Where I disagree, Mr. Fantastic, is that listening to angry music and violent games necessarily makes one angry and violent.
I did not claim such.
Though I will say here this: violent and angry art can definitely play a part in programming the mind in many ways, (you cannot help but to embody what you consume, like attracts like, etc.)
I'd be interested, however, to know what you define as dark arts, and loathsome.
In a general way. . . "That which promotes life, knowledge and joy is good, and that which promotes and celebrates selfishness and suffering is not good."
Though, I agree it it is important that we all experience at least some of the dark side in order to know how to navigate life with ease. But to dwell on the negative is to obsess is to get stuck is to sink.
Also, "focusing on sad things" is actually a very good thing sometimes. In "The Art of Happiness", the Dalai Lama actually advocates several meditations on suffering as a mechanism for achieving greater compassion and happiness! Denying what is *bad* in life is silly, and doesn't achieve anything but fostering an attitude of denial. Engaging the "dark side" occasionally can be very helpful for encouraging the good things in life.
Agreed. I would add the following: Experience your pain in sharp, brief bursts and hold them in memory without obsessing. This is one of the least exhausting ways to mark your road map of life in order to see how and how not to live.
Clearly, I was not talking to people who understand these things. I was talking to those who have been led to believe that misery cannot be managed, or done away with entirely. We are all strongly advised things like, "When you break up with a lover, you should feel angst, loneliness, bitterness and misery, and above all, you should treat her like an enemy from now on." These things are choices, not requirements
You know what cheers me up when everything seems like it is going wrong? I cue up the most depressing music I can find. I wallow in my depression for a bit and then I get over it. Life has a dark side, ignoring it will detach you from reality and your fellow human beings.
Very well. However, if you experiment, you will discover that wallowing in misery is not a pre-requisite to feeling confident and in control of a given scenario. Pain and the acknowledgment of such is certainly an excellent method of learning, but to wallow in it is to obsess. Do it if you feel you need to explore such feelings, but understand that it exhausts, distracts and diminishes personal power. When you are finished exploring this, know that there is somewhere to move on to where depression and misery are required elements of the equation.
-Fantastic Lad
You're not the only one. . .
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E3 Doom III Preview
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Warning: The following IS contentious, unlike the original poster who got slammed for sharing his thoughts anyway. ..
--If you'll notice, a couple of the posters replying to your comment were very brief & very rude. I don't think this is coincidence. I believe that one can equate point and shoot, 'blood fantasy,' as you aptly describe it, with a self-willed decline in brain power, awareness and life energy in general.
Obsessing over death, fear and sadness in games, music, literature and film lowers people and makes them less. It sucks away something vital. Watch for it. It's there to be seen by those who are not scared to notice the patterns.
I don't advocate censorship of any kind. Everybody must be free to explore art and life to the fullest extent. Only in this way do people learn.
I will, however, offer the following. ..
My advice to people who seek symapthy in dark arts is to, rather than seeking temporary solice from angry music and simulated blood sport, endeavor instead to change yourself, your life, your job, etc., so that you are no longer trapped in systems designed to keep you in misery and frustration. All one needs to achieve this is to learn. Achieve a calm state of being, and you will find that sympathetic vibration, (for lack of a better term), will no longer be found in loathsome art, but instead in lighter thoughts. Life power, awareness and happiness will similarly increase as you focus away from sad things.
I apologize for yelling, but there is nothing sociological or reactionary about this one. The evidence is there, and spans (at last count) as many as 20 papers. The only sociological ramifications will be how Lucent, Science, Nature, and the molecular physics community as a whole, most of whom either were suckered or willingly suspended their disbelief, cover their butts as the fallout hits.
No need to apologize. --But, what 'fallout'? Science is 95% negative results anyway. Any team which takes new Lucent data without trying to verify it through independant experimentation is a lousy lab team.
So some experimental results may have been falsified. Big deal. Basically, it sounds like some scientists were bullied by their management environment into releasing info too soon. --Which only means that Lucent management sucks and the employees of one lab are manipulated cowards. I don't see why this should be turned into a hunt for the nearest scapecoat. -A hunt supported by a blood thirsty scientific community.
If Lucent did things right, they would have set up an internal board of inquiry, figure out where the problem is, fix it, and recall the data with an apology. Instead they're all set to make an international spectacle out of the whole thing.
The board of inquiry set up is now on trial, so far as I'm concerned. --Will they have the balls to not over-react? Will they take a close look at the real problem, or are they just going to look at the lie and hang a straw man?
Also, I must disagree with you. --The last sentence of your post is descriptive of exactly the kind of sociological programming I'm talking about. This stuff only serves to shore up the walls of the current calcified structures of the scientific process, and help to slow knowledge advancement to an even worse crawl. --Because now, in order to study a new idea, a scientist must overcome the fears of not only having reputations smeared, grants cut and jobs revoked, but now also something bearing a frightening resemblance to criminal prosecution.
My theory: force one guy to lie, call him out, string him up and torture him, and you watch. Everybody else will fall neatly into line. Alternative thinkers take another blow on the chin and the corporate/military arbitors of public knowledge tighten up the reins ever more.
For crying out loud! If it works, then it can be used, if it doesn't work, then it'll fizzle. It all comes out in the wash in the end, so why all the fuss and bother with these kangaroo court proceedings?
Why? That's easy.
It all has to do with cultural perceptions. If you pull off enough of these debacles you can:
1) Promote paranoid skepticism and distrust in new ideas, creating biases against any thinking which goes against the conventional grain. This effectively puts a huge damper on new research, especially when such a big player is 'suspect'.
2) Make your performance loud and obnoxious enough, and even a working, viable technology can be disbelieved right out of existence. (See note at bottom.)
