Everybody knows UFOs are bunk, you might say.
The UFO phenomenon interests me, not because I believe or want to believe that aliens are real and involved in human affairs, but because there is clearly something happening to make all these people report abductions, all these ex-military staffers report sightings, investigative journalists write books, and so forth.
From a psychological standpoint, the existence of the UFO phenomenon, and people's varied reactions to it, is interesting. As Carl Jung noted:
The
problem of the Ufos is, as you rightly say, a very fascinating one, but
it is as puzzling as it is fascinating; since, in spite of all
observations I know of, there is no certainty about their very nature.
On the other side, there is an overwhelming material pointing to their
legendary or mythological aspect. As a matter of fact the psychological
aspect is so impressive, that one almost must regret that the Ufos seem
to be real after all. I have followed up the literature as much as
possible and it looks to me as if something were seen and even confirmed
by radar, but nobody knows exactly what is seen.
I'm not about to deluge you with links to UFO resources. Good information on the topic is readily available online to anyone with the curiosity, discernment, and ability to push a "search" button who is willing to go fishing for it amongst the deluge of crap that is even more readily available.
Yes, if there is "truth" to these UFO stories it turns everything our tv sets, educators, and governments are telling us about the world on its head.
Yes, there are a lot of loons out there who are UFO truthers.
Still, one can't look at the data and readily dismiss the reams of credible incident reports without lying to oneself or engaging in gross intellectual dishonesty.
This is why many self-professed "skeptics", it would seem, never bother to look at the data at all.
The mainstream massmind's infantilizing obsession with science fiction and fantasy on the one hand while maintaining rigid, rabid ignorance of this phenomenon strikes me as somewhat dissociative.
I think the implications of there being any substance to this stuff scares the bejesus out of most people, frankly. Especially "religious" people (or more correctly, dogmatic people). Or perhaps the average person is uncomfortable living with uncertainties.
There's also a really weird social stigma attached to being interested in this stuff, a taint by association that affects one's credibility and perceived intellectual merit.
For this reason I suspect there are many more people who are interested in this than would be apparent from the amount of conversation that takes place on the matter.
Strange that a society so taken with "science" should also be happy to ignore what's right in front of its face. But this goes back to cognitive dissonance, again... people are strongly psychologically motivated to ignore, forget, or hallucinate away data that interferes with their operating belief systems.
Saturday, May 30, 2015
Wednesday, May 27, 2015
Foundation of a Weaponized Term
“Conspiracy theory” is a term that at once strikes fear and anxiety in the hearts of most every public figure, particularly journalists and academics. Since the 1960s the label has become a disciplinary device that has been overwhelmingly effective in defining certain events off limits to inquiry or debate. Especially in the United States raising legitimate questions about dubious official narratives destined to inform public opinion (and thereby public policy) is a major thought crime that must be cauterized from the public psyche at all costs.
Conspiracy theory’s acutely negative connotations may be traced to liberal historian Richard Hofstadter’s well-known fusillades against the “New Right.” Yet it was the Central Intelligence Agency that likely played the greatest role in effectively “weaponizing” the term. In the groundswell of public skepticism toward the Warren Commission’s findings on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the CIA sent a detailed directive to all of its bureaus. Titled “Countering Criticism of the Warren Commission Report,” the dispatch played a definitive role in making the “conspiracy theory” term a weapon to be wielded against almost any individual or group calling the government’s increasingly clandestine programs and activities into question.
This important memorandum and its broad implications for American politics and public discourse are detailed in a forthcoming book by Florida State University political scientist Lance deHaven-Smith, Conspiracy Theory in America. Dr. deHaven-Smith devised the state crimes against democracy concept to interpret and explain potential government complicity in events such as the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the major political assassinations of the 1960s, and 9/11.
CIA Document 1035-960 was released in response to a 1976 FOIA request by the New York Times. The directive is especially significant because it outlines the CIA’s concern regarding “the whole reputation of the American government” vis-à-vis the Warren Commission Report. The agency was especially interested in maintaining its own image and role as it “contributed information to the [Warren] investigation.”
The memorandum lays out a detailed series of actions and techniques for “countering and discrediting the claims of the conspiracy theorists, so as to inhibit the circulation of such claims in other countries.” For example, approaching “friendly elite contacts (especially politicians and editors)” to remind them of the Warren Commission’s integrity and soundness should be prioritized. “[T]he charges of the critics are without serious foundation,” the document reads, and “further speculative discussion only plays in to the hands of the [Communist] opposition.”
The agency also directed its members “[t]o employ propaganda assets to [negate] and refute the attacks of the critics. Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose.”
1035-960 further delineates specific techniques for countering “conspiratorial” arguments centering on the Warren Commission’s findings. Such responses and their coupling with the pejorative label have been routinely wheeled out in various guises by corporate media outlets, commentators and political leaders to this day against those demanding truth and accountability about momentous public events.
*No significant new evidence has emerged which the [Warren] Commission did not consider.
*Critics usually overvalue particular items and ignore others.
*Conspiracy on the large scale often suggested would be impossible to conceal in the United States.
*Critics have often been enticed by a form of intellectual pride: they light on some theory and fall in love with it.
*Oswald would not have been any sensible person’s choice for a co-conspirator.
*Such vague accusations as that “more than ten people have died mysteriously” [during the Warren Commission’s inquiry] can always be explained in some natural way e.g.: the individuals concerned have for the most part died of natural causes.
Today more so than ever news media personalities and commentators occupy powerful positions for initiating propaganda activities closely resembling those set out in 1035-960 against anyone who might question state-sanctioned narratives of controversial and poorly understood occurrences. Indeed, as the motives and methods encompassed in the document have become fully internalized by intellectual workers and operationalized through such media, the almost uniform public acceptance of official accounts concerning unresolved events such as the Oklahoma City Murrah Federal Building bombing, 9/11, and most recently the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, is largely guaranteed.
The effect on academic and journalistic inquiry into ambiguous and unexplained events that may in turn mobilize public inquiry, debate and action has been dramatic and far-reaching. One need only look to the rising police state and evisceration of civil liberties and constitutional protections as evidence of how this set of subtle and deceptive intimidation tactics has profoundly encumbered the potential for future independent self-determination and civic empowerment.
read more: http://memoryholeblog.com/2013/01/20/cia-document-1035-960-foundation-of-a-weaponized-term/#more-2077
Conspiracy theory’s acutely negative connotations may be traced to liberal historian Richard Hofstadter’s well-known fusillades against the “New Right.” Yet it was the Central Intelligence Agency that likely played the greatest role in effectively “weaponizing” the term. In the groundswell of public skepticism toward the Warren Commission’s findings on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the CIA sent a detailed directive to all of its bureaus. Titled “Countering Criticism of the Warren Commission Report,” the dispatch played a definitive role in making the “conspiracy theory” term a weapon to be wielded against almost any individual or group calling the government’s increasingly clandestine programs and activities into question.
This important memorandum and its broad implications for American politics and public discourse are detailed in a forthcoming book by Florida State University political scientist Lance deHaven-Smith, Conspiracy Theory in America. Dr. deHaven-Smith devised the state crimes against democracy concept to interpret and explain potential government complicity in events such as the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the major political assassinations of the 1960s, and 9/11.
CIA Document 1035-960 was released in response to a 1976 FOIA request by the New York Times. The directive is especially significant because it outlines the CIA’s concern regarding “the whole reputation of the American government” vis-à-vis the Warren Commission Report. The agency was especially interested in maintaining its own image and role as it “contributed information to the [Warren] investigation.”
The memorandum lays out a detailed series of actions and techniques for “countering and discrediting the claims of the conspiracy theorists, so as to inhibit the circulation of such claims in other countries.” For example, approaching “friendly elite contacts (especially politicians and editors)” to remind them of the Warren Commission’s integrity and soundness should be prioritized. “[T]he charges of the critics are without serious foundation,” the document reads, and “further speculative discussion only plays in to the hands of the [Communist] opposition.”
The agency also directed its members “[t]o employ propaganda assets to [negate] and refute the attacks of the critics. Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose.”
1035-960 further delineates specific techniques for countering “conspiratorial” arguments centering on the Warren Commission’s findings. Such responses and their coupling with the pejorative label have been routinely wheeled out in various guises by corporate media outlets, commentators and political leaders to this day against those demanding truth and accountability about momentous public events.
*No significant new evidence has emerged which the [Warren] Commission did not consider.
*Critics usually overvalue particular items and ignore others.
*Conspiracy on the large scale often suggested would be impossible to conceal in the United States.
*Critics have often been enticed by a form of intellectual pride: they light on some theory and fall in love with it.
*Oswald would not have been any sensible person’s choice for a co-conspirator.
*Such vague accusations as that “more than ten people have died mysteriously” [during the Warren Commission’s inquiry] can always be explained in some natural way e.g.: the individuals concerned have for the most part died of natural causes.
Today more so than ever news media personalities and commentators occupy powerful positions for initiating propaganda activities closely resembling those set out in 1035-960 against anyone who might question state-sanctioned narratives of controversial and poorly understood occurrences. Indeed, as the motives and methods encompassed in the document have become fully internalized by intellectual workers and operationalized through such media, the almost uniform public acceptance of official accounts concerning unresolved events such as the Oklahoma City Murrah Federal Building bombing, 9/11, and most recently the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, is largely guaranteed.
The effect on academic and journalistic inquiry into ambiguous and unexplained events that may in turn mobilize public inquiry, debate and action has been dramatic and far-reaching. One need only look to the rising police state and evisceration of civil liberties and constitutional protections as evidence of how this set of subtle and deceptive intimidation tactics has profoundly encumbered the potential for future independent self-determination and civic empowerment.
read more: http://memoryholeblog.com/2013/01/20/cia-document-1035-960-foundation-of-a-weaponized-term/#more-2077
Tuesday, May 26, 2015
Satanic sex abuse in the UK... and beyond?
