Just the same, watch out for Obama

I read this article.

http://tinyurl.com/arr6hy

While it is very wonderful to see diversity like that, adn Obama seems full of earnest good will and intent,
there are 2 disturbing things about it.

1) It refers offhandedly to America’s “ruling families” – This is an absolutely menacing and anti-american concept, which is obviously seeping and/or being injected into the mass consciousness here. A president is not a “Ruler” and his family as nothing to do with politics at all. Now suddenly he is a “Ruler” and his family is “the Ruling Family”. What does that sound like to you? A Republic of free individuals governed constitutionally by the rule of law? Or a monarchy?

2) It says that Obama’s aunt or cousin or whatever was facing deportation for illegal status here – but those charges have been somehow stopped and she’s pursuing a green-card.  So in other words, for how-ever-many years, she ignored immigration laws and should have been deported, but as soon as she had a powerful relative – or excuse me – became part of “the ruling family” – that was all dropped. So this shows that Obama is already using his position to issues favors and break the law on behalf of favored individuals.  This is a terrible sign.  We may all be tempted to say “Oh, come on – it’s his aunt, who wouldn’t help her?” but the fact is the law is supposed to apply equally to all, and to have overtly illegal and corrupt acts like this accepted out of hand spells doom for the rule of law in this country. So yes, if Obama really respected his office, he would have insisted that the law be applied to his aunt just as to anyone else – that’s called “doing your difficult but necessary duty.” Of course this has been going on for countless presidencies, in much worse ways, but it is still corruption, and one more small nail in the coffin for freedom under the law in America – one with may presage bigger nails from our new supposed savior. Time will tell.

Circumcision and that River in Egypt

Went to a Bris today.

Absolutely mind boggling how loving, protective intelligent people can be absolutely blinded by denial and unquestioning adherence to tradition. Everyone is happy except the baby. We get cake and cold-cuts and congratulations. The baby gets tortured and robbed forever of the most sensitive part of his anatomy. Yes, that’s right, the most sensitive part. I’m not going to get into all the details of the structure and nerve ending count of the foreskin here. It doesn’t even matter – cutting off part of any non-consenting person’s body is obviously a violation very much akin to rape. The fact that so many people remain blind to that fact shows how psychological defense-mechanisms like denial are more dominant in them than empathy and an uncompromising demand for plain, simple truth.

And need we speak of the hypocrisy in condemning the genital mutilation females while practicing it on our own males? Or that of of viewing peoples with plate-lips, etc, as primitive and barbaric, even as we cling to our equally unnatural and disfiguring tribal method of physical differentiation?

No, they speak for themselves.

You should have witnessed that kid scream when the mohel inserted the prob between the glans and foreskin to tear through the delicate, still-adherent mucous membranes before slicing off the protective skin.  You should have seen the freshly denuded glans – absolutely red as blood – an open wound. I think I did a pretty good job at keeping my face under control for the most part, but it wasn’t easy.

People tell themselves all kinds of easily debunked stories about hygiene, aesthetics, and whatever else. The fact is circumcision among US non-Jews was introduced to eliminate masturbation. Well, at least the Jewish story, if equally silly, is harder to disprove, ’cause we see how effective it has proven for it’s original purpose. LOL.

And now its really just about easy money – Hospitals can charge like a grand to have an intern strap the kid down and slice his dick with a scalpel.

But my favorite is when people just try to minimize it, saying “it’s only a little flap of skin.”

Then I respond “Oh really? So is your eyelid – why don’t we remove that and see how you like it?”

Then they say “that’s silly, don’t be ridiculous.” But they never make a cogent argument to support there contension.

That’s because it’s not silly – it’s apt. APT!

Specifically, its apt to show’s how absolutely full of shit they are on this subject.

Actually, the foreskin is in many ways a more evolved structure than the eyelid; the eyelid has inordinately fewer nerve endings  measures only about 1.5″x,75″s in the adult, whereas the intact foreskin is an average if 3″x5″ (!)
Plus, you have two eyes, so even if one became blind due to exposure, you could still experience almost normal vision. But with only one penile glans, victims of circumcision can never hope to know the sensations of our natural, in-tact anatomy.

Being there, I felt so sorry I couldn’t save that poor baby from the celebrated abomination of ritual genital mutilation -and all the suppressed emotional/psycho-sexual trauma it entails.

But at least I could look over at my own son and rejoice in knowingt this is one of the world’s insanities to which he need never be subjected.

Three Keys I Found

Looking at my life, I have come to recognize three fundamental keys to understanding and wisdom.

They are:

“How would you feel if you were them?”

“What would you do if that happened?”

“What do you know with absolute certainty?”

The first creates a profound understanding and sympathy for people of all kinds in all situations. It has a corollary, ‘how would you feel in their situation.” the difference being between playing the other person vs. playing yourself.

