Monday, August 6, 2012

Bravery, Fearlessness, and Ignorance: Going all Ilves on Chris Hedges


If you knew for sure what you lived for or what you died for, its meaning and all its effects, there would be no such thing as being brave, confidence would be assured, a given. It is not knowing, or never being quite sure, this is the circumstance that sets up that state of being we call bravery. To do without knowing if it will matter.
Bravery from Ignorance, The Heretic Papers, 2001

Easy to be happy by yourself. Hard to be happy when intensely aware of others' suffering. Some could say that is just an excuse to make oneself unhappy. Others can see ignorance of that may be bliss but willful ignorance and turning a blind eye to what wrong may be or will be done in your name is delusional, unjust, and to be morally with a heart made only of stone toward everyone but those few others you call your own, the bastardization of everyone and everything else that is equally related to your existence which you choose not to acknowledge or recognize and pretend not to see or know about.

Not that I am complaining nor would or could ever be suicidal, but the way I see it, my contract with existence was up awhile ago now. For awhile I counted them as "Super bonus days" for they seemed just that, a limited number of extra days. Now I have lost count. (Actually today, Aug 5, 2012, is Super Bonus Day number 3339, not that I can count that without a computer.) Given that I seem to be stuck here for awhile, I figure why not try to achieve the most possible in the shortest time, or try to advance humanity or knowledge the fastest ways possible with regard to little else except morality and that time is always limited. So other than staying true to what you believe in and who or what you think you are, there is little to hold you back except always trying to hold on. I no longer see holding on as an option. I can go forward or not at all. While existing, not at all is not my choice (or up to me), therefore if I must go forward, my choice is batten down the hatches, full steam ahead, let's see what she's got.

It could be said if I were brave in this environment, I would long ago be dead. Only the sycophants survive long. Some might think one can be brave and live long if one is clever. That is true, but always be wary of clever people. It is not long before they are fooling themselves.
From my Notes pages
(too lazy to look up the dates, its late, 3rd post of the day)



[Note: I don't know what I like about that clip better, the lyrics or the introduction. One way or another I get the feeling one way or another my own "Hawaiian vacation" ends today.]


         About 16 months ago, I reposted here on Truthrevival.org, something from my Notes pages, called 'Democracy DOA. Prognosis Up From Dead on Arrival.' The time seemed right to do so. Since I had studied revolutions and social movements, I wanted to write about the Arab Spring somehow and was looking for a good angle, and also I wanted to repost those notes. One of the reasons for doing so was I was getting tired of Chris Hedges whining articles. "Its hopeless, the world is doomed, doomed I say!!!" Well, maybe that is a slight exaggeration, but not by much. This is the quote I used in that post...

 What got me to thinking about writing this post was recent writing which I have read over people being despondent about what has become of democracy in America these days, many either pronouncing it ill or even dead as I did. (Chris Hedges, ever the cheery cheerleader these days, “When did our democracy die? When did it irrevocably transform itself into a lifeless farce and absurd political theater?”)

           This was before his "Occupy" second-wind, which seems to be thinning out again. As I mentioned in that revised take on "Democracy DOA", that I did not believe that that was my best collection of Notes on Politics. As also from "Democracy DOA," ...

          So to sum up, though I am more hopeful about democracy in general than I was 6 years ago when I wrote Democracy DOA from the notes below, not necessarily still believing it is dead or even dying, I do see it as under fire still as perhaps never before. It is perceived widely as weak or crippled, and the vultures are circling. But I am beginning to see to balance that, there is an increasing willingness of people to step up and fight for what little of it remains. And without a doubt, what is killing it is not the rich, the powerful, or the major powers or corporations. It is dying by the redefinition of it by those actors, and by the willingness of the public around the world to sometimes accept these redefinitions.

         The only thing that can turn that around is constantly increasing the political vocabularies and knowledge of people about politics and what is at stake in that debate in every country, and increasing the willingness of people to act out of those beliefs. To protest, to become more involved, and for the “powerful” countries to not attempt to put down such protests at home when directed at themselves, (THE UNITED STATES HAS REFERRED TO ITS OWN ANTI-WAR PROTESTS AS ‘SOFT TERRORISM’) but instead to see them as important, and as necessary, as the democracy movements in the more oppressed regions of the world today. Because if not, if we accept ANY governments opinions that its people are not being repressed, then of course there would be no such thing as repression even as it spreads everywhere, because no country would ever admit it to itself. Political protest movements and an increasingly active public engaged in politics is required to have any level of effective democracy at all, but apathy and the acceptance of individual powerlessness (The best compilation of my notes on politics I still think is the fearlessness page “Fearlessness take back power- Fear sells out Freedom for ‘Security") is killing it.