The following comes from The Guardian:
1,400 investigated in child sex abuse inquiry, including politicians
Officer leading Operation Hydrant inquiry says out of 1,433 alleged offenders 76 were politicians, 43 were from music industry and 135 were from TV, film or radio
Police across the country are investigating more than 1,400 men – including 261 high-profile individuals – over allegations of child abuse in the past, a senior officer running the national operation has revealed.
The scale of alleged child abuse across society – both recent and non-recent – was stark, said Ch Const Simon Bailey, who runs Operation Hydrant, the national coordinating team overseeing the various inquiries.
Figures from police forces in England and Wales published on Wednesday reveal that 1,433 men have been identified in reports of alleged abuse by victims, since the operation was set up in 2014.
Of these 216 are dead, 76 are politicians, both national and local figures, 43 are from the music industry, 135 from TV, film or radio and seven from the world of sport. The cases include recent high-profile convictions, including Rolf Harris, Gary Glitter and Max Clifford.
Hundreds of institutions have been identified by victims of non-recent abuse as places where their abuse took place. These include 154 schools, 75 children’s homes, 40 religious institutions, 14 medical establishments, 11 community groups, nine prisons or young offender institutions, nine sports venues and 28 other places including military establishments.
Bailey warned that the number of victims could run into the hundreds of thousands, and called for much more support for survivors of child abuse. He said he believed that the enormous increase in reports of all types of child sexual abuse – which have risen by 71% since 2012 to 116,000 reports this year – was not just down to more victims coming forward.
Instead, Bailey warned that the internet was creating the opportunity for more abuse to take place, and said live-streaming of child abuse on mobile phones was the next challenge facing law enforcers.
Bailey said the number of reports of abuse, both by adults of historical abuse, and by children today, was increasing on a daily basis, and the figures released on Wednesday were just a snapshot of the challenge faced by the police and society as a whole.
He supported calls for much more funding for victims of child abuse. “The government has allocated millions of pounds to provide additional support, but I am not sure that is going to be enough. We are talking about hundreds of thousands of victims,” he said.
Of the 116,000 reports of child sexual abuse this year, 52,446 are allegations of sexual abuse in the past, some involving cases going back decades. This amounts to a 166% increase in reports of non-recent abuse, said Bailey.
Detectives on Operation Hydrant are coordinating the many investigations into non-recent abuse involving both high-profile individuals and institutions, from a hub in Sheffield.
A team from Operation Hydrant is liaising with Justice Goddard to support the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse.
Each of the 1,433 suspects has been put into a major crime database, which is cross referenced to ensure that no inquires are being duplicated and to identify suspects whose offending crossed borders. So far 30 individuals have been identified in one or more of the investigations.
Bailey said the figures were stark. “This year I am anticipating an estimated 116,000 reports of child sexual abuse will be received, that is a 71% increase since 2012, so it gives you some idea of the scale of this.
“What we are seeing is an absolutely unprecedented increase in the number of reports that are coming forward. That has brought about a step-change in the way the police service has had to deal with this. We are rising to and meeting the challenge, this is what Operation Hydrant is about.”
Bailey said the Hydrant team was working to create a database which would try to ensure that the failures of the past – as identified in the Jimmy Savile case – would not be repeated.
During the investigation of the late Radio 1 DJ it emerged that intelligence and information, including reports of abuse, were buried in the system – in some cases to prevent leaks – which meant when individual police forces with their own allegations checked the national police computer database his name did not come up.
“One of our primary objectives is to make sure where we get intelligence and where we get evidence of abuse it is being coordinated so we don’t make those mistakes. That particular case showed mistakes were made and he was able to go on and continue further abusing. The whole idea is that we don’t make those mistakes again,” he said.
Bailey said everyone from teachers, GPs, parents and wider society had a duty to look out for signs of abuse. He said: “We face a massive challenge in terms of resources, time and expertise to balance offering routes of justice for those who suffered in the past while safeguarding and protecting children in a vulnerable position today.”
Sheila Taylor, from the national working group on child sexual exploitation, said a massive public health campaign was needed to address the scale of child abuse within society.
John Brown from the NSPCC said the failure to support victims amount to a public health problem. “That is the issue. We are not helping children and adult victims to recover and there are huge costs to society, there are economic considerations and individual psychiatric costs.”
Tom Watson, the Labour MP whose claims made in the Commons that there was a paedophile network linked to parliament triggered a Scotland Yard investigation, said: “The sheer number of allegations just shows why there should be a dedicated national police response to child abuse inquiries. Intelligence gathering and data sharing will be far easier were there to be a dedicated team comprising of specialists from around the country.
“We are only just beginning to understand how as a country, over many generations, we managed to turn a blind eye to Britain’s child abuse scandal. The survivors deserve justice and future generations require greater protection.”
Gabrielle Shaw, chief executive of the National Association for People Abused in Childhood (Napac), said: “The scale and scope of sexual abuse of children committed in the past can often seem overwhelming. What these figures from the National Police Chiefs’ Council do is to provide some degree of measure of the issue.
“And what a measure it is; prolific offenders from all spheres of society, thinking they were untouchable, abusing children and the most vulnerable in settings where they should have been safest , including schools, care facilities and religious institutions.”
1,400 investigated in child sex abuse inquiry, including politicians
Officer leading Operation Hydrant inquiry says out of 1,433 alleged offenders 76 were politicians, 43 were from music industry and 135 were from TV, film or radio
Police across the country are investigating more than 1,400 men – including 261 high-profile individuals – over allegations of child abuse in the past, a senior officer running the national operation has revealed.
The scale of alleged child abuse across society – both recent and non-recent – was stark, said Ch Const Simon Bailey, who runs Operation Hydrant, the national coordinating team overseeing the various inquiries.
Figures from police forces in England and Wales published on Wednesday reveal that 1,433 men have been identified in reports of alleged abuse by victims, since the operation was set up in 2014.
Of these 216 are dead, 76 are politicians, both national and local figures, 43 are from the music industry, 135 from TV, film or radio and seven from the world of sport. The cases include recent high-profile convictions, including Rolf Harris, Gary Glitter and Max Clifford.
Hundreds of institutions have been identified by victims of non-recent abuse as places where their abuse took place. These include 154 schools, 75 children’s homes, 40 religious institutions, 14 medical establishments, 11 community groups, nine prisons or young offender institutions, nine sports venues and 28 other places including military establishments.
Bailey warned that the number of victims could run into the hundreds of thousands, and called for much more support for survivors of child abuse. He said he believed that the enormous increase in reports of all types of child sexual abuse – which have risen by 71% since 2012 to 116,000 reports this year – was not just down to more victims coming forward.
Instead, Bailey warned that the internet was creating the opportunity for more abuse to take place, and said live-streaming of child abuse on mobile phones was the next challenge facing law enforcers.
Bailey said the number of reports of abuse, both by adults of historical abuse, and by children today, was increasing on a daily basis, and the figures released on Wednesday were just a snapshot of the challenge faced by the police and society as a whole.
He supported calls for much more funding for victims of child abuse. “The government has allocated millions of pounds to provide additional support, but I am not sure that is going to be enough. We are talking about hundreds of thousands of victims,” he said.
Of the 116,000 reports of child sexual abuse this year, 52,446 are allegations of sexual abuse in the past, some involving cases going back decades. This amounts to a 166% increase in reports of non-recent abuse, said Bailey.
Detectives on Operation Hydrant are coordinating the many investigations into non-recent abuse involving both high-profile individuals and institutions, from a hub in Sheffield.
A team from Operation Hydrant is liaising with Justice Goddard to support the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse.
Each of the 1,433 suspects has been put into a major crime database, which is cross referenced to ensure that no inquires are being duplicated and to identify suspects whose offending crossed borders. So far 30 individuals have been identified in one or more of the investigations.
Bailey said the figures were stark. “This year I am anticipating an estimated 116,000 reports of child sexual abuse will be received, that is a 71% increase since 2012, so it gives you some idea of the scale of this.
“What we are seeing is an absolutely unprecedented increase in the number of reports that are coming forward. That has brought about a step-change in the way the police service has had to deal with this. We are rising to and meeting the challenge, this is what Operation Hydrant is about.”
Bailey said the Hydrant team was working to create a database which would try to ensure that the failures of the past – as identified in the Jimmy Savile case – would not be repeated.
During the investigation of the late Radio 1 DJ it emerged that intelligence and information, including reports of abuse, were buried in the system – in some cases to prevent leaks – which meant when individual police forces with their own allegations checked the national police computer database his name did not come up.
“One of our primary objectives is to make sure where we get intelligence and where we get evidence of abuse it is being coordinated so we don’t make those mistakes. That particular case showed mistakes were made and he was able to go on and continue further abusing. The whole idea is that we don’t make those mistakes again,” he said.
Bailey said everyone from teachers, GPs, parents and wider society had a duty to look out for signs of abuse. He said: “We face a massive challenge in terms of resources, time and expertise to balance offering routes of justice for those who suffered in the past while safeguarding and protecting children in a vulnerable position today.”
Sheila Taylor, from the national working group on child sexual exploitation, said a massive public health campaign was needed to address the scale of child abuse within society.
John Brown from the NSPCC said the failure to support victims amount to a public health problem. “That is the issue. We are not helping children and adult victims to recover and there are huge costs to society, there are economic considerations and individual psychiatric costs.”
Tom Watson, the Labour MP whose claims made in the Commons that there was a paedophile network linked to parliament triggered a Scotland Yard investigation, said: “The sheer number of allegations just shows why there should be a dedicated national police response to child abuse inquiries. Intelligence gathering and data sharing will be far easier were there to be a dedicated team comprising of specialists from around the country.
