The first formal introduction to any than the vaguest impression of breathing (i did it 'wrong' as in, i wd tighten my stomach on the in breath). When i sought the Sufis (whom i found in the San Francisco White Pages under the name Sufi Islamia Ruhamiat Society (due to irrational prejudice the Society has dropped the Islamia and is now simply The Sufi Ruhaniat International. My teacher was Ahmaddin As-Salik in the lineage of the current Pir of the order, Moineddin Jablonski. After Ahmaddin's death, and other factors, i chose to focus on the mundane part of my life. I started at City College in 2000. 11 years and i have 3 classes to go on a 2 year certificate program. considering the difficulty of Design 110 - Rapid Visualization i may take just that one class in the fall. City College is tired of me, and no longer offers financial aid. That does not rule out scholarships, which require 2 letters of recommendation (check - at least as far as asking. Both would like some personal details that might be relevant, and what the committee is looking for. I attended a seminar on scholarships. My major life challenge boils down to procrastination. I very well cd have hammered out a letter to my two instructors w/ the data they need. The due date is the 4th - shd have already done it, and tonite is not too late. not to speak of the letter i have to write myself, explaining my struggles and how i have overcome then. I only have a high GPA on my side. a poor completion ratio, but that will be wiped out if i take the additional 5-8 classes i need to transfer to state. If going to school is like pulling teeth, why do it? Alison Miller suggested that 'it is the only game in town'. that is, if they are gonna pay me to go to school, may as well. well, let's see how Scholarships pan out. I get as much as the FEDs say is my need. Since my own personal contribution is close to zero, i qualify for approx $16,000 in scholarship money. which, declared on my taxes the right way, does not affect my disability payments. (Tho the accountant at A.C.O.R.N. used a 'deferment' that may come back and bite me. fortunately i know a real accountant if such a thing were to manifest, i think he might take me on as a charity case.)
I don't suppose any of that has to do w/ Shakespeare. So far, in my reading among the critics, i have encountered the thesis that much of Shakespeare's later texts contain incoherencies that scholars attempt in vain to edit into some kind of sense. The counter thesis that the speeches of Leontes and Polixenes, rather than revealing a lack of sense in the original, tho obscure, reveal that instead of blaming Shakespeare for creating lines that are nonsense, that Shakespeare is exploring a theme, which has to do w/ power over and a refusal of ambiguity. Those in power cannot tolerate the ambiguous. Went to the Rosenberg Library at City College and found Ted Hughes exploring the NeoPlatonic/Alchemical milieu that was part of the circle that commissioned Love's Labour's Lost. I haven't read enough of Ted Hughes book to judge his thesis, but he prefaces his introduction by asking the gentle reader to abandon, for the sake of a thought experiment, the Shakespeare of psychological realism, and see instead a 'mythic' writer. To join him in exploring the underground grottoes and structures of Shakespeare's mythic imagination. I put the book aside at the beginning of the chapter on Venus and Adonis. By now i know that Hughes intends to show that the image of (in Grail imagery) 'the dolorous blow' in particular the roman variant the Shakespeare makes his own. I haven't read that, which mebbe i will do right now. let's see if i can find the text online.
[… … …](read along w/ me)
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Friday, February 11, 2011
kenne on Liberty
Democracy is a dangerous tool in the hands of the People. the Founding Fathers (notice there were no women? unless i am mistaken there were no black men at the Convention where the Constitution was argued and ratified - pls tell me their was a freedman at the Constitutional Convention!)
the founding fathers didn't like the direction that the democratic institutions were going under the Articles of Federation. the people are too emotional too easily swayed by demagogues (see the Federalist Papers by Madison, he was there. and he is remarkably blunt.) The purpose of our Constitution was to dilute the power of direct democracy. The Fathers didn't trust the people. And at the time the right to vote was limited to property holders. They didn't trust their own class. Jefferson is considered to be the liberal hero who saved us from Hamiltonian tyranny. Aaron Burr may have been mentally unstable, but his antagonism to Hamilton started as an argument over the crippling control the banks had over America. go Burr! vendetta and dueling are often seen as 'outlaw' justice, but it is the path chosen by many throughout history. Hamilton was not a native citizen and cd never be President but he at the time of the duel was the most powerfull person in America.
