want--too many children, and the odds of any given one surviving to reproductive age decrease. Property inheritance encourages people to develop property. Prostitution gives work to women that have been abandoned by society and would otherwise starve. Class/caste stratification and controlling priests both prevent disorder that might threaten a society's survival. Now I'm not arguing for some of the things in this paragraph that I consider to be quite terrible, but I would say that we can find simple explanations for the rise of most societal practices and traditions--the good, the bad, and the ugly.
- He claims that patrism spread to the New World beginning with the Pacific coast, where it presumably came from the Old World. Furthermore, he suggests that parts of the Americas didn't become patrist until after 1492. But even the oldest archaeological evidence we have from the Americas suggests patrism as much as matrism. We have plenty of evidence that the pre-Columbus Americans engaged in the full range of patrist behaviors, including bloody wars, massacres, ritual sacrifies, and so on.
In summary, as compelling as his argument sounds at first, I'm going to need to see proof--not just logical explanations accompanied by evidence that seems entirely one-sided, before I'll accept DeMeo's theory of patrism and matrism. As tempting as it is to accept a theory that supposedly explains all of human suffering and blames it on authoritative men who repress and abuse women and children, it just isn't that simple.
-
Re:What I don't understandHuh. Why is there no large scale evidence of human on human violence until ~4500bc then? No mass graves, no body armor, no fortifications of dwellings, no weapons that are primarily aimed at killing other humans (like swords.) The only thing you'll find is the occasional wound caused by a weapon which may well have been a hunting accident.
No, early humans used no coercive violence prior to massive climate shifts in 4500bc which caused the drying up of the Sahara and central Asia. This lead to widespread famine and the birth of violent, dominator type cultures. For a very thorough analysis of this idea, see an article titled "The Origins and Diffusion of Patrism in Saharasia, c.4000 BCE"
Your times are off, as well: humans evolved "modern" behavior 25,000 years before the atlatl, and agriculture 10,000 to 20,000 years before the bow.
Organized coercive violence caused human development. Bah. Just what the world needs, another apologist for violence.
-
So you want to build a cloudbuster
Good opportunity to re-read everyone's favorite mad scientist Wilhelm Reich. Or watch the Kate Bush video (starring Donald Sutherland) on the same topic, for that matter..