“We are only just beginning to understand how as a country, over many generations, we managed to turn a blind eye to Britain’s child abuse scandal. The survivors deserve justice and future generations require greater protection.”
Gabrielle Shaw, chief executive of the National Association for People Abused in Childhood (Napac), said: “The scale and scope of sexual abuse of children committed in the past can often seem overwhelming. What these figures from the National Police Chiefs’ Council do is to provide some degree of measure of the issue.
“And what a measure it is; prolific offenders from all spheres of society, thinking they were untouchable, abusing children and the most vulnerable in settings where they should have been safest , including schools, care facilities and religious institutions.”
***
UK paper The Express goes into more detail about the Jimmy Savile case, alleging:
Jimmy Savile was part of satanic ring
JIMMY SAVILE beat and raped a 12-year-old girl during a secret satanic ritual in a hospital.
The perverted star wore a hooded robe and mask as he abused the terrifi ed victim in a candle-lit basement.
He also chanted “Hail Satan” in Latin as other paedophile devil worshippers joined in and assaulted the girl at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Buckinghamshire. The attack, which happened in 1975, shines a sinister new light on the former DJ’s 54-year reign of terror.
Savile, who died aged 84 in October 2011, is now Britain’s worst sex offender after police revealed he preyed on at least 450 victims aged eight to 47.
The girl kept her torment hidden for nearly 20 years before finally opening up to therapist Valerie Sinason.
Dr Sinason told the Sunday Express she first spoke to the victim in 1992. “She had been a patient at Stoke Mandeville in 1975 when Savile was a regular visitor.
“She recalled being led into a room that was filled with candles on the lowest level of the hospital, somewhere that was not regularly used by staff. Several adults were there, including Jimmy Savile who, like the others, was wearing a robe and a mask.
“She recognised him because of his distinctive voice and the fact that his blond hair was protruding from the side of the mask. He was not the leader but he was seen as important because of his fame.
“She was molested, raped and beaten and heard words that sounded like ‘Ave Satanas’, a Latinised version of ‘Hail Satan’, being chanted. There was no mention of any other child being there and she cannot remember how long the attack lasted but she was left extremely frightened and shaken.”
Savile was a volunteer porter and fundraiser at the hospital between 1965 and 1988 and had his own quarters there.
Five years after the hospital attack, he abused a second victim during another black mass ceremony held at a house in a wealthy London street.
The woman was 21 at the time and was made to attend an orgy, which later took on a darker twist.
Dr Sinason, director of the Clinic for Dissociative Studies in London, said: “A second victim approached me in 1993. She said she had been ‘lent out’ as a supposedly consenting prostituted woman at a party in a London house in 1980.
“The first part of the evening started off with an orgy but half-way through some of the participants left.
“Along with other young women, the victim was shepherded to wait in another room before being brought back to find Savile in a master of ceremonies kind of role with a group wearing robes and masks. She too heard Latin chanting and instantly recognised satanist regalia. Although the girl was a young adult, who was above the age of consent, she had suffered a history of sexual abuse and was extremely vulnerable.”
Both victims contacted Dr Sinason, who is president of the Institute of Psychotherapy and Disability, while she was involved in a Department of Health-funded study into sexual abuse committed during rituals and religious ceremonies. She said: “Both these witnesses did speak to police at the time but were vulnerable witnesses and on encountering any surprise or shock did not dare to give all the details.”
The police took no action.
He also chanted “Hail Satan” in Latin as other paedophile devil worshippers joined in and assaulted the girl at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Buckinghamshire. The attack, which happened in 1975, shines a sinister new light on the former DJ’s 54-year reign of terror.
Savile, who died aged 84 in October 2011, is now Britain’s worst sex offender after police revealed he preyed on at least 450 victims aged eight to 47.
The girl kept her torment hidden for nearly 20 years before finally opening up to therapist Valerie Sinason.
Dr Sinason told the Sunday Express she first spoke to the victim in 1992. “She had been a patient at Stoke Mandeville in 1975 when Savile was a regular visitor.
“She recalled being led into a room that was filled with candles on the lowest level of the hospital, somewhere that was not regularly used by staff. Several adults were there, including Jimmy Savile who, like the others, was wearing a robe and a mask.
“She recognised him because of his distinctive voice and the fact that his blond hair was protruding from the side of the mask. He was not the leader but he was seen as important because of his fame.
“She was molested, raped and beaten and heard words that sounded like ‘Ave Satanas’, a Latinised version of ‘Hail Satan’, being chanted. There was no mention of any other child being there and she cannot remember how long the attack lasted but she was left extremely frightened and shaken.”
Savile was a volunteer porter and fundraiser at the hospital between 1965 and 1988 and had his own quarters there.
Five years after the hospital attack, he abused a second victim during another black mass ceremony held at a house in a wealthy London street.
The woman was 21 at the time and was made to attend an orgy, which later took on a darker twist.
Dr Sinason, director of the Clinic for Dissociative Studies in London, said: “A second victim approached me in 1993. She said she had been ‘lent out’ as a supposedly consenting prostituted woman at a party in a London house in 1980.
“The first part of the evening started off with an orgy but half-way through some of the participants left.
“Along with other young women, the victim was shepherded to wait in another room before being brought back to find Savile in a master of ceremonies kind of role with a group wearing robes and masks. She too heard Latin chanting and instantly recognised satanist regalia. Although the girl was a young adult, who was above the age of consent, she had suffered a history of sexual abuse and was extremely vulnerable.”
Both victims contacted Dr Sinason, who is president of the Institute of Psychotherapy and Disability, while she was involved in a Department of Health-funded study into sexual abuse committed during rituals and religious ceremonies. She said: “Both these witnesses did speak to police at the time but were vulnerable witnesses and on encountering any surprise or shock did not dare to give all the details.”
The police took no action.
Dr Sinason added: “Savile was still a huge celebrity in the early Nineties, let’s not forget, and there was never any action taken against him or any of the others involved.
“Neither girl knew one another, they lived in different parts of the country and contacted me a year apart yet their experiences are very similar. Whether Savile was a practising Satanist or merely enjoyed dressing up to scare his victims even more will perhaps never be known but he left those two girls mentally scarred.”
Dr Sinason has passed details of the abuse to officers from the Savile inquiry, Operation Yewtree.
A joint report published on Friday by the Metropolitan Police and the NSPCC uncovered at least 30 claims of abuse at Stoke Mandeville.
The hospital said it was unable to discuss individual cases while its own “Speaking Out” investigation was ongoing.
Anne Eden, chief executive of Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust, said: “As the investigation’s name suggests, it is very keen to hear from anybody with any knowledge that they feel could help its work or anybody that needs support because of Jimmy Savile’s alleged behaviour.”
“Neither girl knew one another, they lived in different parts of the country and contacted me a year apart yet their experiences are very similar. Whether Savile was a practising Satanist or merely enjoyed dressing up to scare his victims even more will perhaps never be known but he left those two girls mentally scarred.”
Dr Sinason has passed details of the abuse to officers from the Savile inquiry, Operation Yewtree.
A joint report published on Friday by the Metropolitan Police and the NSPCC uncovered at least 30 claims of abuse at Stoke Mandeville.
The hospital said it was unable to discuss individual cases while its own “Speaking Out” investigation was ongoing.
Anne Eden, chief executive of Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust, said: “As the investigation’s name suggests, it is very keen to hear from anybody with any knowledge that they feel could help its work or anybody that needs support because of Jimmy Savile’s alleged behaviour.”
***
Next up is video of one of the abuse victims claiming that everyone being investigated is a Freemason:
***
Let's hear from The Corbett Report:
Pedophiles in Politics: An Open Source Investigation
As 2015 begins, high-profile cases involving accusations of pedophilia in the highest ranks of political power are making headlines on both sides of the Atlantic.
MPs Caught in Pedophile Network
The first case involves the exposure of five VIP pedophile rings operating in Britain in the 1970s and 80s that have been researched in a dossier compiled by John Mann, an MP for Bassetlaw in the Midlands, which was then submitted to the London Metropolitan Police for further investigation. These five rings all included at least one current or former member of parliament, with a total of 24 politicians having been identified in Mann’s dossier. Six of those 24 are currently serving members of the UK government, including three MPs and three members of the House of Lords. As an MP himself, Mann enjoys parliamentary privilege to name the accused politicians in the House of Commons but has said he will not do so because he believes the accusations should be investigated by police first.
The Met are already investigating claims made by an alleged victim of the network that a Conservative MP strangled a boy to death during one of the ring’s sex parties, and that he personally witnessed two other boys murdered by the gang, including one who was run over in broad daylight. Mann has also indicated that he believes two men may have been murdered as part of a cover-up of the network’s activities.
One of the hurdles in investigating the claims is the Official Secrets Act, which prevents the disclosure of state secrets and “sensitive” information. “It is clear there are a lot of people who could provide a lot of information, potentially vital information, to support ongoing criminal investigations,” Mann said regarding the investigation. “But they are not doing so because of the Official Secrets Act. They are fearful of not only breaking the law but the potential effect on their pension. This is absolutely crucial if we are to get some of these ex-officers coming forward and to get prosecutions of some of the former MPs.” He has asked Home Secretary Theresa May to lift the restrictions, allowing former officials to speak up about what they know about the case, but so far there is no indication that this has been done.
Epstein Accuser Names Names
Meanwhile in the United States a similarly shocking set of allegations are emerging from a Florida court case surrounding Jeffrey Epstein, the prominent American financier and billionaire who was convicted in 2008 of soliciting an underage girl for prostitution. In the years since his conviction, dozens of women have come forward to accuse him of abuse, and he has made 17 out-of-court settlements in various civil cases arising from these accusations. There is now an ongoing federal civil suit in Florida in which two women are alleging violations of the Crime Victims’ Rights Act in the remarkable plea deal that saw Epstein emerge from the scandal with a single count of solicitation of underage prostitution and a 13-month prison sentence.