3) Promote the cultural acceptence of guilt-based systems of analysis. What are they going to do? Put people in jail for publishing (possibly) false readings? The ultimate farce! It's science for goodness sake! It's about exploration and discovery. It's supposed to be fun!
4) Fear, Fear, Fear! If the flawless surface of Lucent Tech is smeared, investors ditch, contracts walk, and new talent looks elsewhere. --And ultimately, the fear of thinning pocket books looms in the small minds of the board of directors. As they say, Money is the root of all evil.
Oh, and by the way. ..
Take a glance at this much over-looked item on cold fusion to gain some insights into how these kinds of manipulation of the scientific community are used to benefit those behind the scenes. The relevant link is to a dot-mil site quietly hosting this 135 page report on the current state of behind the scenes Cold Fusion research which in no uncertain terms confirms what Pons & Flieshman were reporting all along.
I've had the clear impetus over the last two years during which I've been studying in depth all things New Age, Occult, Mystical, Magical and Fantastik, to observe trends in how people are conditioned to respond to any form of thought which falls outside the accepted norms.
Really neat!
With the advanced warning that Fantastic Lad's views on these matters come with a heavy bias, since I have become utterly convinced that prevailant forces beyond the understanding of conventional science are at work all over the place all the time, here are my observations. ..
1. Most people who have embraced what I affectionately call, 'The Programming' automatically assume a position of denial and disbelief, regardless of their actual feelings. Even if they are fascinated by an alternative idea and might even be willing to accept it, the conditioned reaction seems to be one of ridicule and scorn designed to hurt the person sharing the information.
This is really weird, because it even happens to me! After friends listen to me blathering on about Chem Trails, aliens, and Chi, sometimes they come to me and relate weird experiences they have had or esoteric theories they have read, and my automatic response is to doubt and scorn them! I actually have to work in order to listen without automatic negative judgement!
2. People shed their programmed disbelief in weird levels. I've talked with astrologers and channelers who believe entirely in their 'craft' (I put 'craft' in quotes because, while these phenomena are without any question in my mind perfectly legitimate, they remain fields nonetheless filled with MOUNTAINS of crap, disinfo, charlatanism, etc.), while accepting these things fully, nonetheless automatically reject ALL aspects of things like free energy theory, UFO's, conspiracy theory, Chi, etc. --You can pick any combination of these subject headers for such an individual and distribute them randomly beneath "Believe" and "Disbelieve". --And I'm talking about TOTAL belief in one area with TOTAL denial in another. It should go without saying that this seems remarkably peculiar to me.
3. The "Re-Boot" phenomenon. When you provide a powerful experience to a disbeliever, (such as knocking them on their asses by tapping their crown Chakra, pointing to a plane dispersing a chem-trail, Dream walking into their sleep and describing to them in detail their dream the next day, knocking over a chair or lighting a candle with focused Chi, etc.) -the average disbeliever will walk around stunned for a day or two, unable to process the experience, and then, if they are unable to find a rational sounding way of dismissing the new information will actually deny any memory of the event! --I've actually seen this happen several times. (I don't know if people actually don't remember or not, but when you press, people will actively avoid the subject in conversation with anger. I've never seen it reach the point of violence, but it seems to me quite possible.)
4. Geeks and technically savvy individuals, who I believe are critical vectors in the determination of the current state of this reality paradigm, have by far the most powerfull 'blanking' programs and 'rationalization' programs installed, all sporting the most vehement emotional reactions when pressed. (It should be noted that 'rationalization' is very much in quotes. A look at something like the Skeptic's Dictionary shows a wide array of Mis-informed Straw-Man bashing, Half-baked logic, and Plain Old Ridicule used to fortify the 'Official Line'.) --All of which, of course, in my mind, suggests that special care has been taken in this sector by The Powers That Be.
Anyway, I've found the whole process of making these observations utterly fascinating, and I know there are some out there who might also be interested. And of course, Caveat Lector should be employed at all times when reading my stuff. While I tend to know WAY more on most of these topics than a bevy of New Age morons, I'm still only on the lower parts of the knowledge mountain myself! For every bit of verification I find, I run across 25 lies and bits of fabricated sensationalist crap.
This story had been developing for about a year now, with no 'anti-conspiracy' angle yet presented by the sketpic community.
Now, however, that it's a story on Slashdot, (along with several other Big Hot Button stories which have made Slashdot headlines over the past couple of days), we'll get to sift through all the Perfectly Logical Explanations.
Let the Paranoia and Head-in-the-Sand-'Rationality' begin!
-Fantastic Lad --The Truth is somewhere in between. ..
Sci-Fi dreams from the Pulp-era. Time to wake up.
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The Next Generation
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Bio-technology. ..
Sci-fi dreaming was fine for the pulp paperback age. Kind of dumb now, as I seriously doubt any of the shit mentioned in that article will implement in the public sector.
Aside from the fact that technology to radically alter human abilities through surgery has been around for quite some time. You think the 'X-Men' is fantasy? Aside from the dumb costumes, and canned dialogue. ..
The story about "Steve Rogers" as Captain America is barely fiction. Guys like that are entirely too real. But that's nothing I'm in a position to prove, so moving right along. ..
The point of the matter is that any 'upgrades' Joe Public will be able to have implemented on himself will be:
a) At the cost of his freedom. (i.e., you become a military tool, closely watched, guarded and controlled. Plus the surgeons can easily turn you psychopathic. That's currently the only realistic way 'in' for Joe Public at the moment.)
b) In the purely private and commercial sector, enhancements would only serve to enslave; (Special foods required, and yearly 'licensing' dues, etc.)
c) Will absolutely NOT provide increased senses which might allow Joe Public to ascend from the mire of awareness-deadened slavery.
