| Author | Message | ||
     People is people - how we are |
People is people - how we are in an interactive universe.  What is it that makes us uniquely so human? We all share a common humanity, yet each one of us is different. Looking at another person, we cannot help but think 'this is a human being'. What makes us think so? We are the people of planet Earth, all differently unique, yet all united in a common bond, our humanity. What is it that makes it so? In an interactive universe our definition as being 'human' is already preset for us in how we are. Our common self awareness is natural for us. Generally we can all talk or smile, uniquely human traits, and we look a certain way, walking upright, have common human physical proportions, as well as being able to use tools to make things of our design. We can think and feel, create artworks, sing and enjoy music, and have the potential to love and dream. We all have the capacity to love beauty, finding something beautiful, even the human body. These are our common bond universally, no matter where on the planet, that these uniquely human traits are easily identifiable, and to a large degree admired. Most of us like being human, it sets us apart from the animal world. But there is a truly unique human trait that raises us above all the other life forms of the planet, that we can think consciously. We can be aware of our internal thoughts and feelings, and express them verbally or artistically. This truly sets us apart, because though we know many animals can think and learn, other than anthropomorphically projecting our awareness on them, this self awareness is a truly human trait, as other life has not exhibited it to any meaningful degree. Unlike them, these traits of self awareness, our human consciousness, is an inherent part of our being, how the universe designed us to be. To be conscious in an interactive universe is to be aware of where you are. Are you where you want to be? In a calm fashion, with a calm mind, do a personal assessment. What are you drawing into your life? Are there people to whom you are close, or need to move away? Is your life unfolding as you desire it? Remember that everything you do, whether in relation to yourself or others, you do within the infinite-interrelationship bubble of your personal identity, which translates into your doing it to yourself. What are you feeling about yourself? Is the person you know in yourself the person you want? In the personal reality you inhabit, is this where you want to be? Or is your personal reality troubled, lacking serenity and calm? Your personal Who of who you are is constantly in touch with its life reality, so it draws into its existence at a level of mind that is largely unconscious for us. Our micro-mind draws into our daily existence all that surrounds us, down to every step we take. Are we consciously aware of what we are drawing into our life? This may be the most important awareness we can have about ourselves: Are we drawing in the life we want? Or are we at odds with our reality? Mostly we are unawares of what choices we make. They are relegated to that part of the Subjective mind that forms for us, interactively, our existent reality. But it shows up in what we draw into our lives. What books do we read? What shows do we watch? What music? What foods we eat? Are we aware of our health? What company do we keep? How do we think? What do we do? Is it with awareness, or with indifference? We cannot control how others are around us, but we can control how we respond to them, and how we are in ourselves. Is it with friendship and goodwill, or is it with fear and hostility? Are we kind to all life we encounter, including our own, or do we approach it wearily? In every step we take there is a choice made. Are we consciously sensitive to those choices? All these things draw into our lives how we will be, and how our reality will be around us. We may not understand it, but this unfolding happens naturally. Are they the reality that we want? Take a moment and assess. What does it mean to be human? If we live our lives largely unawares, it will be one way. But if aware, it will be another. This sets us apart from the animal kingdom, that we can think of these things, choose to be aware, to be human. We live in a social context. But we also live in a universal context. They both define our lives, what makes us 'Who we are' in relation to the choices we make. In an interactive universe the definitions of our existent reality is automatic for us. In an interrelated universe that connects with everything our personal reality is manifest in what we believe. This is the hardest thing to see through with our minds, because our beliefs are largely opaque to us. In our social reality we are surrounded by beliefs. Many are pressured upon us by people who have their own systems of belief, seeking to mold our beliefs according to theirs. This is natural for us and them, as we come to accept what we believe to be universal, so seek to impose them on others. But because our beliefs are largely opaque for us, we are unawares of this. Without a greater awareness, we do not have the mechanism to consciously assess their validity, so they become articles of faith. They involuntarily become part of our personal reality; we are what we believe. Then if so, this faith seeks to impose itself on others, forgetting that faith imposed is no longer free, thus forcing a person from their greater universal reality. It takes a focussed conscious mind to see through this, and to make its own conclusions. This is why freedom of thought, and commensurate freedom of belief, as well as freedom of expression, our social freedoms, are so fundamental to our human rights protecting those freedoms. Once those freedoms are taken away from us, we are no longer able to manifest our lives to reflect Who we are. Generally, psychological and physical suffering follows. This is important to a conscious mind, because social pressures, including religious and political pressures, can prevent us from interacting with our universal being and interconnected reality. What results is a disassociated mind, not Who we are, forbidden from realizing the existent reality germane to our being. 