Late last month, Virginia Roberts made headlines by submitting a motion to be added to the legal action in Florida. Those documents allege that Roberts was one of Epstein’s underage sex slaves and names both Prince Andrew, Duke of York and fifth in line for the British crown, and Alan Dershowitz, a well-known lawyer and author, as men with whom she was forced to have sex while underage. Buckingham Palace has emphatically denied the claims, and Dershowitz threatened to sue Roberts’ lawyers over the allegations but was instead counter-sued for defamation.
The scandal threatens to re-focus attention on the Epstein case, which raises many important questions about the billionaire’s connections with the rich and powerful. It has since been revealed that Epstein had 21 different phone numbers for contacting his friend Bill Clinton, who, court records allege, “frequently flew” on Epstein’s private jet between 2002 and 2005. The American tabloid press is now reporting that the new claims have created problems for Clinton’s marriage, with Hillary allegedly visibly angry at Bill at a recent public appearance.
Nothing New
Allegations of pedophilia networks amongst the political and entertainment “elite” are of course nothing new. In recent years Britain has been rocked by revelations of repeated, serial sexual abuse of children by popular children’s television entertainers Jimmy Savile and Rolf Harris. These scandals have raised questions about institutional support for these activities at a number of levels, including the BBC, the political classes and even royal participation in the enabling and cover-up of the abuse.
Likewise in America, allegations of political pedophile rings date back decades, with the most notorious being the Franklin scandal in which Lawrence E. King Jr. was accused of running an elite child prostitution ring for Nebraska Republican Party members and high-ranking U.S. politicians. The story involves accusations that link the ring to CIA drug dealing, murder and cover up, including accusations of ritual abuse in the Bohemian Grove. The investigation was championed by former State Senator John De Camp and eventually brought before a grand jury in Douglas County but was eventually thrown out as a “carefully crafted hoax” and two of the alleged victims were themselves convicted of perjury after two other witnesses recanted their supporting testimony. Still, questions still surround the cover up of the case as documented in suppressed documentaries like Conspiracy of Silence.
Cover Ups
The question of whether the London Met will be adequate to the task of properly investigating Mann’s dossier is not an idle one. Just last year reports revealed that the Met had 260 crates of evidence documenting police corruption in the north-east corner of London alone. The evidence relates to Operation Tiberius, a 2002 investigation that concluded there was “endemic corruption” in the Metropolitan Police force and that organized crime networks had been able to infiltrate the Met “at will.” The report that issued from that investigation was 170 pages long, but only six heavily-redacted pages were provided to a parliamentary committee that had requested the information. Only a handful of the scores of then-serving officers and officials identified by the investigation were ever prosecuted.
In the Epstein case, as well, there are numerous questions surrounding the possibility of high-level cover up. In recent weeks it has emerged that Epstein struck a remarkable secret deal with the US Attorney’s Office that barred more than 500 pages of documents detailing negotiations of the deal and a staggering 13,000 documents from the investigation into Epstein’s activities that were shelved as a result of the bargain. Moreover, the victims were not told of the plea bargain until after it had been concluded. All of this resulted from the US Attorney Office’s pledge to avoid turning the case into a “media circus” and disclosing the names of people like Prince Andrew.
Clearing the Smoke, Smashing the Mirrors
As always with ongoing legal investigations, it is important to sort the credible from the incredible, the proven from the unproven, and the mere allegations from the actual findings of fact. Hoaxes, lies and moral panics have erupted in the past that have proven fraudulent in the long run.
So what are the credible sources in investigations like these? How can those with a monetary or other interest in slandering the rich and powerful be separated from those with credible claims of abuse? What bodies or institutions can be relied on to investigate claims of this nature, especially when they involve sitting politicians and others in the highest reaches of political or financial power?
These questions and others like them will be answered in an upcoming edition of The Corbett Report podcast. In the meantime, Corbett Report members are encouraged to sign in and leave their own thoughts on these issues, including sources for further reading on theses topics and discussion of why pedophilia accusations of high-ranking politicians continue to crop up, and what these claims might mean if they are indeed true.
MPs Caught in Pedophile Network
The first case involves the exposure of five VIP pedophile rings operating in Britain in the 1970s and 80s that have been researched in a dossier compiled by John Mann, an MP for Bassetlaw in the Midlands, which was then submitted to the London Metropolitan Police for further investigation. These five rings all included at least one current or former member of parliament, with a total of 24 politicians having been identified in Mann’s dossier. Six of those 24 are currently serving members of the UK government, including three MPs and three members of the House of Lords. As an MP himself, Mann enjoys parliamentary privilege to name the accused politicians in the House of Commons but has said he will not do so because he believes the accusations should be investigated by police first.
The Met are already investigating claims made by an alleged victim of the network that a Conservative MP strangled a boy to death during one of the ring’s sex parties, and that he personally witnessed two other boys murdered by the gang, including one who was run over in broad daylight. Mann has also indicated that he believes two men may have been murdered as part of a cover-up of the network’s activities.
One of the hurdles in investigating the claims is the Official Secrets Act, which prevents the disclosure of state secrets and “sensitive” information. “It is clear there are a lot of people who could provide a lot of information, potentially vital information, to support ongoing criminal investigations,” Mann said regarding the investigation. “But they are not doing so because of the Official Secrets Act. They are fearful of not only breaking the law but the potential effect on their pension. This is absolutely crucial if we are to get some of these ex-officers coming forward and to get prosecutions of some of the former MPs.” He has asked Home Secretary Theresa May to lift the restrictions, allowing former officials to speak up about what they know about the case, but so far there is no indication that this has been done.
Epstein Accuser Names Names
Meanwhile in the United States a similarly shocking set of allegations are emerging from a Florida court case surrounding Jeffrey Epstein, the prominent American financier and billionaire who was convicted in 2008 of soliciting an underage girl for prostitution. In the years since his conviction, dozens of women have come forward to accuse him of abuse, and he has made 17 out-of-court settlements in various civil cases arising from these accusations. There is now an ongoing federal civil suit in Florida in which two women are alleging violations of the Crime Victims’ Rights Act in the remarkable plea deal that saw Epstein emerge from the scandal with a single count of solicitation of underage prostitution and a 13-month prison sentence.
Late last month, Virginia Roberts made headlines by submitting a motion to be added to the legal action in Florida. Those documents allege that Roberts was one of Epstein’s underage sex slaves and names both Prince Andrew, Duke of York and fifth in line for the British crown, and Alan Dershowitz, a well-known lawyer and author, as men with whom she was forced to have sex while underage. Buckingham Palace has emphatically denied the claims, and Dershowitz threatened to sue Roberts’ lawyers over the allegations but was instead counter-sued for defamation.
The scandal threatens to re-focus attention on the Epstein case, which raises many important questions about the billionaire’s connections with the rich and powerful. It has since been revealed that Epstein had 21 different phone numbers for contacting his friend Bill Clinton, who, court records allege, “frequently flew” on Epstein’s private jet between 2002 and 2005. The American tabloid press is now reporting that the new claims have created problems for Clinton’s marriage, with Hillary allegedly visibly angry at Bill at a recent public appearance.
Nothing New
Allegations of pedophilia networks amongst the political and entertainment “elite” are of course nothing new. In recent years Britain has been rocked by revelations of repeated, serial sexual abuse of children by popular children’s television entertainers Jimmy Savile and Rolf Harris. These scandals have raised questions about institutional support for these activities at a number of levels, including the BBC, the political classes and even royal participation in the enabling and cover-up of the abuse.
Likewise in America, allegations of political pedophile rings date back decades, with the most notorious being the Franklin scandal in which Lawrence E. King Jr. was accused of running an elite child prostitution ring for Nebraska Republican Party members and high-ranking U.S. politicians. The story involves accusations that link the ring to CIA drug dealing, murder and cover up, including accusations of ritual abuse in the Bohemian Grove. The investigation was championed by former State Senator John De Camp and eventually brought before a grand jury in Douglas County but was eventually thrown out as a “carefully crafted hoax” and two of the alleged victims were themselves convicted of perjury after two other witnesses recanted their supporting testimony. Still, questions still surround the cover up of the case as documented in suppressed documentaries like Conspiracy of Silence.
Cover Ups
The question of whether the London Met will be adequate to the task of properly investigating Mann’s dossier is not an idle one. Just last year reports revealed that the Met had 260 crates of evidence documenting police corruption in the north-east corner of London alone. The evidence relates to Operation Tiberius, a 2002 investigation that concluded there was “endemic corruption” in the Metropolitan Police force and that organized crime networks had been able to infiltrate the Met “at will.” The report that issued from that investigation was 170 pages long, but only six heavily-redacted pages were provided to a parliamentary committee that had requested the information. Only a handful of the scores of then-serving officers and officials identified by the investigation were ever prosecuted.
In the Epstein case, as well, there are numerous questions surrounding the possibility of high-level cover up. In recent weeks it has emerged that Epstein struck a remarkable secret deal with the US Attorney’s Office that barred more than 500 pages of documents detailing negotiations of the deal and a staggering 13,000 documents from the investigation into Epstein’s activities that were shelved as a result of the bargain. Moreover, the victims were not told of the plea bargain until after it had been concluded. All of this resulted from the US Attorney Office’s pledge to avoid turning the case into a “media circus” and disclosing the names of people like Prince Andrew.
Clearing the Smoke, Smashing the Mirrors
As always with ongoing legal investigations, it is important to sort the credible from the incredible, the proven from the unproven, and the mere allegations from the actual findings of fact. Hoaxes, lies and moral panics have erupted in the past that have proven fraudulent in the long run.