         So, though I thought it was better at that time to do a rehash of 'Democracy DOA,' I was at least honest that that was not my favorite collection of my notes, just the one that seemed like the thing to do at that time. So I am grateful that Chris Hedges dour writing has once again inspired me to rehash what I sort of wished I had posted then instead, the Fearlessness page.

         To say I am offended by the quote I will put below may be half-joking, but it is also at least half-serious or I would not still be thinking of writing this still, 2 weeks later. It sort of pissed me off, in a not-entirely-joking kind of way. This is from that article, "The Careerists," (July 23, 2012)...

Computer programmers. Men and women who know no history, know no ideas. They live and think in an intellectual vacuum, a world of stultifying minutia. They are T.S. Eliot’s “the hollow men,” “the stuffed men.” “Shape without form, shade without colour,” the poet wrote. “Paralysed force, gesture without motion.”

         Its not that I don't get what he was trying to do. Name lots of professions, people he dumped on as mindless automatons, people not able to rise above their programmings, what Paul Craig Roberts seems stuck on as calling being 'plugged into the Matrix' these days. (Not that I want to be possibly punked by him possibly again, but Paul, please get a new metaphor!) I said the same things in a poem called Automatons eons ago (or does it just seem that long...)


Man or machine,  that is the question
   which remains to be seen
  Shielded by uniforms,  we lash out beating and killing
   those who are our own brethren
    as we convince ourselves we have given up all rights
     to question why

 We poison and maim,  all the while believing
   we are not to blame
  Behind desks and thick glass,  we protect our jobs
   by following mindless regulations
    often hearing pleas from those that they destroy,
     sympathizing yet never helping

 Part of the system,  we fail to rise above the limits
   of its questionable wisdom
  Filling the functions of some prepackaged lives
   we lose sight of needed changes
    and by identifying ourselves with socially programmed desires,
     we become something less than human

from Triumvirum, 1988

         See, it is not that hard to dump on people for not doing more to stand against things that you think they should be standing up to. With a little more effort, you can even do it in rhymes! I get the idea, really I do. But it does not really do much to rally people to your opinion. When I first was asked "What about alternative media?" by an instructor in late 2005, when I said "No one is doing anything," in why I was doing what I was doing. In response to that question I dismissed it as preaching to the choir. (He then told me about Glenn Greenwald. I told him to write it down because I would not remember it. Really who TF heard of Glenn Greenwald in 2005?)  Writers who really think they are not just feeding their own egos or assuaging their own consciences about not doing more, they should ask themselves, is what I am writing really going to convince anyone who does not already agree with me?

         How is dumping on lots of professions who are not well-read writers as he is, saying they all are not doing anything, really going to gain their sympathy enough for them to do more? And putting computer programmers at the end of the list just before the kick in the pants, well as Billy Jack would say, that just makes me want to go berserk! Okay, maybe not beserk but to at least to go all Ilves twitter bashing on him. I call that 4 posts on twitter in an odd but bitchy sort of way.





[Note: well it IS hard to think of four snarky things NOT about Paul Krugman! Could not fit that whole line in there. Damn character limits! Sorry for any similarity to any others in the insults. Its hard to come up with lines like that on my own. I am not as good as I used to be.]

         The reason for going on like that is because there are supposedly at least 2 former computer programmers in not so open spaces who showed more balls in standing up to what they thought people ought to know about what is going on than a whole convention hall of people in Chris Hedges profession, Seymour Hersh excepted.

         Not that I would wish to mention said others at this time, as it is far too complicated to put in a short post like this. I do not agree with everything they did anymore than I agree with everything Pussy Riot did. With the former, it is because I do not know enough about it to speak with any certainty, and with the latter it is because I know more than most do about what they did. I can agree somewhat with the intents, meaning well, but not always with how people go about the follow through.

         Maybe one day I will write more, if I have more time to write. Time for another clip show again...