Assuming for a ludicrous moment that these kind of upgrades will ever become a marketable commodity, like owning a car, having an enhancement would be a financial and life-style leg shackle sold under the guise of freedom. --Which, no doubt, everybody would buy into. Hook, line and sinker.
Out of all the car owners I know, only a very small handful are not miserable wage slaves trying like mad to pretend they're happy. --While chasing the bullshit 'satisfaction markers' as sold to them by cute television sit coms and popular music, all of which is primarily designed to cause social strife.
Your comparing the wrong thing. CD's have killed the cassete tape, MP3 players are begging to kill portable CD players. Cellphones with more capabilities are killing pagers etc.
Yeah. Of course, you're right. --Unlike the instances I noted, in this case the content remains the same while the delivery system changes form. --And from looking at the number of grammatical blunders in my post, it seems I wasn't very awake this morning when I wrote other aspects of it.
Anyway, another thing I was thinking while going through the Gutenberg Project archives, was just how woefully limited their library is. The explosion of new data, among which is the bulk of material I am particularly interested in studying, all seems to sit within the last sixty years. --Very little of which will ever be digitized, for one reason or another, under today's constraints.
Rather like obscure movies never getting transferred to DVD, (and there are FAR fewer movies than there are books! --Heck if you consider that every movie has a script which might be considered a type of book. ..), whole strata of information can be lost if one shifts to a new 'carrier' medium to the exclusion of the old system.
I would wonder sometimes when considering the Enterprise computer on TNG; how much data was left out. How complete was it?
Digital is cool, but paper-based materials will in many, many cases, simply be the ONLY copies of certain materials.
Well, I suppose you could argue that. Many do. But for the most part, people have been programmed like mad away from recognizing the following little nuget of wisdom. ..
Your level of awareness is your problem. Your level of awarenss is nobody else's responsibility. What on earth would motivate me to provide all the research for you? --Especially when you are being so snotty? If you want to continue playing the dupe, well that's entirely up to you.
I'm afraid today, I just don't have the interest in jumping through hoops. Maybe another day. Ambient no-comment readers can always pick up a few new ideas by observing a debate from the wings, no matter how determined the debators are in maintaining their illusions. Today, however, I just don't have the energy to waste, so I'm afraid I must ignore your silly baits and let you defend your shored-up fortress of ignorance without challenge.
My "media" employer doesn't care about any "Control Reality". They care about reporting the truth, and maximizing shareholder value.
I love this kind of statement! Luckily I know several people who can enjoy such wonderful examples of irony along with me. It'd be lonely otherwise!
Looking up from the bottom, you see conspiracy. Looking at the problem from the inside, I see no sign of grand conspiracies, no intentional plot to beat down the "annoying burr".
The simple fact you responded with such ire is a direct example of the 'Control Reality'. Consider this! --Of course, your bosses aren't reporting to shadow figures in trench coats! Control is both so much easier and so much more complex than that! If it was obvious, do you think it would be so effective?
Whatever. I'm gone. Good luck out there. You'll need it!
-Fantastic Lad
This is why Hackers are SO important!
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Spyware Fights Back
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· Score: 4, Funny
When the automotive industry in agreement with the petrolium industry decide that no car on the market will have an aerodynamic efficiency above a certain figure, (so as to maintain a piggish rate of gas burning which might not otherwise be necessary), what can the average individual do?
Aside from not owning a car, (which, btw, is an entirely viable option more people should look into), Joe-average can do very little.
In the software universe, however, there are thousands of people who know how to program well enough to FIX intentional, greed-related corporate bullshit problems, and distribute those fixes to anybody who takes the relatively small amount of time required to learn how to implement them.
Why are Hackors demonized by the media? Because they represent an annoying burr, a standing nail which refuses to be brushed away or hammered down. And through this, humanity is prevented from being jammed, (quite so quickly and neatly), into the square holes all neatly prepared for us. Hackors get in the way of the plans of the Control Reality which are being implemented around our ears as we speak.
I am not a programmer. I am not a hacker. But I am proud that this aspect of humanity still exists. I am proud that people are having FUN in this way! (All important!) I salute those who know how to make the machines work for the common benefit, and who have the courage to do so!
Once I picked up an old Dell latitude for chump-change, I began toting it around the house, treating it with as much respect as a Fisher-Price toy, or one of those old Bell Rotary phones. Indestructable. --I was downloading mountains of reading material and using the thing like a book.
It really IS convenient, cross referencing is doesn't involve stopping in the middle of a passage and then going, "Shit, I guess I have time on Tuesday to head down to the library, cuz I don't have a copy of N title."
My only complaints with the lap top were:
-Too heavy & awkward, buttons in the wrong place for when I'm reading on the sofa, in bed, on the toilet.
-It's nice to have a keyboard just in case I want to take notes, but I think the awkward-value outstrips the usefulness. A keyboard should be attachable, or should fold away and be completely un-obtrusive when not in use.
Lap tops are typically designed for maximum comfort when they sit on a table. Lounging in bed makes them really difficult. Pivot software doesn't take into account that a laptop control mechanism has a fixed physical position, (DUH! --Way to make your software 'user-friendly' guys. Hint to GUI programers: ALWAYS provide an 'advanced tab', underwhich EVERY option imaginable is provided even if those options will be of no use to 99% of users!!! The 'user-friendly' philosophy of giving the minimum number of options because of fear of confusing the computer illiterate is the single most infuriating philosophy of the last 20 years, bar none!)
So basically, it looks like the guys over at Samsung are finally on the right track here.
But let me make a final point:
Just like books didn't put an end to theater, and film didn't put an end to books, and television didn't kill film, and the internet hasn't killed any of the above, digital books will NOT replace the hard copy.
