Wednesday, November 30, 2005

rights vs. responsibilities.

well, here`s a sticky one. where do we get the idea that we have rights? some political types mentioned the concept that we could get these rights if we subscribed to thier system. these rights have been traded as a currency to the point where government has become a delivery and enforcement system, with the help of lawyers and judges, for more and more rights each passing month.
what suffers in this process is the idea and action of personal responsibility. the more we believe we have a right to do and say what we want the less we have to be responsible for what these actions do.
what do we actually have the right to?
is there a person actually, dynamically, following our every personal move, ensuring the expediency and exclusive domain for these rights?
no there isn`t.
it is getting to the point where people believe that this is so unfortunately, and people are eating, dringing, smoking and engaging in practices that are damaging to thier health and safety because they believe they have a right to.
take smoking as an an example, smokers continue to ingest harmful substances into thier systems with the full knowledge that it will kill them and thier last few years will be lived in physical and emotional misery, yet they persist because they have a right to and the government says, "yes, cigarettes are a legal substance and people of legal age have the right to consume them."
a right to consume them. ??????
that`s permission to go ahead and kill yourself.
what about your responsibility to your health, quality of life and wellbeing?
the smoker knows that if he becomes ill because of his habit, then the medical system must provide him with care. it`s his right.
this dynamic between rights and responsibilities is pretty straightforward.
more rights mean less responsibility.
even for blacks and women and other minorities and the disabled, in exactly the same measure.
the more responsibility we take in our lives, not only will our personal lives improve, but so will society in general.
will it happen?
not when a major part of government is devoted to generating new rights as fast as it can.
all we can do is take more personal responsibility in our lives,and be aware of what the mechanism of rights and the organisations designed to develop them are actually doing.
destroying society and culture brick by brick.

Monday, November 28, 2005

radiorbit.

tonight i have the distinct pleasure and priveledge of speaking with mike hagan at www.radiorbit.com about what i do and where we are all heading together. i am excited and slightly nervous but confident that things will go smoothly in talking about all of the stuff going on in our consciousness. i thank all of you in advance for listening and visiting my blog and my site at www.tools4change.ca and hope that occasionally you will join in here and discuss things that you have interest in adding, subtracting or multiplying regarding the big WTF of our existance.

Friday, November 25, 2005

authentic desire.

authentic desire can be described as that which we want at the spiritual level. what we are provided with, culturally, are consumer goods. we are conditioned, at each turn and with each conversation, to want things to have.
what suffers, of course, is our humanity.
a bigger house, a more expensive car and more money to buy brighter and shinier things.
what suffers in all of this is our ability to do the art of life.
the abject boredom and stultifying repetitiveness of menial labour and tasking that is what describes most jobs is what conditions us to robotising our minds and our bodies. we are conditioned to sit still, be quiet and obey at an early age. this prepares us for a cubical existance, making money to raise another generation of robots. and when they leave the nest we begin the cycle of decline, knowing our purpose in a consumer society is winding down.
is it any wonder that pre-conditioned minds rebels with each fibre of thier being?
the sex and violence on t.v. is a product of this pressurising of the intellect and spirit. the enablers are the government and the church. the two most violent entities on the planet.
the two conversations that will engender the most angry responses are that of religion and politics.
the church and state are working hand-in-hand to keep the button on our hostility trigger to further blind us to the fact that we are slaves to the machinery of a mega-corporation.
not many but one.
feudalism never went away, it has merely been rebadged as corporatism.
technology has been able to provide for societies needs with minimal labour for a long time. yet we are still conscripted into a system that is relentless in it`s determination to have us spending 120% of our income and worrying that the music will stop and we wont have a job to go to, to continue to pay for all the crap we own.
it`s not a matter of which pill to take,red or blue. one doesn`t need a pill to see the further enslavement of us when the markets take a downturn and we will have to do even more for even less.
the answer is to not subscribe to the ego driven possessions and desires of the collective. stop reading newspapers, stop watching t.v. period and start actually having meaningful conversations that aren`t about who has what or who. the vacuum created by these simple acts will spur you toward things like playing games, doing art (no matter how bady, we aren`t trying to sell it!) and spending quantity time with people we like being with.
then you will discover your authentic desire.