So what are the credible sources in investigations like these? How can those with a monetary or other interest in slandering the rich and powerful be separated from those with credible claims of abuse? What bodies or institutions can be relied on to investigate claims of this nature, especially when they involve sitting politicians and others in the highest reaches of political or financial power?
These questions and others like them will be answered in an upcoming edition of The Corbett Report podcast. In the meantime, Corbett Report members are encouraged to sign in and leave their own thoughts on these issues, including sources for further reading on theses topics and discussion of why pedophilia accusations of high-ranking politicians continue to crop up, and what these claims might mean if they are indeed true.
***
Further reading:
Theodore L. Gunderson (November 7, 1928 - July 31, 2011 was an American Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agent In Charge and head of the Los Angeles FBI. He was most famous for handling the Marilyn Monroe and the John F. Kennedy cases. He was the author of the best selling book How to Locate Anyone Anywhere.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Gunderson
Here's video of Ted alleging the existence of a vast underground network of drug-smugglers and Satanic pedophiles operating through the albabet intelligence agencies of the United States, with tendrils reaching all the way to the steps of The White House. He also goes on at some length about false flag attacks in the United States, and about The Bavarian Illuminati, whoever they are.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4qWYv67XA4
One thing Ted was excited about was having obtained a copy of the documentary, Conspiracy of Silence: The Franklin Cover-up, which had been scheduled to air on television but had been nixxed by congressional order. Uh oh, there's that "conspiracy" word again.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_child_prostitution_ring_allegations
Here's the documentary.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQHrbJPhus4
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Gunderson
Here's video of Ted alleging the existence of a vast underground network of drug-smugglers and Satanic pedophiles operating through the albabet intelligence agencies of the United States, with tendrils reaching all the way to the steps of The White House. He also goes on at some length about false flag attacks in the United States, and about The Bavarian Illuminati, whoever they are.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4qWYv67XA4
One thing Ted was excited about was having obtained a copy of the documentary, Conspiracy of Silence: The Franklin Cover-up, which had been scheduled to air on television but had been nixxed by congressional order. Uh oh, there's that "conspiracy" word again.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_child_prostitution_ring_allegations
Here's the documentary.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQHrbJPhus4
Saturday, May 23, 2015
Thursday, May 21, 2015
In the beginning was the code
The universe seems incredibly complex. But could its rules be dead simple? Juergen Schmidhuber’s fascinating story will convince you that this universe and your own life are just by-products of a very simple and fast program computing all logically possible universes.
Juergen Schmidhuber is Director of the Swiss Artificial Intelligence Lab IDSIA (since 1995), Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Lugano, Switzerland (since 2009), and Professor SUPSI (since 2003).
He helped to transform IDSIA into one of the world’s top ten AI labs (the smallest!), according to the ranking of Business Week Magazine. His group pioneered the field of mathematically optimal universal AI and universal problem solvers. The algorithms developed in his lab won seven first prizes in international pattern recognition competitions, as well as several best paper awards.
Since 1990 he has developed a formal theory of fun and curiosity and creativity to build artificial scientists and artists. He also generalized the many-worlds theory of physics to a theory of all constructively computable universes – an algorithmic theory of everything.
He has published nearly 300 peer-reviewed scientific works on topics such as machine learning, artificial recurrent neural networks, fast deep neural nets, adaptive robotics, algorithmic information and complexity theory, digital physics, the formal theory of beauty & humor, and the fine arts.
In 2008 he was elected member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts.
via disinformation
Juergen Schmidhuber is Director of the Swiss Artificial Intelligence Lab IDSIA (since 1995), Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Lugano, Switzerland (since 2009), and Professor SUPSI (since 2003).
He helped to transform IDSIA into one of the world’s top ten AI labs (the smallest!), according to the ranking of Business Week Magazine. His group pioneered the field of mathematically optimal universal AI and universal problem solvers. The algorithms developed in his lab won seven first prizes in international pattern recognition competitions, as well as several best paper awards.
Since 1990 he has developed a formal theory of fun and curiosity and creativity to build artificial scientists and artists. He also generalized the many-worlds theory of physics to a theory of all constructively computable universes – an algorithmic theory of everything.
He has published nearly 300 peer-reviewed scientific works on topics such as machine learning, artificial recurrent neural networks, fast deep neural nets, adaptive robotics, algorithmic information and complexity theory, digital physics, the formal theory of beauty & humor, and the fine arts.
In 2008 he was elected member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts.
via disinformation
Wednesday, May 20, 2015
The Abyss by Grant Morrison
Aleister Crowley embodied the destruction of Egoic Self structures as Choronzon, the Devil 333. Choronzon, we are told, is the all-devouring guardian of "the Abyss" (the Abyss being a suitably dramatic and evocative term for an experiential "gap" in human consciousness.) The term can be applied to that state of mind during which Individual Egoic Self-consciousness begins to cannibalize itself rather than confront the usually frightening fact that Personality is not "Real" in the existential sense and is simply a behavioral strategy.
Most of us have had some small experience of the gigantic boundary complex Mega-ChoronzonnoznorohC-ageM; the Choronzonic Encounter is present in the relentless, dull self-interrogation of amphetamine comedowns or fevers, near-death experiences. Think of the chattering mind, annihilating itself in unstoppable self-examination and you will hear the voice of Choronzon.
Choronzon then, is Exisential Self at the last gap, munching out its own brains, seeking nourishment and finding only the riddle of the Bottom That is Bottomless. Choronzon is when there is nothing left but to die to nothingness. Beyond Choronzon, concepts of personality and identity cannot survive. Beyond Choronzon we are no longer our Self. The "personality" on the brink of the Abyss will do anything, say anything and find any excuse to avoid taking his disintegrating step into "non- being".
Most of us in the increasingly popular Western Consumerist traditions tend to wait until we die before even considering Choronzon. Since we can only assume that Egoic Selfsense is devoured whole in whatever blaze of guilt and fury or self-denial or peace perfect peace our last flood of endorphins allow in the 5 minutes before brain death, the moment of death seems to me to be a particularly vulnerable one in which to also have to face Existential terror for the first time.
Better to go there early and scout out the scenery. To die before dying is one of the great Ordeals of the magical path.
The Abyss, then, is that limit to Self consciousness where meaning surrenders and reverses into its own absolute opposite and is there consumed in "Choronzonic Acid," a hypersolvent so powerful it dissolved the Selfitself. Here you will encounter the immense SELF/NOT SELF boundary wall on the edge of Egoic Consciousness and be obliterated against it. The Abyss is a hiatus in awareness, where notions of identity, race, being and territory are consumed in an agonizing fury of contradiction.
Magicians who have successfully "crossed" the Abyss are considered no longer human, in the sense that survival of this ordeal necessitates the breaking down of SELF into multiple personality complexes.
EXPERIMENT:
The so-called "Oath of the Abyss", is a corrosive encounter with Choronzonic forces inside the personality. It is not something to be undertaken lightly and I'd suggest many years of magical practice before attempting anything as stupid and as glamorous as destroying your carefully-established SELF. The rewards of a successful crossing of the Abyss are many but a failed attempt can leave the magician broken inside, consumed by doubt, fear, and insecurity and quite useless to his or her community...
Most of us have had some small experience of the gigantic boundary complex Mega-ChoronzonnoznorohC-ageM; the Choronzonic Encounter is present in the relentless, dull self-interrogation of amphetamine comedowns or fevers, near-death experiences. Think of the chattering mind, annihilating itself in unstoppable self-examination and you will hear the voice of Choronzon.
Choronzon then, is Exisential Self at the last gap, munching out its own brains, seeking nourishment and finding only the riddle of the Bottom That is Bottomless. Choronzon is when there is nothing left but to die to nothingness. Beyond Choronzon, concepts of personality and identity cannot survive. Beyond Choronzon we are no longer our Self. The "personality" on the brink of the Abyss will do anything, say anything and find any excuse to avoid taking his disintegrating step into "non- being".
Most of us in the increasingly popular Western Consumerist traditions tend to wait until we die before even considering Choronzon. Since we can only assume that Egoic Selfsense is devoured whole in whatever blaze of guilt and fury or self-denial or peace perfect peace our last flood of endorphins allow in the 5 minutes before brain death, the moment of death seems to me to be a particularly vulnerable one in which to also have to face Existential terror for the first time.
Better to go there early and scout out the scenery. To die before dying is one of the great Ordeals of the magical path.
The Abyss, then, is that limit to Self consciousness where meaning surrenders and reverses into its own absolute opposite and is there consumed in "Choronzonic Acid," a hypersolvent so powerful it dissolved the Selfitself. Here you will encounter the immense SELF/NOT SELF boundary wall on the edge of Egoic Consciousness and be obliterated against it. The Abyss is a hiatus in awareness, where notions of identity, race, being and territory are consumed in an agonizing fury of contradiction.
Magicians who have successfully "crossed" the Abyss are considered no longer human, in the sense that survival of this ordeal necessitates the breaking down of SELF into multiple personality complexes.
EXPERIMENT:
The so-called "Oath of the Abyss", is a corrosive encounter with Choronzonic forces inside the personality. It is not something to be undertaken lightly and I'd suggest many years of magical practice before attempting anything as stupid and as glamorous as destroying your carefully-established SELF. The rewards of a successful crossing of the Abyss are many but a failed attempt can leave the magician broken inside, consumed by doubt, fear, and insecurity and quite useless to his or her community...
Strange Physics: Is reality a grand illusion?
You know the saying, “things are rarely what they seem”? The phrase is meant to encourage us to examine the way in which we view the people, and the world, around us. In fact, this phrase applies to the very laws of nature.
As we know, due to the finite speed that light travels in an almost-perfect vacuum, we are incapable of seeing things in “real time.” We see the moon as it was 1.3 seconds ago, the Sun eight minutes ago, Proxima Centauri (the closest star to our solar system) as it was more than four years ago, and the Andromeda galaxy (our closest galactic neighbor) as it was more than 2.5 million years ago.