While projects like the Gutenberg are cool, they are subject to massive change and instability. On the extreme side, -as Fascist State has more than enough power to shut down the internet in an entire nation, to regulate content according to the whims of a few. A nuclear strike or a handful of comet hits could make my digi-book not work, either through an EM overload pulse, or simply by destroying the electrical power infrastructure.
Digital Information can be great, but it requires a whole pyramid of layering support technologies, all of which must work perfectly. The pyramid needed to keep paper funtioning is much smaller and much more easily maintained. If worst comes to worst, I can make my own paper and get a bunch of clerics to hand-copy stuff with feather pens.
I just wish that books were printed on acid-free paper. A sixty year life-span on your average sheet of typing paper is pretty lame!
But I'm curious. --Were the accounts you were swapping money between two Paypal accounts, or were you trying to move money from a Paypal account to a regular bank account?
(My company is getting into Paypal regardless of my repeated cautions.)
It's a million dollars if you can do that in front of James Randi. But somehow, whenever any one who can do that gets near a skeptic, the ability goes away. Funny how that happens . ..
There are several huge flaws with this. See my comment regarding one important aspect of it here.
Don't have to when you've provided no evidence whatsoever that your friends can see or manipulate energy. No reasonable person would beleive you until you do so.
The thing you are ignoring here, is that your level of ignorance is YOUR problem. I have no vested interest in how blind you choose to be.
So, please post an experiment by which we can all test your claim.
See above. You'll figure it out when you're ready, though it doesn't sound like it'll happen this life time. No matter. I suspect you'll be working on your next rather sooner than you might like to believe.
Seriously, you need to see someone to help you with whatever bizarre beliefs you've picked up. You sound like a new-age cult memeber. When was the last time you talked to your own family?
Make no mistake: Cults are dangerous in the extreme. They abridge free thought and strongly discourage curiosity and questioning. (Much like normal society, and certainly any religous movement you care to point at.) I assure you, there are VERY few people of my type out there. Though, those I do run across are nearly always individuals of great power, influence, intellect and charisma who have or do hold one or more respected stations in the regular world. (Though they often take breaks from it. The effort to maintain the mask is difficult. Castaneda called it, "Controled Folly", and he was right on the money.)
Part of the challenge of higher awareness is not just in seeing the illusion for what it is, but in still being able to function within it. It's rather like having the cheat codes to life, but suddenly no longer being able to truly care about the game.
Now here's an exercise for you: See if you can't figure out why 'proving' these things to people of normal stature is foolish, dangerous and selfish in the extreme. --The thousand temple massacre in China over the last five years might supply an indicator or two. But beyond such a simple aspect, consider that abridging free will is a serious no-no for the good guys.
I've raised a few cautioning eyebrows from those I know regarding my outspoken activities for exactly these reasons. I hold back a great deal. Try this on for size: Providing proof effectively forces a belief structure, and this abridges free will.
--I know that may sound like a cop-out to somebody coming from what you believe to be a perspective of pure scientific reasoning, but believe me, through my own experiences I know that providing proof that the world is not what it seems, can really hurt people. I've pushed before and I've seen just how much damage can be caused when one is not ready to receive. --Luckily, those I've dealt with had the fortunate ability to 're-boot' their brains after a couple of weeks. I've watched people actively erase entire experiences from their memory in order to carry on with their normal lives. Remarkable. Luckily, they also didn't try to wring my neck, though this is not at all uncommon either. Fight or flight.
However, there is nothing wrong with providing invitations to knowledge. Those who are ready to start looking can benefit enormously when somebody tells them that, yes, it's okay to question the current paradigm. There are certainly powerful negative forces out there more than willing to manipulate truth, abridge free-will and generally keep people chained up in ignorance.
But basically, it works like this: The Universe is a school for the soul. People will advance when they are ready. Pushing them ahead messes up the lesson. -And this in itself is a lesson, one which I am currently trying to learn myself. When I learn it properly, I suspect I will be able to perform without causing ripples except where I specifically intend them. Right now, I tend to have too much passion and an urge to say more than I should.
I practice reiki. I've found it effective, on myself and others, for minor physical and emotional disturbances. But I believe it works though mild bodywork, the physiological reaction to touch, and the powerful healing effect of ritual, and not by mystical energy flowing into my crown chakra - but still, the best way to obtain the necessary state of mind is to think about mystical energy flowing into my crown chakra.
A variation of Reiki was making a fairly big stir a decade and a half ago. I recall reading about a double-blind study whereby people would put wounded arms through a hole in a screen. They would either be treated or not treated, and it was not possible for them to see, hear or have a tactile sense of whether or not they were being treated by one of the a 'Healing Touch' (as it was called), specialists. -The healer just ran their hands several inches above the person's wound, never making contact. --Or they would just stand there and do nothing.
The results were that the treated patients responded with wounds healing in about half the time of that of the control group. -I wish I could post a reference, but it was in a respected newspaper article written a decade and a half ago, so a reference is simply not going to happen. I'm sure a Skeptic will say that I mis-remember the text, or that the reporter was a fool, or whatever. A Skeptic could deny the blue of the sky if he was bent on it. Socrates was good at this kind of logical nonsense as well. Most Skeptics are no better than the scam-astrologers.
And here's another item the Skeptics will love. I know several people who can see energy directly, and one who can even manipulate it. I have my own stories about why I believe this, which I won't bother retelling here. Skeptics can come up with endless reasons to disbelieve. Fair enough. The problem is that either they are wrong or I am wrong. --And the time is quickly approaching when one's fate is going to rest upon just how aware one is of what is and is not real.
Dangerous, no?