I hope Egypt is not unduly influenced in their path to Democracy by the American system. I think a Parliamentary system is more just, in that minority parties have access to power. I have been a mutterer in the corner (kind like a voice in the wilderness, only more invisible) calling for a new Constitution. let's not rush into it. let's spend a decade talking about what kind of society we want. There are those that claim that no system can be imposed by decree and change the facts of human nature. I think that argument is so wrong - the facts of human nature are the distortions of human nature imposed by the needs of production. we are slaves, and are very angry about it, and cling to those scraps of freedom we have.
For instance, i sorta want to be a school teacher. In America i am free to celebrate any religion i want in ways that include the ingestion of drugs forbidden to non-members of the religion As in peyote, which is legal for those whose religion uses peyote sacramentally. I can't argue if i'm caught w/ a bag of peyote buttons that i have a religious right to use peyote, because despite the 1st amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;" there are many court cases around veganism and other belief systems where 'religion' is defined in a way that one's idiosyncratic belief system does not constitute a religion. I wear certain items of jewelry for what are religious reasons. But a religion according to the courts must have a foundational text and certain level of organization (churches and popes and such).
I have joined a church or religion but the members of said 'institution' usually flinch when you refer to their activity as religious. "This is spirituality". But i tithe a certain amount of time every year to helping out during our major holidays. But if i were a school teacher, or worked for a religious bigot (as a teacher you are certain to have some students whose parents are intolerant of other religions) it wd behoove me to keep my mouth shut about my belief system. Those of you who are pagans and work in public schools know what i mean. I hesitate to call myself a pagan, but there is a certain polytheism in my beliefs, so pagan is as close as you are going to get. My own private religion was revealed to me alone (the original meaning of heretic) and in the course of my life have had experiences that seem like memories of a pre-conceptual worldview. i don't know how writers get their ideas. Some people call the source of their writings a being from Beyond like Ramtha and they say they channeled the information. The experience is for me more like vividly recalling something that didn't happened to kenne any time since 1963 when i was born. Like vividly recalling being a Franciscan msk who had fallen in love w/ the witch whose confession wd. allow Her to go to Heaven. I once read that some of the Franciscans were so devout that they wd stay w/ their 'client' right up to the Burning, and as i read that it even so often happen that the Franciscan friar wd be so close to the fire, hoping for a 'confession' that he wd also die - i cd vividly recall my spirit entwined like smoke w/ the spirit of the witch, and becoming one w/ that person. Frank Herbert writes in the Dune books that the female line of ancestral memories is unendurable for any man but their Kwisatz Haderach [sp?] whose cd look at all the time lines. That may be true, I don't have access to the memories of that witch i imagine that once i loved and died trying to save her soul. If i really am a twin soul, I only remember selective scenes. Or, i just cannot imagine what it is like to be a woman.
I didn't name the church i joined. and if the members of that body were to hear me call their organization a church they wd collectively flinch. But the essence of religion is this (to paraphrase Paul) feed the hungry, comfort the widow, visit prisoners. "By your fruits you shall be known."