Saturday, November 19, 2005

the age of reason.

it seems reasonable to assume that there are reasons why things occur. this assumption is the basis for science. it is the basis of our science, our laws and our very existance in a technological society. so why is it difficult to find reasons for important issues like free will and consciousness and death.
a reasonable approach to a designed existance would include immortality, right? we design things and implement systems that we want to exist forever and we resist change. so why do we die?
these concepts sit outside of this new, scientific approach to living. the very idea of life it`s self, the act of consciousness disturbs science so intensely that it doesn`t have a symbol in math or physics to describe it.
science see the effect of consciousness all the time. the observer effect is has been known to physics for nearly a hundred years. there are things going on around us all the time that defy the ability for reasonable explenations yet they continue to happen.
if we take two portions of the same tub of yogurt and hook them both up to a device that measures minute changes in current flow (lie detector) and put them in different rooms, then feed one milk, which is food to the live bacteria in the yogurt, the other portion of yogurt shows a galvanic response on it`s meter.
yogurt knows yogurt.
reasonable?
fact.
this study was done over twenty years ago by a cleve baxter, the inventor of the polygraph (lie detector.) and is repeated by students with plants, yogurt, people and dogs in various forms. science sees the data but refuses to accept the finding into peer-reviewed publication without reasons!
what reasons do we need once we know that yogurt knows yogurt?
what reasons do we need to know that when we feel good, we make good decisions?
we just have to go ahead and choose to feel good for no reason and our lives improve.
or we can wait for reason.

what it means to be conscious.

how do we know we are conscious? there are a thousand answers to that question. all of them may be wrong. it may be wrong to suggest that we know we are conscious and alive when we feel happiness, it may be wrong to say that we know that we are alive when we suffer, or when we take a chance and our heart races as we await the outcome. all of these and a million other ideas are merely dreams of something that is becoming information in our awareness.
but what is really going on.
this is a fantastic something, that`s for damned sure, but as physicists become poetic in describing the action of tinier and tinier packets of energy bumping into each other we get a clue as to thier emerging uncertainty about what they are revealing.
nothing.
a great seething, electromagnetic (?) nothing.
so, on one hand we have science saying that if we can`t measure it, it cannot exist, as they struggle to make finer instruments to measure nothing more accurately. and on the other hand we have religion saying have faith. we talk to god all the time and come back next week for an update. on another hand we have politics, philosophy, sport, judges etc. all making new realities as they go.
what does this mean to us in the search for what it means to be conscious?
nothing.
not a damned thing.
it`s all like trying to give a fish a bicycle.
the redundancy of human existance.
a struggle to impart meaning into nothing.
why is it so hard to accept the nothingness?
ego.
we are addicted to the ego`s need to recognise it`s self in action.
the me,me,i,i game.
that`s why we strive for answers and measurements of things.
prediction and control of the future and the repair of the past.
so we feel better.
so the ego feels better.
anxiety about what is going to happen and depression over lost opportunities in the past.
from the ego`s standpoint anyway.
if we are concerned about what it means to be conscious it is because we want some certainty about all of this. where it`s all heading, what`s going to happen, what we will feel, see and do.
nothing.
it doesn`t mean anything to be conscious.
it just is.

Friday, November 18, 2005

computer issues.

i have been unable to post recently as i have had simultanious problems with both my computers. thankfully i have gained access to the internet once again and will begin to blog more regularly. i want to thank those of you who have been reading these thoughts and i hope that you will be encouraged to comment, as that is the real purpose in all of this. to discuss this whole wonderful experience that we share.
i have way more questions than answers and i would like to work toward sharing your deepest questions. the real wtf. that we all come to when we really think about the miraculous spectacle that we are part of, each waking moment.
peace.

Wednesday, November 02, 2005

did you remember to smile today?

we are funny creatures. when people pull faces, we get feelings inside. when people grimace at us we think we`ve done something wrong. when someone`s eyebrows are raised we think something`s wrong too but when someone smiles at us we feel warm inside and smile back. isn`t that nice.
here`s something surprising.
when we smile at ourseves in the mirror we smile back.
the first time we do it, it may feel uncomfortable. we may have to force ourselves to twist a grin. but right after that, if we smile again at our reflection the mirror, a natural smile will appear.
why is that?
it has something to do with the nerves in the face sending signals to the brain. apparently the position of the face in the expression of a smile signals the brain to release chemicals into the bloodstream that makes us feel good. these chemicals are called neurotransmitters and they do everthing from make us happy to make us ill. so be careful what you tell your brain to dose yourelf with.
the neurotransmitter phenyl-ethyl-amine or p.e.a. is a chemical created when or when we get a hug or when we see a picture of kittens or when we eat dark chcolate. it is called the hug drug. it`s no wonder people buy chocolates on valentine`s day.
it`s cheaper to smile at yourself and others and it`s not fattening..........