It would pay to be careful about who one believes and how deep one looks into matters. And never forget; The bad guys own the media.
Wrong. The difference between quacks and scientists is that a quack's "hits" are almost always irreproducible by non-believers. Hence the need for conspiracy theories as to why mainstream science doesn't accept their theory.
Well sure, except I'm not talking about quacks or scientists. I'm talking about Skeptics. There's a very big difference.
What if your 'crank' actually happens to be correct?
--Every single one of your 5 points could easily hold true for an inventor with a valid new idea, up to and including the last point. (New concepts require new terms, for crying out loud!)
But, like every other zealous Skeptic out there, this little problem can be easily overlooked by simply riding the head of delusional self-congratulatory steam which comes with dogmatic self-hypnosis. --No different than the New Age nut: Only look at the 'Hits' and ignore the 'Misses'.
The article you posted is a prime example of the closed minded bullshit Skepticism is.
Doesn't a book like that make you feel all safe, warm and superior?
Look. Everybody knows the stance of the 'other' side, so I won't waste everybody's time pointing out why subtle crap, (sneaking little lies in with patent truth, using ridicule, and re-enforcement of the con artist's trick of making you defend your own folly so that you don't have to face the embarrassment of others realizing you were conned.), like this book are very much in the best interests of mega corps, military infrastructure, control freak governments and the list of regular suspects.
What continually stuns me is that people like/.ers who, one would think, sported a slightly higher I.Q. than most of the populace, are falling over themselves to give away their power to think for themselves and jump on the popular opinion bandwagon.
Coffee has been around for ever. We know the positive/negative effects. It is trust worthy.
In the current corporate/government lobbyist environment I wouldn't touch ANYTHING even vaguely pill shaped which is designed to improve my 'worker drone efficiency'.
Will it also turn me into a slobbering 'yes sir' zombie?
Call me paranoid, but they can take that pill and shove it!
So basically you've never . . . taken time to understand the difference between chinese, shinto and tibetian bhudism. Awesome!
Do you mean, "Awesome" in a hyperbolic, "Good for you!" sense, or as in, "It's astonishing that anybody has not studied Eastern religious phiolosphy to exhaustive lengths as I broadly suggest that I, in my infinite superiority, have done."?
(Though I'm not sure if there is in fact a difference.)
--But I'll go with the hyperbole; Considering you seem to have an interest in one of the more popular 'systems' used to reach enlightenment, you certainly deserve what little slack such an assumption might offer. (Or perhaps not, depending on how serious you are about your studies.)
So how is Bhudism working out for you, btw? Are my dumb-ass barbs proving a challenge, an obstacle, or am I like the 'water which finds no resistance'?
Come to think of it, before you answer that, are you studying as an anthropologist or as an actual student? Are you climbing the mountain or are you just messing around in the foothills taking holiday snapshots?
Face it, worthless cr*p comes from any nation from any continent. . . Conservatism and the supressing of new ideas happen in Western culture all the time.
I agree. But I still have problems with a country where there are annually high suicide rates among pre-teens due to classroom bullying.
The plight of the individual in America is NOTHING compared to that of Japan. Like I said, I have a number of friends who emigrated specifically because of this issue. While we in the West have more than enough of our own problems, Japan is specifically fucked up in this way. And I see a direct cause and effect relationship between these qualities and the content of its entertainment media.
Slashdot Mirror
I did not claim such.
Though I will say here this: violent and angry art can definitely play a part in programming the mind in many ways, (you cannot help but to embody what you consume, like attracts like, etc.)
I'd be interested, however, to know what you define as dark arts, and loathsome.
In a general way. . . "That which promotes life, knowledge and joy is good, and that which promotes and celebrates selfishness and suffering is not good."
Though, I agree it it is important that we all experience at least some of the dark side in order to know how to navigate life with ease. But to dwell on the negative is to obsess is to get stuck is to sink.
-Fantastic Lad
Agreed. I would add the following: Experience your pain in sharp, brief bursts and hold them in memory without obsessing. This is one of the least exhausting ways to mark your road map of life in order to see how and how not to live.
Clearly, I was not talking to people who understand these things. I was talking to those who have been led to believe that misery cannot be managed, or done away with entirely. We are all strongly advised things like, "When you break up with a lover, you should feel angst, loneliness, bitterness and misery, and above all, you should treat her like an enemy from now on." These things are choices, not requirements
-Fantastic Lad
Very well. However, if you experiment, you will discover that wallowing in misery is not a pre-requisite to feeling confident and in control of a given scenario. Pain and the acknowledgment of such is certainly an excellent method of learning, but to wallow in it is to obsess. Do it if you feel you need to explore such feelings, but understand that it exhausts, distracts and diminishes personal power. When you are finished exploring this, know that there is somewhere to move on to where depression and misery are required elements of the equation.
-Fantastic Lad
--If you'll notice, a couple of the posters replying to your comment were very brief & very rude. I don't think this is coincidence. I believe that one can equate point and shoot, 'blood fantasy,' as you aptly describe it, with a self-willed decline in brain power, awareness and life energy in general.
Obsessing over death, fear and sadness in games, music, literature and film lowers people and makes them less. It sucks away something vital. Watch for it. It's there to be seen by those who are not scared to notice the patterns.
I don't advocate censorship of any kind. Everybody must be free to explore art and life to the fullest extent. Only in this way do people learn.
I will, however, offer the following. .
My advice to people who seek symapthy in dark arts is to, rather than seeking temporary solice from angry music and simulated blood sport, endeavor instead to change yourself, your life, your job, etc., so that you are no longer trapped in systems designed to keep you in misery and frustration. All one needs to achieve this is to learn. Achieve a calm state of being, and you will find that sympathetic vibration, (for lack of a better term), will no longer be found in loathsome art, but instead in lighter thoughts. Life power, awareness and happiness will similarly increase as you focus away from sad things.