In essence, astronomy is “miraculous” in the sense that, just by looking out into the night sky, we are traveling through time. In the same way, observers in other parts of our galaxy could look at Earth’s development over the course of our evolutionary timeline, and they would see the Earth as it appeared hundreds, perhaps thousands of years ago (depending on which part of the galaxy they live in and how far they are from Earth).
The same phenomenon allows us to study the universe as it appeared mere hundreds of millions of years after the big bang occurred—The most distant sources of light that were emitted from the first generation of stars and galaxies, which sprang up around 13.4 billion years ago.
We Only See a Fraction of Our Surroundings:
Something else that limits our perception of the universe is our inability to see light in all of its various forms. Light—which has properties of particles and waves—is just like the universe in that it is an expression of energy. Albeit, an extraordinarily unique expression of it. Most obvious to us is light at optical wavelengths. Then there is light at ultraviolet and infrared wavelengths.Astonishingly, our Sun only emits about 44% of its total electromagnetic radiation at optical wavelengths, the rest of its emissions come in frequencies invisible to the naked eye (but their true nature can be discerned using special tools and filters, like what we have on our telescopes).
Things of this nature are most obvious at large distances, but they are also applicable in our day-to-day lives as well, though the effects are not nearly as extreme or noticeable. Don’t believe me? Let’s participate in a little thought experiment:
First, close your eyes and extend both of your index fingers (though, unless you can see through your eyelids, you should probably read the rest before doing this….which may defeat the purpose, but ah well). After you’ve done that, take one of your fingers and touch your nose. With the other finger, touch your knee or ankle. Repeat this a few times (even better, have someone else do it), and you should be able to feel your fingers touching your nose and ankle simultaneously. Think about this for a second…the nerve signal from your ankle had to travel much farther (about twenty times over) to get to your brain than the signal from your nose did, but it feels simultaneous, doesn’t it?
Basically—and this is trippy—we aren’t sure if the ankle and the nose were truly touched at the same time, or if they were touched at slightly different moments, and the brain reassembled asynchronous signals, which led to the sensory information being put together at the exact same time.
There was actually an experiment done on this very subject (see the diagram below) where scientists had a group of volunteers press a button that would cause a light to flash after a small delay. After several rounds of this, they found that the volunteers were seeing the flash only milliseconds after they pushed the button, as the brain steadily “edited” the delay as it continued to get use to it—suggesting that our brains modify sensory information in different ways. Inevitably, some researchers conclude that our consciousness may exist in the past to some degree…similar to a few second delay.
Now, let’s tie some of this together… if you were to stick your hand straight in front of your face, you will not see a present image of it. Instead, it will be delayed over the course of a few milliseconds due to the constraints of Einstein’s theory of special relativity (given the time that it takes light to illuminate your hand, and the biological processes we must undergo before our brain can register stimulus). In addition, we must also factor in the speed of nerves traveling to the visual cortex in the back of our brain, where visual information is sorted through and the “speed of thought,” which is largely different from person to person.
In conclusion, many things on a micro and macroscale are directly influenced from our perspective due to a myriad of variables placed on us by the laws of physics and our anatomy itself. There is the reflection and refraction of light scattered in our atmosphere, the observer effect witnessed with subatomic particles, light at various frequencies, and even the properties of time itself, or time dilation more specifically, whose effects can be seen on our satellites in low-Earth orbit (LEO) and the event horizons of black holes. All of this brings up an interesting philosophical question… Are we really observing reality, or can we only see into the past—glimpse the world as it was a nanosecond ago? Are we, in a sense, time travelers?
What are your thoughts?
From http://www.fromquarkstoquasars.com/the-reality-of-perception/
Sunday, May 17, 2015
In All Chaos There is a Cosmos – Carl Jung
“In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order. Every civilized human being, whatever his conscious development, is still an archaic man at the deeper levels of his psyche. Just as the human body connects us with the mammals and displays numerous relics of earlier evolutionary stages going back to even the reptilian age, so the human psyche is likewise a product of evolution which, when followed up to its origins, show countless archaic traits.
A more or less superficial layer of the unconscious is undoubtedly personal. I call it the “personal unconscious.” But this personal layer rests upon a deeper layer, which does not derive from personal experience and is not a personal acquisition but is inborn. This deeper layer I call the “collective unconscious”. I have chosen the term “collective” because this part of the unconscious is not individual but universal; in contrast to the personal psyche, it has contents and modes of behaviour that are more or less the same everywhere and in all individuals.
The great decisions of human life have as a rule far more to do with the instincts and other mysterious unconscious factors than with conscious will and well-meaning reasonableness. The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases. Each of us carries his own life-form—an indeterminable form which cannot be superseded by any other.
We are living in what the Greeks called the right time for a “metamorphosis of the gods,” i.e. of the fundamental principles and symbols. This peculiarity of our time, which is certainly not of our conscious choosing, is the expression of the unconscious man within us who is changing. Coming generations will have to take account of this momentous transformation if humanity is not to destroy itself through the might of its own technology and science.
My interests drew me in different directions. On the one hand I was powerfully attracted by science, with its truths based on facts; on the other hand I was fascinated by everything to do with comparative religion… In science I missed the factor of meaning; and in religion, that of empiricism.
Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves… We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect; we apprehend it just as much by feeling. Therefore, the judgment of the intellect is, at best, only the half of truth, and must, if it be honest, also come to an understanding of its inadequacy.
Motherlove… is one of the most moving and unforgettable memories of our lives, the mysterious root of all growth and change; the love that means homecoming, shelter, and the long silence from which everything begins and in which everything ends. Intimately known and yet strange like Nature, lovingly tender and yet cruel like fate, joyous and untiring giver of life-mater dolorosa and mute implacable portal that closes upon the dead.
Mother is motherlove, my experience and my secret. Why risk saying too much, too much that is false and inadequate and beside the point, about that human being who was our mother, the accidental carrier of that great experience which includes herself and myself and all mankind, and indeed the whole of created nature, the experience of life whose children we are?
The grasping of the whole is obviously the aim of science… but it is a goal that necessarily lies very far off because science, whenever possible, proceeds experimentally and in all cases statistically. Experiment, however, consists in asking a definite question which excludes as far as possible anything disturbing and irrelevant. It makes conditions, imposes them on Nature, and in this way forces her to give an answer to a question devised by man. She is prevented from answering out of the fullness of her possibilities since these possibilities are restricted as far as practible.
For this purpose there is created in the laboratory a situation which is artificially restricted to the question which compels Nature to give an unequivocal answer. The workings of Nature in her unrestricted wholeness are completely excluded. If we want to know what these workings are, we need a method of inquiry which imposes the fewest possible conditions, or if possible no conditions at all, and then leave Nature to answer out of her fullness.”
~Carl Jung~
https://creativesystemsthinking.wordpress.com/2014/03/06/in-all-chaos-there-is-a-cosmos-carl-jung/
Saturday, May 16, 2015
Wu Wei, Flow States and the Art of Being a Lazy Fuck
From disinfo.com:
“…It is when we act freely, for the sake of the action itself rather than for ulterior motives, that we learn to become more than what we were.”
“The psychic entropy peculiar to the human condition involves seeing more to do than one can actually accomplish and feeling able to accomplish more than what conditions allow.”
― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
I visibly waffled on several occasions when attempting to begin this article. Literally. I sat down on the couch with my laptop, ready to begin the process of typing this stupid, god-forsaken thing, and I physically shuddered. Each time. And, each time, Missus Furious would gaze at me cock-eyed and ask what the fuck my problem was.
“Nothing,” I’d mumble. “Nothing at all.”
“Ok?” She’d say, skeptically. “But why do you keep doing that?”
“Doing what?”
“Having seizures or whatever it is you’re doing over there. Are you alright?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“YOU KEEP SHAKING.”
At that point I just shrugged and shook my head as if she were crazy.
This is what it’s like living with someone as mercilessly moronic as myself.
Anyhow, I did have several episodes of trembling. For a couple of reasons.
• • •
One: The thought of having to type Mihaly Csikszentmihaly’s name a half-dozen or so times made me ill. This sounds like such a minor inconvenience that I must be making it up. But I’m not. You’re reading the work of the type of person who, when trying to watch Rey Mysterio highlights on youtube and an ad pops up, and the button in the corner of the ad says “you can skip this ad in 13 seconds,” I usually just close up the entire browser, get off the computer and go make peanut butter sandwiches or something, instead of waiting the 13 seconds.
Two: There are enough subtleties and nuances to both Csikszentmihalyi’s ideas and my own arguments, that I’m worried a fair number of potential readers are going to miss them. And, as a writer, I feel that if people misunderstand and/or don’t fully comprehend what is going on, it’s my fault, not the reader’s. So I spend an inordinate and irrational amount of time in the midsts of a neurotic episode because I’m convinced I’m not a good enough writer (or thinker) to make some of my ideas clear.
Regardless of how I feel—and regardless of my concerns—here I am. And since I’ve already buried the lede this far, let me just come out and tell you what my thesis is for the rest of the article: that so-called “flow” states are much more easily accessed—and most commonly experienced—when one is being a lazy fuck.
• • •
First off, even though Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of Flow is one of the most popular and discussed ideas produced by psychology in the past 50 years or so, not everybody’s familiar with it. So we have to at least touch on what Flow is. Csikszentmihalyi himself describes the experience of flow as consisting of 6 components, which are:
1. Intense and focused concentration on the present moment
2. Merging of action and awareness
3. A loss of reflective self-consciousness
4. A sense of personal control or agency over the situation or activity
5. A distortion of temporal experience, one’s subjective experience of time is altered
6. Experience of the activity as intrinsically rewarding, also referred to as autotelic experience
All of which sounds incredibly reasonable and probably accurate. My issue is really with how Csikszentmihalyi argues we induce flow states, mostly because Csikszentmihalyi spends a good portion of the his book on the topic—inconceivably entitled Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience—discussing his belief that Flow experiences must be stimulated by activities that provide just the right amount of challenge, i.e. not challenging to the point of making one frustrated, but not so devoid of challenge that one finds the activity boring.