The religion whose foundational texts i am most familiar w/ is of course Christianity and to a lesser degree Judaism (the Judaic approach to what Christians call the Old Testament) is different enough from the luke-warm assention to christianity (we went to church when more religious family were visiting - i was baptised as a new-born as is the custom w/ the Methodists. joke: my grandfather was Church of Scotland, my grandmother was Catholic - they chose Methodism as a compromise. hahaha. The Methodist Church didn't seem to have much juice back then. as a child i preferred Catholicism, the ritual appealed to me. and my first glimmerings of any use for my psychick powers came to me at church - i found i could sing along to any song, even tho i had never heard it before and wasn't looking at the lyrics. I can also answer your question based on the first word before the question itself is posed. In my English class i wrote 'reconciliation' in between the columns of qualities personifled by the Sun and the North Star in the characters Leontes and Polixones in the Winter's Tale. when the instructor was framing his question about these contradictory qualities i said "Reconciliation." he said "who said that?" ["me."] he looked at me funny, he had barely started the sentence. "That's right." for the benefit of the class he finished asking the question. This skill or intelligence can be disruptive. I have profound respect for all the previous Cassandras. a fren recently called me a canary and people ignore my distress at their own peril.
every semester i make a vow to keep my mouth shut, and just be a good student. i have learned to wait long enough for someone else to speak up when the instructor asks a question. My educational goals aren't the same as the normal young person going to City College. why shd they have to ask the famous question "Is this going to on the test?" After a kenne digression the teacher found interesting lead the class on a long digression, someone wd say that. i hope to never hear it again. but when i had a social fail at a fren's birthday party he disagreed when i said i had the intention of having conversatations w/ people, and not take hostages. he said, "No. you want to be heard."
Well here, in this obscure corner of the internet, i can ramble and hold you hostage and at any point you can stop reading. in person, getting kenne to be quiet is a skill that very few people have. In hindsight, i see that I like Mike and Lizie and courted them for the room i live in now, because they both have excellent disengagement skills, and i can be told to shut up and not get hurt feelings. most people don't have that skill, or they just don't choose to be kind. most people will allow kenne to take them hostage and escape at the first opportunity, generating resentment and such. When in the course of a lecture on social norms and the crazy vibe i radiate i suggested that people have a share of responsibility when someone like kenne seems to have fallen in love w/ their own voice. I do listen. if i think you are grossly wrong i may choose to walk away from you rather than let myself get upset and argue w/ someone i don't enjoy arguing w/. Otis (otherwise known as Douche) prefaces every response to anything i say w/ a "this is how you are wrong and a fool." The last time i saw Douche i was talking about certain particulars about the experience of being a recipient of Federal and State entitlements. I am on both Medicare and Medical and have the best medical care possible. Certain specialists like psychiatrists pretty much are impossible to get in as a new private practice patient. But my orthopedist is glad to take what the Medi/Medi offers as recompense. Medi/Medi people are a small niche of disabled people who have enough years of a work history to qualify for Medicare, but make the minimum payout, and have no assets so i also still am on MediCal [MediCaid is the generic term for the state run health systems. different states call it different things.] So my conversational gambit is based on my own experience as a member of a denigrated elite - the leisured poor. And Douche starts his denounciation of socialism w/ his usual "yer wrong" and i walked away. he said "Oh, you say your piece and then when it's my turn you walk away." So i returned and said "I won't listen to your lies. When I am talking I sm telling the truth, and when you talk all you do is parrot lies." and walked away for good. Douche's birthday is the same day as my party and Douche is the boyfren of Lizie's best fren, so there is a conflict. If Douche and I ever do talk again, i will tell him i will not tolerate being told i am wrong, or that i don't know what i am talking about. If he is willing to back off from being a Douche and talk to me as a peer. But i will not tolerate being abused.
Am reading a book Hayek On Liberty but i don't have a reasoned response to it yet. this post is my unreasoned response. Douche and the entire built meme of the free market (which Hayek claims to be an evolved entity) rests on the creative efforts of people like Hayek to purge science and philosophy of certain entities which have been found to be full of contradictions. But Hayek is the main apologist/architect of the current worship of 'free market economy' as the only route to liberty.
the founding fathers didn't like the direction that the democratic institutions were going under the Articles of Federation. the people are too emotional too easily swayed by demagogues (see the Federalist Papers by Madison, he was there. and he is remarkably blunt.) The purpose of our Constitution was to dilute the power of direct democracy. The Fathers didn't trust the people. And at the time the right to vote was limited to property holders. They didn't trust their own class. Jefferson is considered to be the liberal hero who saved us from Hamiltonian tyranny. Aaron Burr may have been mentally unstable, but his antagonism to Hamilton started as an argument over the crippling control the banks had over America. go Burr! vendetta and dueling are often seen as 'outlaw' justice, but it is the path chosen by many throughout history. Hamilton was not a native citizen and cd never be President but he at the time of the duel was the most powerfull person in America.
