For the new cycle, and for the new year that begins in ten days, I set my intent.
To do the work best suited to me.
To live so as to be a blessing to others.
To find wisdom, and to recognize it when I find it, and to incorporate it into my life.
Anything beyond these three – the pursuit of usefulness, love, wisdom — would be redundant. It is all implied in Lao Tzu’s admonitions:
Manifest plainness
Embrace simplicity
Reduce selfishness
Have few desires
This is the last day of the old cycle on the Mayan calendar, and in any case the day before solstice, which is when the year’s solar tides change. It is a time for quiet reflection, a little thought about where your life has taken you to this point and where you would like it to take you from here. (Put better: Who you would like to make yourself into.)
Given that, is it really a good idea to spend your time, your attention, and your mental and emotional energy trying to convince somebody about your views on gun control? I mean, whatever your views, they are obviously right, and are obviously the only way that any sane sensible person could see it – but, so what? “One convinced against his will, is of the same opinion still.” When you have some extra time, send me an exhaustive list of everyone you have ever persuaded of anything they didn’t want to be persuaded of.
Is it, in fact, worthwhile to let the “news” media direct your thoughts toward and one crime in any one place, or in one issue among so many? To get down to the nub of it – this is not the time to pay attention to anything that is designed to convince you or remind you that you are helpless victims in a hostile universe.
The long nightmare (some people look at it as a thrill ride) is about over. The future isn’t going to be just more of the same. It isn’t going to change in a blinding flash, but it is changing. Has been already for some time, in fact, and high time.
Be well, friends. Happy end-of-the-old-cycle.
The situation with what is called “science” but is actually technology (and sometimes technology-worship) is about as bad as it can get. The “science” establishment in our society has more or less the power, influence, prestige and access to resources that the Church had at the time of the renaissance. Where is the Luther that will free us from slavery to this oppressive organization?
The following message from WantToKnow.info is available online at http://www.WantToKnow.info/humananimalhybrids. To join the 10,812 informed and caring subscribers to this list (two emails/week) Subscribe here
Continue reading Scientists are mixing human and animal forms
MICHAEL VENTURA
LETTERS AT 3AM – ACCIDENTS OF BIRTH AND REBIrTH
Austin Chronicle – July 13, 2012
Whenever I bitch about the evils of my era, I take a moment to remind myself that no other era would have me.
Had my birth occurred a few years earlier, my mother almost certainly would have died — me, too, probably. Fortunately for us, by 1945 the world had spent a decade tearing itself to pieces with war; that massive variety of wounds inspired myriad new medical techniques, and as a direct consequence, my mother and I lived.
Me, just barely. I kept on almost dying. Doctors said I’d not make it to 1950 and age five. But penicillin worked wonders. Now I read that penicillin’s mass production wasn’t effective until well into the Fifties. Gee. I’d lucked out again.
My existence has been, so to speak, a generational gift, but my generation is famously ungrateful for its advantages, and I’m no exception. My good fortune failed to restrain a recklessness that is, for better and worse, at the core of my nature. Drinking, smoking, pushing myself past sane limits of endurance – I like that sort of thing. (But I don’t do drugs, and never have, for fear they’d mess with what Mikey says is my favorite vice: writing.)
Life continued for an unexpectedly long time until, six or so years ago,
Continue reading Ventura column – Accidents of Birth and Rebirth
A friend and his son asked me for my opinion on a couple of questions about abortion, and they made me think. So here is the result, FWIW. Maybe it will spark some thinking from someone else that will correct mine.
Thinking, Fast and Slow
I am reading a book by a retired professor of psychology who is a winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics. Probably a pretty dull book, right?
Pretty dull book, wrong. It’s lively, consistently engaging, and useful. It’s called Thinking, Fast and Slow. The author is Daniel Kahneman.
A while ago I sent out a puzzle to my email list, saying that a bat and a ball together cost $1.10, and the ball cost $1 more than the ball did, so how much did the ball cost. I and many of my friends were flummoxed by this elementarily easy puzzle, not because we’re stupid (we aren’t) but because of the way we habitually process information.
That puzzle came from this book. Here’s another. (This time, forewarned that there might be a rat in the cellar, I got the answer right, easily. I predict that you will too, for the same reason: You are forewarned. This is what his book is about, how the mind uses two systems to process information. Forewarning mobilizes system 2.)
“If it takes 5 machines 5 minutes to make 5 widgets, how long would it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets?
“100 minutes OR 5 minutes”
If you got the answer right without hesitation, you haven’t learned anything by this puzzle.
If you got it wrong, or got it right only after you hesitated and then rejected the wrong answer, you have experienced the shift from system 1 to system 2.
If you don’t know if your answer is right or wrong, email me and I’ll tell you, but that is a sign that you are not shifting over to system 2 when you should.
This is a fascinating book!