Again, this assertion sounds rather reasonable. And it is. But Csikszentmihalyi then expounds on that idea to insist that one cannot be in a passive or lazy mind if one hopes to initiate states of Flow.
He states:
“Contrary to what we usually believe, moments like these, the best moments in our lives, are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times—although such experiences can also be enjoyable, if we have worked hard to attain them. The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.” (emphasis mine)
He gives, as support to this idea, the example of a European woman who is a scholar and business magnate. She constantly travels, owns a number of homes around the world, is ceaselessly attending business meetings or conferences or concerts. She is so busy and opposed to leisure time that she expects her chauffeur to attend the local art museums in whatever town she finds herself in and give her a run-down of sorts on how the art museum was. To me she sounds insufferable and her life sounds exhausting. The importance of discussing this concept of Flow, as even Csikszentmihalyi admits, is that Flow states are supposed to make us happy. The inability to sit still and enjoy life for being life doesn’t sound like happiness to me. It sounds like distraction.
Either way, the philosopher and author Ed Slingerland agrees. In his book, Trying Not to Try, he takes the concept of Flow and expands and—in my opinion—improves on Csikszentmihalyi’s ideas. Slingerland makes the connection between Flow states and the Chinese philosophical concept of Wu Wei. Wu Wei is typically translated (with numerous, but less influential, exceptions) as “non-action,” “non-doing,” or “actionless action.” There is not really an English equivalent. Anyhow, Slingerland makes a rather convincing argument that Flow states are essentially states of Wu Wei.
This is important, because—even though I disagree with a number of assertions in Slingerland’s book—Slingerland is able to recognize that it’s not effort that is necessary to initiate episodes of Flow, it is a lack of effort that activates such states. Hence the title his book, Trying Not to Try.
Slingerland, though, still has his own aversion to coming out and saying that it’s a certain kind of laziness that induces Flow/Wu Wei states. Most writers who attempt to expound on the concept of Wu Wei exhibit this bizarre anxiety.
• • •
I’ve already written a bit about the virtues of laziness, and I want to emphasize that there’s a big difference between boredom and laziness, two concepts which I think a lot of people conflate. I also want to reiterate a major point from that initial essay of mine, which is: that a healthy laziness (as opposed to an unhealthy laziness, which does exist) is merely the spontaneous act of doing whatever seems most enjoyable to a person at a given moment. For example, a few people I know insist that I’m not lazy because I work 50-plus hours each week and yet I still find time to write and work-out and such things. But I genuinely enjoy writing and exercise. And typically when I am engaging in such activities, I am doing so at times when they’re so enjoyable that they are not taking much actual effort to complete. My 50 hours of work each week are really the only parts of my life that take any kind of effort — well, that and when my wife puts me to work doing some kind of tedious work around the house (for me, although many people like DIY projects). The opposite of laziness is “working hard.” But I think work only becomes hard when we’re not interested in doing it. I have to work hard at work because there are literally thousands of other things I’d rather spend my life doing.
This is my definition of laziness: the doing of things that are enjoyable at times when they are enjoyable. There were times when I was in school that writing was not enjoyable and was full of effort. Even in my series of essays for Disinfo, I believe a keen (or maybe not so keen in some instances) eye can spot those essays that weren’t all that enjoyable to write. They’re full of real effort. I’m the rare writer who believes that one should only write when inspired, and the fact that so many writers force themselves to write is why I find so many novels so unreadable.
All of which is sort of besides the point. The main idea here is that a healthy laziness is being spontaneous and doing enjoyable things at times when they are enjoyable. Sometimes activities we find to be enjoyable aren’t going to be enjoyable (for any of a myriad of reasons) and we shouldn’t do those usually enjoyable things at those times.
If we follow this advice, I believe we will find ourselves to be more often in states of Flow/Wu Wei. I know this is true for me when I write when I feel like writing, when I work-out when I feel like working out, when I socialize when I feel like socializing. I have Flow/Wu Wei watering my garden in cool summer evenings. I have felt it drinking green tea under a full moon while sitting on a rocking chair in my backyard. I have felt it on long walks after work with Missus Furious. I have even felt it lying on the couch and staring at the ceiling while daydreaming about being interviewed by Charlie Rose or about being able to eventually, one day, do a one-armed pull-up. And so on.
Most of those activities don’t meet Csikszentmihalyi’s requirement that flow states must present some kind of challenge, nor did I have to work hard to attain any of those states, contrary to his assertions. Believe me, for example, when I say that it literally takes no effort to imagine one’s self explaining pretentiously to Charlie Rose why one’s novel about drunk college kids puking on each other is really an analog for certain aspects of Taoist philosophy.
What those activities did meet, though, were my requirements: activities should be done when they feel enjoyable to do so.
• • •
Both Csikszentmihalyi and Slingerland recognized that Flow/Wu Wei states are instigated when we are doing things for their own sake. When we sew because we like the act of sewing, not because we’re all that interested in making a beautiful dress. When we cook because we enjoy the process of cooking, not because we’re all that interested in the resulting meal. When we play basketball not because we really want to win, but because playing basketball is fun.
The results of such activities may be rewarding too. Creating a beautiful dress, eating a tasty meal, and winning a basketball game certainly feel good. But there’s a difference, say, between Michael Jordan, who played basketball to feed his own ego, and a person who plays basketball because the activity of playing basketball is enjoyable in and of itself, regardless of outcome. Primarily, Michael Jordan’s efforts were effortful, whereas the other person’s was actually an act of spontaneity, or laziness, as I define it. And if you need proof that one form of playing basketball is superior to the other, all you need to do is look at Jordan or, say, Kobe Bryant, and observe how happy or fulfilled those two are, despite their numerous championships and accomplishments in the sport of basketball.
What Slingerland and Csikszentmihalyi neglect, though, is that the only way to do something for its own sake is to not give a shit about it, at least in the traditional ways we give a shit about things. What I’m talking about is being apathetic about results. If we don’t care about winning the basketball game, then our attention is focused only the joys of playing the game itself. If we’re not concerned about results, then we can focus on the joys of the process, which is where we can be lazy and in which we make ourselves available to Flow/Wu-Wei.
Note: It is inherent in the word “Flow” that a process is occurring. A river cannot flow, for example, once it has reached its end result of entering the ocean or of having been dried up. One can flow making a hamburger or eating a hamburger, but one cannot flow when the hamburger is simply sitting on the plate after the process of having been made, or when it is done being consumed. One can flow playing a game of basketball, but not when one has finished playing and has “won” or “lost” the game. One can flow when sewing a dress, but not when the dress is completed. If this is true for sewing and cooking and playing basketball, how much truer is it for the act (the process) of living life itself?
For if we work too hard, place too much effort in a search for results, instead of simply living life for life’s sake, we close ourselves off from opportunities for experiencing Flow/Wu Wei. And when we spend our lives struggling, striving, working, being effortful for some sort of ultimately meaningless result, we miss all that is enjoyable and worth experiencing… except when we’re in the mood to be effortful.
I’ll end this thing with a long-ish quote from Chuang Tzu via Slingerland that sums all of this up–even though Slingerland doesn’t seem to realize the depth and profundity of just what Chuang Tzu was saying, for Slingerland doesn’t quite recognize the connection between “spontaneity” and “laziness.”
Per Chuang Tzu:
When people are asleep, their spirits wander off; when they are awake, their bodies are like an open door, so that everything they touch becomes an entanglement. Day after day they use their minds to stir up trouble; they become boastful, sneaky, secretive. They are consumed with anxiety over trivial matters but remain arrogantly oblivious to the things truly worth fearing. Their words fly from their mouths like crossbow bolts, so sure are they that they know right from wrong. They cling to their positions as though they had sworn an oath, so sure are they of victory. Their gradual decline is like autumn fading into winter—this is how they dwindle day by day. They drown in what they do—you cannot make them turn back. They begin to suffocate, as though sealed up in a box—this is how they decline into senility. And as their minds approach death, nothing can cause them to turn back toward the light.
http://disinfo.com/2015/05/wu-wei-flow-states-art-lazy-fuck/
“…It is when we act freely, for the sake of the action itself rather than for ulterior motives, that we learn to become more than what we were.”
“The psychic entropy peculiar to the human condition involves seeing more to do than one can actually accomplish and feeling able to accomplish more than what conditions allow.”
― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
I visibly waffled on several occasions when attempting to begin this article. Literally. I sat down on the couch with my laptop, ready to begin the process of typing this stupid, god-forsaken thing, and I physically shuddered. Each time. And, each time, Missus Furious would gaze at me cock-eyed and ask what the fuck my problem was.
“Nothing,” I’d mumble. “Nothing at all.”
“Ok?” She’d say, skeptically. “But why do you keep doing that?”
“Doing what?”
“Having seizures or whatever it is you’re doing over there. Are you alright?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“YOU KEEP SHAKING.”
At that point I just shrugged and shook my head as if she were crazy.
This is what it’s like living with someone as mercilessly moronic as myself.
Anyhow, I did have several episodes of trembling. For a couple of reasons.
• • •
One: The thought of having to type Mihaly Csikszentmihaly’s name a half-dozen or so times made me ill. This sounds like such a minor inconvenience that I must be making it up. But I’m not. You’re reading the work of the type of person who, when trying to watch Rey Mysterio highlights on youtube and an ad pops up, and the button in the corner of the ad says “you can skip this ad in 13 seconds,” I usually just close up the entire browser, get off the computer and go make peanut butter sandwiches or something, instead of waiting the 13 seconds.