I hope Egypt is not unduly influenced in their path to Democracy by the American system. I think a Parliamentary system is more just, in that minority parties have access to power. I have been a mutterer in the corner (kind like a voice in the wilderness, only more invisible) calling for a new Constitution. let's not rush into it. let's spend a decade talking about what kind of society we want. There are those that claim that no system can be imposed by decree and change the facts of human nature. I think that argument is so wrong - the facts of human nature are the distortions of human nature imposed by the needs of production. we are slaves, and are very angry about it, and cling to those scraps of freedom we have.
For instance, i sorta want to be a school teacher. In America i am free to celebrate any religion i want in ways that include the ingestion of drugs forbidden to non-members of the religion As in peyote, which is legal for those whose religion uses peyote sacramentally. I can't argue if i'm caught w/ a bag of peyote buttons that i have a religious right to use peyote, because despite the 1st amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;" there are many court cases around veganism and other belief systems where 'religion' is defined in a way that one's idiosyncratic belief system does not constitute a religion. I wear certain items of jewelry for what are religious reasons. But a religion according to the courts must have a foundational text and certain level of organization (churches and popes and such).
I have joined a church or religion but the members of said 'institution' usually flinch when you refer to their activity as religious. "This is spirituality". But i tithe a certain amount of time every year to helping out during our major holidays. But if i were a school teacher, or worked for a religious bigot (as a teacher you are certain to have some students whose parents are intolerant of other religions) it wd behoove me to keep my mouth shut about my belief system. Those of you who are pagans and work in public schools know what i mean. I hesitate to call myself a pagan, but there is a certain polytheism in my beliefs, so pagan is as close as you are going to get. My own private religion was revealed to me alone (the original meaning of heretic) and in the course of my life have had experiences that seem like memories of a pre-conceptual worldview. i don't know how writers get their ideas. Some people call the source of their writings a being from Beyond like Ramtha and they say they channeled the information. The experience is for me more like vividly recalling something that didn't happened to kenne any time since 1963 when i was born. Like vividly recalling being a Franciscan msk who had fallen in love w/ the witch whose confession wd. allow Her to go to Heaven. I once read that some of the Franciscans were so devout that they wd stay w/ their 'client' right up to the Burning, and as i read that it even so often happen that the Franciscan friar wd be so close to the fire, hoping for a 'confession' that he wd also die - i cd vividly recall my spirit entwined like smoke w/ the spirit of the witch, and becoming one w/ that person. Frank Herbert writes in the Dune books that the female line of ancestral memories is unendurable for any man but their Kwisatz Haderach [sp?] whose cd look at all the time lines. That may be true, I don't have access to the memories of that witch i imagine that once i loved and died trying to save her soul. If i really am a twin soul, I only remember selective scenes. Or, i just cannot imagine what it is like to be a woman.
I didn't name the church i joined. and if the members of that body were to hear me call their organization a church they wd collectively flinch. But the essence of religion is this (to paraphrase Paul) feed the hungry, comfort the widow, visit prisoners. "By your fruits you shall be known."