         Whenever I think people might criticize me for not being as "good" anymore, I like to think of the clip below, my favorite Creator / Asisfour dialog. Not as good as the Inventor / Assistwo ones, but then not nearly as much to pick from.

         "Hey, I'm not one of your characters, you can't kill me off, and you can't fire me either. You know you could never do without me," he (Asisfour) added trying to look as cute as possible.
         "Won't and can't are not the same thing," she (Creator) added. "You are not as good as you used to be."

        "See, there you go, bringing up the past. All the better to get rid of causality now. No expectations, no limitations on the future or what is possible. That's what I'm talking about! If you were good before, you have to be just as good or better later. If you're off a bit, everyone says, "Hey, whats wrong with him, he used to be so good. What a pity!" Its a trap I tell you."

        "Granted, expectations can be a bitch sometimes," she added, "just as I can be, but without them, without assuming you will do something as good in the future as you did in the past, why keep you on at all? Don't think your past will carry you far with me for long. We need some continuity and expectations to live up to or fail at living up to, or it just becomes dribble."
 
8.1: The Second Coming Outside of Causality: Book 2 Commences (For the Usual Fee Plus Expenses) 2D 3D 4D 5D Thinking Made Simple

and now, finally, my notes on Fear and Fearlessness, aka, the Fearless page...

 
Best of the Notes – Fear Vs. Freedom
   
These are most of the notes involving Fear and Fearlessness...

“Without trying, even if you fail, you never get to find out if that potential was real or imagined. They say in life you don't get second chances. Whoever “they” were in that sentence were wrong. Every minute of every day is a second chance to do what you put off, are too scared to try, or lack the courage to believe you can or ought to try. (X-mas letter 2003 from Lithuania).

"Evil to be afraid of is not the evil that might be done to you, but the evil you might do because of it."



To live in no fear

To not fear death, torture, or pain is very easy. To not fear rediscovering the truth about existence is very hard.

To be afraid of death is foolish. To long for death is wasteful. To see it as a possible obstacle, either as an actual event or as a possible threat, is to make it real your now. Best to leave it then.

The goal ought not to be how to devise any system of governance among many nations or ethnicities which will peaceably stand for a hundred or a thousand years, for no generation ought to have the presumptiveness to think their present views or beliefs ought to be taken up by so many successive others. They must always be free to amend or reject it as they see fit. The challenge then becomes not only to come up with ideals which will be able to withstand such rigorous tests of times and debates, but to provide a structure for change and natural evolution of governmental structures and shifting regionalizations and loyalties, to occur with the least loss of human life and the greatest protection of individual self-determination, of action, consent of belief or deferment of prevailing mindsets and be free to rally others against them without fear of bodily harm nor illegal or non-public means to isolate, marginalize, or discredit them, and above all else for without it, nothing else matters, complete freedom to believe as one wishes about anything one wishes without restraint to time, place, culture, or present senses of sensibilities.

Perpetual war can keep any group in power indefinitely. The mixture of hatred and fear is an iron grip which cannot be loosened. It enabled the Communist Party to remain in power for over 70 years and the Cold War kept the Democrats firmly in control of Congress during its run. When Gorbachev admitted the West wasn't so bad, he began his undoing. Even a seemingly constant war came to an abrupt end. The Republicans have learned a great lesson. The enemy must have no name, nor face, and no one can ever say then when it is over. The public is sold on the concept of being at war with "to be announced". It could be one country today or a different country tomorrow but still the same war which can be believed to be continuing until whenever it is politically expedient to say it is won. Unfortunately history has shown it is never politically expedient for a party in power for a war to end, and without one clear enemy to be defeated, nor even necessarily ongoing battles, now never has to. Fear and hatred are easily rekindled by any number of means so the public will always believe the enemy is real, even if it can be potentially anyone, even a recent ally, and all the same war. And the enemy within can never be defeated either and can also be anyone, thus the need to accept constant scrutiny and suspicion of everyone. Unfortunately if the enemy is oppression, it really can take any form and can never be defeated. Those who claim to fight it simply become it to seem to win indefinitely. When the words "war" and "peace" have been redefined by those in power to mean whatever they want them to mean, "freedom" is equally open for redefinition as well. If even understanding this shows it to be inevitable and unstoppable, all hope for improvement is lost.