-Fantastic Lad
No need to apologize. --But, what 'fallout'? Science is 95% negative results anyway. Any team which takes new Lucent data without trying to verify it through independant experimentation is a lousy lab team.
So some experimental results may have been falsified. Big deal. Basically, it sounds like some scientists were bullied by their management environment into releasing info too soon. --Which only means that Lucent management sucks and the employees of one lab are manipulated cowards. I don't see why this should be turned into a hunt for the nearest scapecoat. -A hunt supported by a blood thirsty scientific community.
If Lucent did things right, they would have set up an internal board of inquiry, figure out where the problem is, fix it, and recall the data with an apology. Instead they're all set to make an international spectacle out of the whole thing.
The board of inquiry set up is now on trial, so far as I'm concerned. --Will they have the balls to not over-react? Will they take a close look at the real problem, or are they just going to look at the lie and hang a straw man?
Also, I must disagree with you. --The last sentence of your post is descriptive of exactly the kind of sociological programming I'm talking about. This stuff only serves to shore up the walls of the current calcified structures of the scientific process, and help to slow knowledge advancement to an even worse crawl. --Because now, in order to study a new idea, a scientist must overcome the fears of not only having reputations smeared, grants cut and jobs revoked, but now also something bearing a frightening resemblance to criminal prosecution.
My theory: force one guy to lie, call him out, string him up and torture him, and you watch. Everybody else will fall neatly into line. Alternative thinkers take another blow on the chin and the corporate/military arbitors of public knowledge tighten up the reins ever more.
-Fantastic Lad
Why? That's easy.
It all has to do with cultural perceptions. If you pull off enough of these debacles you can:
Oh, and by the way. .
Take a glance at this much over-looked item on cold fusion to gain some insights into how these kinds of manipulation of the scientific community are used to benefit those behind the scenes. The relevant link is to a dot-mil site quietly hosting this 135 page report on the current state of behind the scenes Cold Fusion research which in no uncertain terms confirms what Pons & Flieshman were reporting all along.
-Fantastic Lad
Really neat!
With the advanced warning that Fantastic Lad's views on these matters come with a heavy bias, since I have become utterly convinced that prevailant forces beyond the understanding of conventional science are at work all over the place all the time, here are my observations. .
Anyway, I've found the whole process of making these observations utterly fascinating, and I know there are some out there who might also be interested. And of course, Caveat Lector should be employed at all times when reading my stuff. While I tend to know WAY more on most of these topics than a bevy of New Age morons, I'm still only on the lower parts of the knowledge mountain myself! For every bit of verification I find, I run across 25 lies and bits of fabricated sensationalist crap.
-Fantastic Lad
Now, however, that it's a story on Slashdot, (along with several other Big Hot Button stories which have made Slashdot headlines over the past couple of days), we'll get to sift through all the Perfectly Logical Explanations.
Let the Paranoia and Head-in-the-Sand-'Rationality' begin!
-Fantastic Lad --The Truth is somewhere in between. .
Sci-fi dreaming was fine for the pulp paperback age. Kind of dumb now, as I seriously doubt any of the shit mentioned in that article will implement in the public sector.
Aside from the fact that technology to radically alter human abilities through surgery has been around for quite some time. You think the 'X-Men' is fantasy? Aside from the dumb costumes, and canned dialogue. .
The story about "Steve Rogers" as Captain America is barely fiction. Guys like that are entirely too real. But that's nothing I'm in a position to prove, so moving right along. .
The point of the matter is that any 'upgrades' Joe Public will be able to have implemented on himself will be:
Assuming for a ludicrous moment that these kind of upgrades will ever become a marketable commodity, like owning a car, having an enhancement would be a financial and life-style leg shackle sold under the guise of freedom. --Which, no doubt, everybody would buy into. Hook, line and sinker.
Out of all the car owners I know, only a very small handful are not miserable wage slaves trying like mad to pretend they're happy. --While chasing the bullshit 'satisfaction markers' as sold to them by cute television sit coms and popular music, all of which is primarily designed to cause social strife.
"Hit me baby, one more time."
-Fantastic Lad
Yeah. Of course, you're right. --Unlike the instances I noted, in this case the content remains the same while the delivery system changes form. --And from looking at the number of grammatical blunders in my post, it seems I wasn't very awake this morning when I wrote other aspects of it.
Anyway, another thing I was thinking while going through the Gutenberg Project archives, was just how woefully limited their library is. The explosion of new data, among which is the bulk of material I am particularly interested in studying, all seems to sit within the last sixty years. --Very little of which will ever be digitized, for one reason or another, under today's constraints.
Rather like obscure movies never getting transferred to DVD, (and there are FAR fewer movies than there are books! --Heck if you consider that every movie has a script which might be considered a type of book. .
I would wonder sometimes when considering the Enterprise computer on TNG; how much data was left out. How complete was it?
Digital is cool, but paper-based materials will in many, many cases, simply be the ONLY copies of certain materials.
-Fantastic Lad
Well, I suppose you could argue that. Many do. But for the most part, people have been programmed like mad away from recognizing the following little nuget of wisdom. .
Your level of awareness is your problem. Your level of awarenss is nobody else's responsibility. What on earth would motivate me to provide all the research for you? --Especially when you are being so snotty? If you want to continue playing the dupe, well that's entirely up to you.
I'm afraid today, I just don't have the interest in jumping through hoops. Maybe another day. Ambient no-comment readers can always pick up a few new ideas by observing a debate from the wings, no matter how determined the debators are in maintaining their illusions. Today, however, I just don't have the energy to waste, so I'm afraid I must ignore your silly baits and let you defend your shored-up fortress of ignorance without challenge.