The religion whose foundational texts i am most familiar w/ is of course Christianity and to a lesser degree Judaism (the Judaic approach to what Christians call the Old Testament) is different enough from the luke-warm assention to christianity (we went to church when more religious family were visiting - i was baptised as a new-born as is the custom w/ the Methodists. joke: my grandfather was Church of Scotland, my grandmother was Catholic - they chose Methodism as a compromise. hahaha. The Methodist Church didn't seem to have much juice back then. as a child i preferred Catholicism, the ritual appealed to me. and my first glimmerings of any use for my psychick powers came to me at church - i found i could sing along to any song, even tho i had never heard it before and wasn't looking at the lyrics. I can also answer your question based on the first word before the question itself is posed. In my English class i wrote 'reconciliation' in between the columns of qualities personifled by the Sun and the North Star in the characters Leontes and Polixones in the Winter's Tale. when the instructor was framing his question about these contradictory qualities i said "Reconciliation." he said "who said that?" ["me."] he looked at me funny, he had barely started the sentence. "That's right." for the benefit of the class he finished asking the question. This skill or intelligence can be disruptive. I have profound respect for all the previous Cassandras. a fren recently called me a canary and people ignore my distress at their own peril.
every semester i make a vow to keep my mouth shut, and just be a good student. i have learned to wait long enough for someone else to speak up when the instructor asks a question. My educational goals aren't the same as the normal young person going to City College. why shd they have to ask the famous question "Is this going to on the test?" After a kenne digression the teacher found interesting lead the class on a long digression, someone wd say that. i hope to never hear it again. but when i had a social fail at a fren's birthday party he disagreed when i said i had the intention of having conversatations w/ people, and not take hostages. he said, "No. you want to be heard."
Well here, in this obscure corner of the internet, i can ramble and hold you hostage and at any point you can stop reading. in person, getting kenne to be quiet is a skill that very few people have. In hindsight, i see that I like Mike and Lizie and courted them for the room i live in now, because they both have excellent disengagement skills, and i can be told to shut up and not get hurt feelings. most people don't have that skill, or they just don't choose to be kind. most people will allow kenne to take them hostage and escape at the first opportunity, generating resentment and such. When in the course of a lecture on social norms and the crazy vibe i radiate i suggested that people have a share of responsibility when someone like kenne seems to have fallen in love w/ their own voice. I do listen. if i think you are grossly wrong i may choose to walk away from you rather than let myself get upset and argue w/ someone i don't enjoy arguing w/. Otis (otherwise known as Douche) prefaces every response to anything i say w/ a "this is how you are wrong and a fool." The last time i saw Douche i was talking about certain particulars about the experience of being a recipient of Federal and State entitlements. I am on both Medicare and Medical and have the best medical care possible. Certain specialists like psychiatrists pretty much are impossible to get in as a new private practice patient. But my orthopedist is glad to take what the Medi/Medi offers as recompense. Medi/Medi people are a small niche of disabled people who have enough years of a work history to qualify for Medicare, but make the minimum payout, and have no assets so i also still am on MediCal [MediCaid is the generic term for the state run health systems. different states call it different things.] So my conversational gambit is based on my own experience as a member of a denigrated elite - the leisured poor. And Douche starts his denounciation of socialism w/ his usual "yer wrong" and i walked away. he said "Oh, you say your piece and then when it's my turn you walk away." So i returned and said "I won't listen to your lies. When I am talking I sm telling the truth, and when you talk all you do is parrot lies." and walked away for good. Douche's birthday is the same day as my party and Douche is the boyfren of Lizie's best fren, so there is a conflict. If Douche and I ever do talk again, i will tell him i will not tolerate being told i am wrong, or that i don't know what i am talking about. If he is willing to back off from being a Douche and talk to me as a peer. But i will not tolerate being abused.
Am reading a book Hayek On Liberty but i don't have a reasoned response to it yet. this post is my unreasoned response. Douche and the entire built meme of the free market (which Hayek claims to be an evolved entity) rests on the creative efforts of people like Hayek to purge science and philosophy of certain entities which have been found to be full of contradictions. But Hayek is the main apologist/architect of the current worship of 'free market economy' as the only route to liberty.
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