It is superstition and ignorance of ourselves and by our cultures which makes us think death is something to be feared. The only thing worth fearing about death is that it will come before you get around to attempting to do that which you would most want to achieve, actualize, do, or even just be brave enough to attempt to do with or in your life, for in that respect, (the) attempting can be the goal and (if the attempt IS the goal, it) cannot be failed at (as long as it is attempted). And the results as seen by others will always be determined by forces outside yourself which you cannot control and therefore, are irrelevant.

Organized crime profits by robbing from those who the police would not protect. Those who think the police help all equally are nieve. The more corrupt and indifferent or invasive the police become, the stronger and richer the criminals become. The more people view the police with fear and suspicion, the stronger the grip shadow groups control a society with. Laws written to strengthen law enforcement by making them more feared, weaken their ability to be anything other than just another group of thugs to those who do not trust them for help. The fewer the police protect or the more of a society they see as criminals, the more powerful criminals it creates. Fewer laws create fewer criminals and the more the population can view police as allies, if they do not extort themselves, and when they are thought more to aid all equally in need of help.

It is common for people to be apprehensive or scared about the future. I more specifically have always been more afraid of who or how I might become in the future far more than what anyone might do to me. The former I am thought to have control over and that is what matters to me, and what that might be has not only been more of a concern, its relevance dwarfs all others. We all are afraid to grow up in one way or another, and hold onto the present somehow, with due reason. But even if the present were ideal, we would want to spoil it just for something (different) to do. Fortunately it isn't (ideal), and we can now seem to push it constructively, but that is simply a matter of a chosen perspective upon it and what we do.

People afraid of death who cannot make peace with the idea before they die I have little sympathy with. Death is inevitable and a part of life and should be accepted as due course. When I was at peace and ready, I instead was given only an upgraded body and mind. Existence continues whether you want it to or not. Dream and accept rest if offered.

Don't fight change and don't be afraid of it, and you can never go wrong or be disappointed. Whether you want or like what is going to happen, it won't last, will be replaced by the opposite, only be replaced again.

Suicidal in a free speech sort of way - if enough people pretend they have free speech and say what they really think without fear, someday some WILL gain it, though many will have to risk everything. The West gave up free speech when they proved they were not willing to risk shit to keep it, and now are more watched than Malaysia with their governments studying North Korea for good ideas. Maybe not Europe yet, but sure as hell, the United States. People know better than to criticize the government now. It is no longer a safe course of action. People wonder why the current Chinese young won't risk their lives for democracy, with the US having sold ludicrous attack helicopters with machine guns to the Beijing police departments, they know no one of consequence would care. Convergence in governments has occurred, and the more ruthless models won as always. Almost always anyway.

If you are not afraid of what others can do to you, would do or will do, then they can only impede you or get out of your way. Fear is all that can divert you. Ceding direction is to give up control over your own life. Do not believe in side-trips of any significant time. It is to be diverted, become lost, and ultimately to become someone else.

The more you turn your back on the past and break the strings one by one, the more you know each and every one of them, and the way they pull you, hold you, define you, and its designs upon you. You cannot escape the past altogether, nor should you wish to, but you must learn all the strings one by one to know which ones to keep and which must stay cut to create the direction you think is the best to seem to go in. The more expectations the past has upon you, the more important it is to mentally take hold of it to make that past your own and not be its creation, but (be) your own master, and give the future that right of self-determination as well, rather than to fall into the trap as those in the past might have wished and wish to control or shape it as well. Guide it, yes, but guide it to run free. Free where others wouldn't dare, not out of (lack of) morals, but out of timidity and fear, and lack of imagination. You must trust others and you must trust yourself to know what is right for each different time.

The societies we have are they way they are because they are built around fear. Fear of thinking for yourself, fear of saying what you think is truth, fear of believing you know what others more powerful than you are doing is wrong and have the right to even just say so, let alone to work for a society not as dysfunctional.

When people are unwilling or afraid to take a stand against laws, rules, guidelines, or requirements they know are wrong, that only encourages lawmakers to make more of them. The more that happens, the less it is thought the laws must make any rational sense whatsoever, and they become free do to with the law whatever they please. Injustice becomes gospel because of the precedents they set which are all there is that guides them when morality becomes whatever is profitable and the law, merely then a tool to use against those you do not like. That is power gone mad. That is our reality.