My "media" employer doesn't care about any "Control Reality". They care about reporting the truth, and maximizing shareholder value.
I love this kind of statement! Luckily I know several people who can enjoy such wonderful examples of irony along with me. It'd be lonely otherwise!
Looking up from the bottom, you see conspiracy. Looking at the problem from the inside, I see no sign of grand conspiracies, no intentional plot to beat down the "annoying burr".
The simple fact you responded with such ire is a direct example of the 'Control Reality'. Consider this! --Of course, your bosses aren't reporting to shadow figures in trench coats! Control is both so much easier and so much more complex than that! If it was obvious, do you think it would be so effective?
Whatever. I'm gone. Good luck out there. You'll need it!
-Fantastic Lad
Aside from not owning a car, (which, btw, is an entirely viable option more people should look into), Joe-average can do very little.
In the software universe, however, there are thousands of people who know how to program well enough to FIX intentional, greed-related corporate bullshit problems, and distribute those fixes to anybody who takes the relatively small amount of time required to learn how to implement them.
Why are Hackors demonized by the media? Because they represent an annoying burr, a standing nail which refuses to be brushed away or hammered down. And through this, humanity is prevented from being jammed, (quite so quickly and neatly), into the square holes all neatly prepared for us. Hackors get in the way of the plans of the Control Reality which are being implemented around our ears as we speak.
I am not a programmer. I am not a hacker. But I am proud that this aspect of humanity still exists. I am proud that people are having FUN in this way! (All important!) I salute those who know how to make the machines work for the common benefit, and who have the courage to do so!
A tip of the hat to you all!
-Fantastic Lad
It really IS convenient, cross referencing is doesn't involve stopping in the middle of a passage and then going, "Shit, I guess I have time on Tuesday to head down to the library, cuz I don't have a copy of N title."
My only complaints with the lap top were:
-Too heavy & awkward, buttons in the wrong place for when I'm reading on the sofa, in bed, on the toilet.
-It's nice to have a keyboard just in case I want to take notes, but I think the awkward-value outstrips the usefulness. A keyboard should be attachable, or should fold away and be completely un-obtrusive when not in use.
Lap tops are typically designed for maximum comfort when they sit on a table. Lounging in bed makes them really difficult. Pivot software doesn't take into account that a laptop control mechanism has a fixed physical position, (DUH! --Way to make your software 'user-friendly' guys. Hint to GUI programers: ALWAYS provide an 'advanced tab', underwhich EVERY option imaginable is provided even if those options will be of no use to 99% of users!!! The 'user-friendly' philosophy of giving the minimum number of options because of fear of confusing the computer illiterate is the single most infuriating philosophy of the last 20 years, bar none!)
So basically, it looks like the guys over at Samsung are finally on the right track here.
But let me make a final point:
Just like books didn't put an end to theater, and film didn't put an end to books, and television didn't kill film, and the internet hasn't killed any of the above, digital books will NOT replace the hard copy.
While projects like the Gutenberg are cool, they are subject to massive change and instability. On the extreme side, -as Fascist State has more than enough power to shut down the internet in an entire nation, to regulate content according to the whims of a few. A nuclear strike or a handful of comet hits could make my digi-book not work, either through an EM overload pulse, or simply by destroying the electrical power infrastructure.
Digital Information can be great, but it requires a whole pyramid of layering support technologies, all of which must work perfectly. The pyramid needed to keep paper funtioning is much smaller and much more easily maintained. If worst comes to worst, I can make my own paper and get a bunch of clerics to hand-copy stuff with feather pens.
I just wish that books were printed on acid-free paper. A sixty year life-span on your average sheet of typing paper is pretty lame!
-Fantastic Lad
But I'm curious. --Were the accounts you were swapping money between two Paypal accounts, or were you trying to move money from a Paypal account to a regular bank account?
(My company is getting into Paypal regardless of my repeated cautions.)
Anyway, good luck in your battle!
-Fantastic Lad
They test one.
Ad infinitum while the world cringes in fear.
It's going to get ugly when Cuba starts hosting Japanese built systems.
[Okay. Lame joke. It sounded better before I typed it, but I'm too attatched to the effort to not post. You're Welcome.]
-Fantastic Lad
There are several huge flaws with this. See my comment regarding one important aspect of it here.
-Fantastic Lad
The thing you are ignoring here, is that your level of ignorance is YOUR problem. I have no vested interest in how blind you choose to be.
So, please post an experiment by which we can all test your claim.
See above. You'll figure it out when you're ready, though it doesn't sound like it'll happen this life time. No matter. I suspect you'll be working on your next rather sooner than you might like to believe.
Seriously, you need to see someone to help you with whatever bizarre beliefs you've picked up. You sound like a new-age cult memeber. When was the last time you talked to your own family?
Make no mistake: Cults are dangerous in the extreme. They abridge free thought and strongly discourage curiosity and questioning. (Much like normal society, and certainly any religous movement you care to point at.) I assure you, there are VERY few people of my type out there. Though, those I do run across are nearly always individuals of great power, influence, intellect and charisma who have or do hold one or more respected stations in the regular world. (Though they often take breaks from it. The effort to maintain the mask is difficult. Castaneda called it, "Controled Folly", and he was right on the money.)
Part of the challenge of higher awareness is not just in seeing the illusion for what it is, but in still being able to function within it. It's rather like having the cheat codes to life, but suddenly no longer being able to truly care about the game.