Two: There are enough subtleties and nuances to both Csikszentmihalyi’s ideas and my own arguments, that I’m worried a fair number of potential readers are going to miss them. And, as a writer, I feel that if people misunderstand and/or don’t fully comprehend what is going on, it’s my fault, not the reader’s. So I spend an inordinate and irrational amount of time in the midsts of a neurotic episode because I’m convinced I’m not a good enough writer (or thinker) to make some of my ideas clear.
Regardless of how I feel—and regardless of my concerns—here I am. And since I’ve already buried the lede this far, let me just come out and tell you what my thesis is for the rest of the article: that so-called “flow” states are much more easily accessed—and most commonly experienced—when one is being a lazy fuck.
• • •
First off, even though Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of Flow is one of the most popular and discussed ideas produced by psychology in the past 50 years or so, not everybody’s familiar with it. So we have to at least touch on what Flow is. Csikszentmihalyi himself describes the experience of flow as consisting of 6 components, which are:
1. Intense and focused concentration on the present moment
2. Merging of action and awareness
3. A loss of reflective self-consciousness
4. A sense of personal control or agency over the situation or activity
5. A distortion of temporal experience, one’s subjective experience of time is altered
6. Experience of the activity as intrinsically rewarding, also referred to as autotelic experience
All of which sounds incredibly reasonable and probably accurate. My issue is really with how Csikszentmihalyi argues we induce flow states, mostly because Csikszentmihalyi spends a good portion of the his book on the topic—inconceivably entitled Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience—discussing his belief that Flow experiences must be stimulated by activities that provide just the right amount of challenge, i.e. not challenging to the point of making one frustrated, but not so devoid of challenge that one finds the activity boring.
Again, this assertion sounds rather reasonable. And it is. But Csikszentmihalyi then expounds on that idea to insist that one cannot be in a passive or lazy mind if one hopes to initiate states of Flow.
He states:
“Contrary to what we usually believe, moments like these, the best moments in our lives, are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times—although such experiences can also be enjoyable, if we have worked hard to attain them. The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.” (emphasis mine)
He gives, as support to this idea, the example of a European woman who is a scholar and business magnate. She constantly travels, owns a number of homes around the world, is ceaselessly attending business meetings or conferences or concerts. She is so busy and opposed to leisure time that she expects her chauffeur to attend the local art museums in whatever town she finds herself in and give her a run-down of sorts on how the art museum was. To me she sounds insufferable and her life sounds exhausting. The importance of discussing this concept of Flow, as even Csikszentmihalyi admits, is that Flow states are supposed to make us happy. The inability to sit still and enjoy life for being life doesn’t sound like happiness to me. It sounds like distraction.
Either way, the philosopher and author Ed Slingerland agrees. In his book, Trying Not to Try, he takes the concept of Flow and expands and—in my opinion—improves on Csikszentmihalyi’s ideas. Slingerland makes the connection between Flow states and the Chinese philosophical concept of Wu Wei. Wu Wei is typically translated (with numerous, but less influential, exceptions) as “non-action,” “non-doing,” or “actionless action.” There is not really an English equivalent. Anyhow, Slingerland makes a rather convincing argument that Flow states are essentially states of Wu Wei.
This is important, because—even though I disagree with a number of assertions in Slingerland’s book—Slingerland is able to recognize that it’s not effort that is necessary to initiate episodes of Flow, it is a lack of effort that activates such states. Hence the title his book, Trying Not to Try.
Slingerland, though, still has his own aversion to coming out and saying that it’s a certain kind of laziness that induces Flow/Wu Wei states. Most writers who attempt to expound on the concept of Wu Wei exhibit this bizarre anxiety.
• • •
I’ve already written a bit about the virtues of laziness, and I want to emphasize that there’s a big difference between boredom and laziness, two concepts which I think a lot of people conflate. I also want to reiterate a major point from that initial essay of mine, which is: that a healthy laziness (as opposed to an unhealthy laziness, which does exist) is merely the spontaneous act of doing whatever seems most enjoyable to a person at a given moment. For example, a few people I know insist that I’m not lazy because I work 50-plus hours each week and yet I still find time to write and work-out and such things. But I genuinely enjoy writing and exercise. And typically when I am engaging in such activities, I am doing so at times when they’re so enjoyable that they are not taking much actual effort to complete. My 50 hours of work each week are really the only parts of my life that take any kind of effort — well, that and when my wife puts me to work doing some kind of tedious work around the house (for me, although many people like DIY projects). The opposite of laziness is “working hard.” But I think work only becomes hard when we’re not interested in doing it. I have to work hard at work because there are literally thousands of other things I’d rather spend my life doing.
This is my definition of laziness: the doing of things that are enjoyable at times when they are enjoyable. There were times when I was in school that writing was not enjoyable and was full of effort. Even in my series of essays for Disinfo, I believe a keen (or maybe not so keen in some instances) eye can spot those essays that weren’t all that enjoyable to write. They’re full of real effort. I’m the rare writer who believes that one should only write when inspired, and the fact that so many writers force themselves to write is why I find so many novels so unreadable.
All of which is sort of besides the point. The main idea here is that a healthy laziness is being spontaneous and doing enjoyable things at times when they are enjoyable. Sometimes activities we find to be enjoyable aren’t going to be enjoyable (for any of a myriad of reasons) and we shouldn’t do those usually enjoyable things at those times.
If we follow this advice, I believe we will find ourselves to be more often in states of Flow/Wu Wei. I know this is true for me when I write when I feel like writing, when I work-out when I feel like working out, when I socialize when I feel like socializing. I have Flow/Wu Wei watering my garden in cool summer evenings. I have felt it drinking green tea under a full moon while sitting on a rocking chair in my backyard. I have felt it on long walks after work with Missus Furious. I have even felt it lying on the couch and staring at the ceiling while daydreaming about being interviewed by Charlie Rose or about being able to eventually, one day, do a one-armed pull-up. And so on.
Most of those activities don’t meet Csikszentmihalyi’s requirement that flow states must present some kind of challenge, nor did I have to work hard to attain any of those states, contrary to his assertions. Believe me, for example, when I say that it literally takes no effort to imagine one’s self explaining pretentiously to Charlie Rose why one’s novel about drunk college kids puking on each other is really an analog for certain aspects of Taoist philosophy.
What those activities did meet, though, were my requirements: activities should be done when they feel enjoyable to do so.
• • •
Both Csikszentmihalyi and Slingerland recognized that Flow/Wu Wei states are instigated when we are doing things for their own sake. When we sew because we like the act of sewing, not because we’re all that interested in making a beautiful dress. When we cook because we enjoy the process of cooking, not because we’re all that interested in the resulting meal. When we play basketball not because we really want to win, but because playing basketball is fun.
The results of such activities may be rewarding too. Creating a beautiful dress, eating a tasty meal, and winning a basketball game certainly feel good. But there’s a difference, say, between Michael Jordan, who played basketball to feed his own ego, and a person who plays basketball because the activity of playing basketball is enjoyable in and of itself, regardless of outcome. Primarily, Michael Jordan’s efforts were effortful, whereas the other person’s was actually an act of spontaneity, or laziness, as I define it. And if you need proof that one form of playing basketball is superior to the other, all you need to do is look at Jordan or, say, Kobe Bryant, and observe how happy or fulfilled those two are, despite their numerous championships and accomplishments in the sport of basketball.
What Slingerland and Csikszentmihalyi neglect, though, is that the only way to do something for its own sake is to not give a shit about it, at least in the traditional ways we give a shit about things. What I’m talking about is being apathetic about results. If we don’t care about winning the basketball game, then our attention is focused only the joys of playing the game itself. If we’re not concerned about results, then we can focus on the joys of the process, which is where we can be lazy and in which we make ourselves available to Flow/Wu-Wei.
Note: It is inherent in the word “Flow” that a process is occurring. A river cannot flow, for example, once it has reached its end result of entering the ocean or of having been dried up. One can flow making a hamburger or eating a hamburger, but one cannot flow when the hamburger is simply sitting on the plate after the process of having been made, or when it is done being consumed. One can flow playing a game of basketball, but not when one has finished playing and has “won” or “lost” the game. One can flow when sewing a dress, but not when the dress is completed. If this is true for sewing and cooking and playing basketball, how much truer is it for the act (the process) of living life itself?
For if we work too hard, place too much effort in a search for results, instead of simply living life for life’s sake, we close ourselves off from opportunities for experiencing Flow/Wu Wei. And when we spend our lives struggling, striving, working, being effortful for some sort of ultimately meaningless result, we miss all that is enjoyable and worth experiencing… except when we’re in the mood to be effortful.
I’ll end this thing with a long-ish quote from Chuang Tzu via Slingerland that sums all of this up–even though Slingerland doesn’t seem to realize the depth and profundity of just what Chuang Tzu was saying, for Slingerland doesn’t quite recognize the connection between “spontaneity” and “laziness.”
Per Chuang Tzu:
When people are asleep, their spirits wander off; when they are awake, their bodies are like an open door, so that everything they touch becomes an entanglement. Day after day they use their minds to stir up trouble; they become boastful, sneaky, secretive. They are consumed with anxiety over trivial matters but remain arrogantly oblivious to the things truly worth fearing. Their words fly from their mouths like crossbow bolts, so sure are they that they know right from wrong. They cling to their positions as though they had sworn an oath, so sure are they of victory. Their gradual decline is like autumn fading into winter—this is how they dwindle day by day. They drown in what they do—you cannot make them turn back. They begin to suffocate, as though sealed up in a box—this is how they decline into senility. And as their minds approach death, nothing can cause them to turn back toward the light.
http://disinfo.com/2015/05/wu-wei-flow-states-art-lazy-fuck/
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