The second reveals to yourself where you really stand. For example, in our generally low-crime, safe society, many people have come to believe the responsibility for self-protection to be obsolete. “That’s what we have police for” they tell themselves. “I’m absolutely peaceful and nonviolent” they tell themselves. How are individuals who believe this about themselves to know if it is true, when life in our society probably has and never will put it to the test.  The best way is to ask yourself questions like these: “If I were trapped in a dark, isolated ally with a man who was approaching me menacingly with a knife, would I be so committed to non-violence that I would try to talk sense to him, and would make no move to defend myself physically, even at the cost of my life?” Or “If had lived in Nazi Germany, and the gestapo had come in the night to take me away, knowing what I know now about them, would I go with them peacefully, or resist by every available means?”  Unless you feel with absolute certainty that you would choose to  calmly and willingly accept death, if necessary, rather than fight back, then you would have to re-evaluate  your assumptions about your absolute commitment to  non-violence and take steps to learn self-protection.

The third is perhaps the most fundamental, because if you are absolutely honest with yourself about it you will quickly come to see that you really don’t know almost anything and that virtually every last thing you have been taught must be approached with doubt and dispassionate evaluation from all sides. This destroys prejudice and makes the mind supple, free and clear.

I expect to expand on these in future posts.

∞*∞. and so on…

This post has been catalyzed by my viewing just now of two videos by Robert Bryanton, which I was turned on to by the Mighty Kong [not to self: link].

Rob, having watched your vids, I observe that you are brushing up against tthe confluence of the scientific and the spiritual.

You seek the  factor “outside the system.”

You are right to seek it. It is. But to find if, you must grasp the paradox that it is also within the system – indeed, not just within, but permeating, underpinning, creating and destroying it constantly at all levels. Infinite paradox resolves itself as all that is.

This is the same factor which religion has attempted to speak of and which is been distorted by individual minds, and then fed through and the exponentially distorting feedback loop of other minds.

“Tell Pharo I AM THAT I AM” sent you.

The phrase “I AM THAT I AM” as a way of saying “the one ‘God’”…  what is it if not a statement of the infinitely recursive nature of consciousness, which is the alpha and the omega and all else in between. Infinite infinities infinitely infusing themselves and each other – it quickly becomes linguistically silly, and I would say “I AM THAT I AM” distills it down about as nicely as can be, given the obvious futility of trying to surrond this with words.

So Rob, in short, the factor you’re looking for is consciousness itself. This understanding is as far as the theoretical/symbolic constructs  known as “ideas” can take you. Beyond that, you can only venture by way of direct, subjective experience and exploration of conscious – your own conscisouness – At which point you have left the familiar “dimension” of the rational and entered that of the mystic.

Librative or Conserbral?

This whole “Liberal” vs. “Conservative” thing has goten way out-of-hand and it’s really past time we straightned it out.

Well what does each one mean?  Fundamentally a “Conservative” is someone intent on maintaining or “conserv”ing the wise and valuable ways of the past.

A “Liberal” is someone who wants to find new and better ways to do things, to improve on and correct the flaws and mistakes of the past.

I ask you, is either of these wrong? Are they not both necessary?

Of course they are.

The problem stems not from any mutual exclusivity of these two approaches to life; On the contrary, they are compliments.  The problem comes from individuals’ tenancies to tip one way or the other.

People who identify as “liberal” know the importance of draining the dirty bathwater to make room for fresh – but they tend to forget there’s a baby in there and out it goes.

“Conservatives?”  They keep the baby, but also wind up with a houseful of mason jars brimming with festering, ancient bathwater.

Neither is willing to see the value and wisdom of the other side, nor the folly of its own glaring incompletness – they remain mirror images of each other, exponentially feeding back their shared, fearful, self righteous hate in a yin-yang of endless folly.

People!  Please!

We need babies.

We need clean water.

We need balance.

Balance.

Balance.

So be it.

Not a Bonsai

The other day, I was playing a piece I wrote for the guitar while your Grandma was playing with you. about 3.7 months old, you were watching intently. Your Grandma said “See that Tojo? That’s a guitar! One day you’ll play the guitar too!”

I asked my mom to please not say things like that to you.

Why?

Because your life is your own.

Would I love it if you found yourself possessed of the desire to learn to play? Of course. Would it burst my heart with joy to help you learn, see your progress, play together and one day watch your skill eclipse my own? Of course.  Was all this in your Grandma’s heart when she said that to you? Of course. So then why would I asked her never to say such things to you? Because such thoughts and words create expectations, and expectations create pressure and pressure can push you from your natural course in life – even if that natural course would have anyway lead you in the direction you were pushed.

So perhaps you will be drawn to the guitar or not. Perhaps you will be drawn to sing, or play some other instrument(s), or not.  In any case. it is not my place to push you where I want you to go, but to recognize who you are and help you develop to your full potential. It is not important to me that you walk in my footsteps – only that you grow to take your greatest possible strides.

It’s like this:

Many fathers view their role like that of a Bonsai designer. Such people believe they cultivate beautiful works of living art – but from the standpoint of life, they just twist an otherwise healthy tree into a stunted dwarf. In so doing, they rob the tree of it’s right to be as life intended and ensure none will ever experience that tree in it’s true form.

Let me instead be a gardener, providing fertile ground, and access to sun and rain – the rest is simply you.