What is designed to take me down I make my own knowing to run or avoid it is to be beaten by it. To know it, to accept its place in the scheme of things, yet remain resolute, that is more of a victory, whatever the cost, than living even much much longer but in fear avoiding what is sent your way that you run from every moment you choose not to confront it. You are at least as strong as whatever you choose to stand up to, and stronger than whatever cannot make you afraid.

Sunday August 21st, 2005- Super Bonus Day number 800 counting leap year day. 800 days of living as if possibly no tomorrow, no fear, no planning for a future which may never come, but trying to do the most possible if today is all I get, and enjoy and appreciate it as if it is all I may get. Racked up a string of accomplishments in writing down the ideas, conceived and finished 2D 3D 4D 5D over the 2 years, graduated, tried my best to wake a few people up, though if they are asleep, they probably are happier that way. Reality which few have chosen to face has become grim and only getting darker at the moment until people start paying attention more. Tomorrow I head toward another country, beginning a new chapter on day number 801, still taking it, or trying to take it, one day at a time, taking nothing for granted and having as little expectations as possible to keep from knowing what is there to be seen beyond what I may prefer to see, yet wish to know anyway, and on many levels, need to.

When you begin to suspect everything you have been told, that anything you have been told might be lies, about God, your country's motivations, your political ideologies, merely lies to get you to think the way others have decided you should think, believe what others have decided you should believe, behave the way others have decided you should behave, make sacrifices for others benefits which are not people as a whole, but for a privileged few who control your or all societies, you can begin to think for yourself and come up with your own ideas of truth, though no other may ever be allowed to hear them, speak them, or believe them, which are untainted by the lies and political manipulations to get you to serve people without honor and without truth. Those who can and most certainly do prevent the public from ever hearing unauthorized versions of any truths. People who owe their positions of power only to their lies and their abilities to control what a society as a whole thinks by what they are allowed to know, read about, and think about. Publics with the ability to decide on their own, ideas and ideals, able to surmount their societies constant attempts to manipulate how they think, capable of truly thinking for themselves, those in power fear this more than anything, and their political survival depends on getting less powerful people to hate each other and fight amongst themselves. That keeps humanity from ever progressing to enrich human lives, honor, and self-respect, and themselves securely on top.

Dream of fighting oneself in collapsed time, (analogous to how each person cannot reassess their purpose or direction without fighting older notions of how they previously thought they ought to be seeing things at that time, to change direction of our own lives, it is ultimately only our past ideas which prevent us from changing, decreasing, yes, but also from improving as well in ways we could not always accurately predict, that is the only thing that keeps the world static, past notions of how the future should be, not being able to conquer them or see ourselves as equal to them or not equal to the task of surmounting the past), referee, tower over Hawaii, Matrix moves without fear knowing already screwed.

Unless someone besides Bush (not that he has said so) is willing to step up to the plate and advocate the killing off of billions of unnecessary and in-the-way poor people who are beginning to outlive their ability to be usefully exploited, and actually try to feed and house these people by Western standards instead of double-standards, then the world economy will have to switch from one that values scarcity at all or higher costs (diamonds, gold, etc.) to one that rewards highest those industries that provide the most people possible with low-cost goods instead of now where the highest profit margins are to small niche markets catering to the whims and wishes of the super-rich. These smaller markets should still exist and have value but the entire principle that fewer in quantity makes something more valuable needs to be turned on its head. Luxury taxes are only one approach and not ideal by far. Tax breaks and subsidies to those who provide the most people possible with what they need to survive is where the most competition and interest should be even and ESPECIALLY when the profit margin is low, rather than how to constantly fall all over each other to make giant profits by making toys for the super-wealthy and no one else. This being the goal of large groups of people solely for the big bucks it guarantees is indeed a luxury when half the people in the world have no homes of their own, no safe or sure place to live and raise their children without destitution and fear, and no way forward BY DESIGN to get out of such a situation unless they are extremely exceptional. Those that deal with reversing that mindset and economic reality the world is currently based on deserve the most attention, acclaim, and the greatest rewards.

Life either confirms ones own best and highest aspirations or confirms ones own deepest and worst fears. Usually a mixture of both to keep it interesting. How and what creates that lateral movement between is interesting, if not yourself, but located externally within the environment.