Now here's an exercise for you: See if you can't figure out why 'proving' these things to people of normal stature is foolish, dangerous and selfish in the extreme. --The thousand temple massacre in China over the last five years might supply an indicator or two. But beyond such a simple aspect, consider that abridging free will is a serious no-no for the good guys.
I've raised a few cautioning eyebrows from those I know regarding my outspoken activities for exactly these reasons. I hold back a great deal. Try this on for size: Providing proof effectively forces a belief structure, and this abridges free will.
--I know that may sound like a cop-out to somebody coming from what you believe to be a perspective of pure scientific reasoning, but believe me, through my own experiences I know that providing proof that the world is not what it seems, can really hurt people. I've pushed before and I've seen just how much damage can be caused when one is not ready to receive. --Luckily, those I've dealt with had the fortunate ability to 're-boot' their brains after a couple of weeks. I've watched people actively erase entire experiences from their memory in order to carry on with their normal lives. Remarkable. Luckily, they also didn't try to wring my neck, though this is not at all uncommon either. Fight or flight.
However, there is nothing wrong with providing invitations to knowledge. Those who are ready to start looking can benefit enormously when somebody tells them that, yes, it's okay to question the current paradigm. There are certainly powerful negative forces out there more than willing to manipulate truth, abridge free-will and generally keep people chained up in ignorance.
But basically, it works like this: The Universe is a school for the soul. People will advance when they are ready. Pushing them ahead messes up the lesson. -And this in itself is a lesson, one which I am currently trying to learn myself. When I learn it properly, I suspect I will be able to perform without causing ripples except where I specifically intend them. Right now, I tend to have too much passion and an urge to say more than I should.
-Fantastic Lad
A variation of Reiki was making a fairly big stir a decade and a half ago. I recall reading about a double-blind study whereby people would put wounded arms through a hole in a screen. They would either be treated or not treated, and it was not possible for them to see, hear or have a tactile sense of whether or not they were being treated by one of the a 'Healing Touch' (as it was called), specialists. -The healer just ran their hands several inches above the person's wound, never making contact. --Or they would just stand there and do nothing.
The results were that the treated patients responded with wounds healing in about half the time of that of the control group. -I wish I could post a reference, but it was in a respected newspaper article written a decade and a half ago, so a reference is simply not going to happen. I'm sure a Skeptic will say that I mis-remember the text, or that the reporter was a fool, or whatever. A Skeptic could deny the blue of the sky if he was bent on it. Socrates was good at this kind of logical nonsense as well. Most Skeptics are no better than the scam-astrologers.
And here's another item the Skeptics will love. I know several people who can see energy directly, and one who can even manipulate it. I have my own stories about why I believe this, which I won't bother retelling here. Skeptics can come up with endless reasons to disbelieve. Fair enough. The problem is that either they are wrong or I am wrong. --And the time is quickly approaching when one's fate is going to rest upon just how aware one is of what is and is not real.
Dangerous, no?
It would pay to be careful about who one believes and how deep one looks into matters. And never forget; The bad guys own the media.
-Fantastic Lad
Well sure, except I'm not talking about quacks or scientists. I'm talking about Skeptics. There's a very big difference.
-Fantastic Lad
What if your 'crank' actually happens to be correct?
--Every single one of your 5 points could easily hold true for an inventor with a valid new idea, up to and including the last point. (New concepts require new terms, for crying out loud!)
But, like every other zealous Skeptic out there, this little problem can be easily overlooked by simply riding the head of delusional self-congratulatory steam which comes with dogmatic self-hypnosis. --No different than the New Age nut: Only look at the 'Hits' and ignore the 'Misses'.
The article you posted is a prime example of the closed minded bullshit Skepticism is.
-Fantastic Lad
Look. Everybody knows the stance of the 'other' side, so I won't waste everybody's time pointing out why subtle crap, (sneaking little lies in with patent truth, using ridicule, and re-enforcement of the con artist's trick of making you defend your own folly so that you don't have to face the embarrassment of others realizing you were conned.), like this book are very much in the best interests of mega corps, military infrastructure, control freak governments and the list of regular suspects.
What continually stuns me is that people like
-Fantastic Lad
Coffee has been around for ever. We know the positive/negative effects. It is trust worthy.
In the current corporate/government lobbyist environment I wouldn't touch ANYTHING even vaguely pill shaped which is designed to improve my 'worker drone efficiency'.
Will it also turn me into a slobbering 'yes sir' zombie?
Call me paranoid, but they can take that pill and shove it!
-Fantastic Lad
-Fantastic Lad
Do you mean, "Awesome" in a hyperbolic, "Good for you!" sense, or as in, "It's astonishing that anybody has not studied Eastern religious phiolosphy to exhaustive lengths as I broadly suggest that I, in my infinite superiority, have done."?
(Though I'm not sure if there is in fact a difference.)
--But I'll go with the hyperbole; Considering you seem to have an interest in one of the more popular 'systems' used to reach enlightenment, you certainly deserve what little slack such an assumption might offer. (Or perhaps not, depending on how serious you are about your studies.)
So how is Bhudism working out for you, btw? Are my dumb-ass barbs proving a challenge, an obstacle, or am I like the 'water which finds no resistance'?
Come to think of it, before you answer that, are you studying as an anthropologist or as an actual student? Are you climbing the mountain or are you just messing around in the foothills taking holiday snapshots?
Just curious,
-Fantastic Lad
I agree. But I still have problems with a country where there are annually high suicide rates among pre-teens due to classroom bullying.
The plight of the individual in America is NOTHING compared to that of Japan. Like I said, I have a number of friends who emigrated specifically because of this issue. While we in the West have more than enough of our own problems, Japan is specifically fucked up in this way. And I see a direct cause and effect relationship between these qualities and the content of its entertainment media.
-Fantastic Lad