The most important thing for you to be today is to be not what you were yesterday. The most important thing for you to do or to realize today is what you could not do or realize yesterday. Remembering here is not there, now is not then, never you are what you were (or remember being), and what you remember can never be again. Going against that, holding the past, that is death. Working with it and using constant change is to live and accept being constantly a new person in a new place in new circumstances.

No fear of the sadists in charge, they are my glove.

Breakdown of community, no free (without payment) exchange of goods and help. All (people are) isolated to be economically picked off one by one. Breakdown of trust replaced by intolerance and suspicion and fear leads to breakdown of free exchange of ideas and strained communication and relating to each other in anything more than superficial (ways) and false.

Just as one could say Bush is giving the world a taste of what it would have been like if the Nazis won WWII (one could say through Paperclip they did, the government or ideology it adapts to is merely the host which enables it to survive and mutate, is “progress” too and the countries and peoples are irrelevant and secondary to the “research” and “advancements” which are more important than even their own people are), we are also getting a taste of when Germany decided it no longer was bound by international commitments to the League of Nations, merely because it was in a greater position of power. The main difference between now and then is the US remains within the UN, though it says it is not bound by any rules or laws, procedures, courts, or enforcement mechanisms (against itself) it does not like, and all other major powers are either afraid of stating this obvious truth of what is going on, or are simply on the US payroll, willing to go along with anything so long as the money, directly or indirectly through contracts, trade, and business interlinkages, keeps rolling in at a greater rate than if this was corrected. It is for most countries a combination of fear and greed, and the US plays it well, both carrots of lucrative trade deals to make their leaders friends and supporters rich, and sticks of regime change, electorally (with boycotts and disrupting the economies of administrations it does not like) or by force of arms. But what happens when as now the treasury is emptied by corruption and we have only nuclear sticks left to keep the rest of the world in line to how we wish them to behave? That leaves only fear, but fear when persistent enough breeds people who grow up without it, and all the psychological warfare and conditioning cannot prevent it. The greater the downward push of new forms of oppression, new generations will learn new kinds of bravery and invent new methods of standing up to it.

Most people are controllable because somewhere down deep they are motivated by a desire to survive, to have nice or pleasant things happen to them at some point in the future, and to avoid or minimize the risk of very very bad things happening to them which they are afraid of. None of that means anything to me anymore, less than most before and non-existent now. The only thing I that motivates me is to expose the truth before I die, and the consequences of that are completely insignificant to my feelings one way or another. Machine-like, yes, but in a good way and for a good reason. The lies now are pervasive and completely self-destructive. Only letting the truth out in a regulated but massive way which can begin to enable people to see what they are doing and have done blindly and maliciously through their unwatched and lawless governments transgressions of all its own legal principles, precedents, and morality, that is the only thing I live for and the sole motivation. All else is merely the road from here to there.

Sig last- (refers to the last line of my Sig, “You are at least as strong as whatever you choose to stand up to, and stronger than whatever cannot make you afraid”)Your life is or is framed by a set of expectations based upon past events you use to frame expectations of future events, and how you think you will deal with them when they might occur, and while they are occurring. Without such expectations, consciousness does not exist and we could not function in this world. Once you know your consciousness and attitudes (through these set-up expectations pre-dating the events) are shaping your reactions to this stimuli as much or more than the external events are, you can begin to lose your fear and take control of your life if you lose your fear of death and what others might do to you. That (fear) too is a part of your consciousness that only constrains your behavior to do good if you fear doing so will make avenues of expectations and events you are afraid of play out. When you lose your fear of potential negative reactions of everything else in the world any and all others might do to you for doing what you think is right, not for yourself but for others (I know everyone thinks that all the time, “I am really doing this for so and so or my children's future, etc. etc.” but when it costs you more than anyone else and benefits you not in the least, THAT doing things for others, not the hypocritical “I'm only doing this for...” BS people use as an excuse to get what they want), you literally surmount everything else that could be for the power to keep you from doing and improving, what holds you back, is simply fear of bad things (happening) to yourself and those you love, to be tortured, killed, or harmed. That is the only power others have over you and you enable it yourself.

Fearlessness takes back power. Fear and complacency surrenders it.


 © 2003-2006 by Jared DuBois


posted by Jared DuBois | 12:25 AM