'Being in the mind' has a much greater significance to an aware mind than to one unconscious. It defines for us our reality in being, how we are in terms of our Who identity, that an unconscious mind has not yet come to terms with. A humanly aware mind sees these things clearly, whereas one still unaware finds it puzzling, or meaningless. If we live in a universal context of existence, finding ways to think of these is a fundamental requirement of an emergent human existence, what makes us a human being. And then the world forms around us to be Who we are. Emergence takes time in an interactive universe. Seeking clarity with purpose, in moments of calm reflection, will yield results in our lives. But it is not instantaneous. When things don't work out, pause, take a step back and think about it. The answers may already be in your mind, or in the wind, and in time it will come clear. That is how our connection to universal Mind works for us when we are conscious of it. Not forgetting that our personal reality is still personal, as the universe in toto has a larger agenda, we are all mere infinitesimal fragments within a greater whole, as well as the billions of personalities existing on our planet with us. Yet in the fractal manner of an infinite universe, we each have a personal reality tied to our personal identity, what we manifest in the manner of our Who. It all works together, as the mechanism of interrelationship interacts with our lives. We are all in it together, while at the same time we are all free individuals. But it takes time, and the more conscious we become of it, the shorter time it takes to manifest our reality as we desire, if the universe allows. This is the magic of an interacting universe. We are all uniquely different. Singly and individually we form the humanity of the planet. This humanity is reflected in our cultures, our beliefs, and the level of civilization we inhabit. Is it peaceful and elevating, or is it degraded and destructive? Do we trust one another, or are we afraid of them? People is people, and we are all different. The level of our civilization is reflected in how we are together, whether agreeable and joyful, enjoying our lives fully, or subsisting in despair. These are our choices in a larger universe interacting with us in every moment of time. Are we aware of it? And if so, how do we choose our lives? Thus is how we are in the world. En Terra | ||
| Friends and persons |
Friends and persons- how we are connected interactively.  When I lived in New Mexico, it was common on the long lone stretches of road where few cars were encountered to wave to an oncoming vehicle passing by. It was a way of saying "I'm okay. You okay?" This was done without thought, just a natural reflex of two humans passing by in the desert. If there was trouble it was common to stop, and if needed to help a total stranger. When my Trooper got stuck up in the mountains near Truchas, sinking into a snow filled ditch, two men stopped to pull me out with their truck and long chain. I thanked them for their helpfulness, "Muchas gracias!" and we went our separate ways. It was expected, though we were total strangers. In a city world such simple courtesy is less common. We don't normally say "hello" to passers by, understandably. And in some remote regions of the world, encounters are met with reserve, where both parties may watch each other from a safe distance until someone breaks the silence, testing if this be friend or foe. When we don't know the other person, generally we are cautious, understandably. We must have reason to think them friendly, or potentially hostile, as ours is an uncertain world. There are bad people, as well as the good. In an interactive universe, we are not all on the same page. We all evolved differently, some friendly while others more hostile. There are as many ways to define a personality as there are people on the planet, each with their own characteristic of Who they are in this existence. From birth their lives took them down their personal paths, while in each step they responded to that path. Two persons in same circumstances will emerge with different results, both recollecting their personal experiences differently. This is to be expected, so from both may project a different persona. One may be cheerful and gregarious, ready to be helpful, while the other taciturn and cautious. What forms around them as their reality, what they had interacted with their universal reality, will elicit how they are in the world. But if hostile, it would be an error to think of them as the 'enemy', as they are neither friend nor foe. They merely are as they had become, and to accept them the way they are, which reasonably elicits caution if hostile, even restraint or avoidance, is to recognize that this is where they are in their lives without judgment. They are for us either a friend, or they are not yet able to accept us as a fellow human being, so remain hostile. We evolved one way, but they another. Then without ill will, when encountering hostility, we need to deal with it, understanding that their personal reality is not compatible with ours. Then prudence is the better way. Life is less complicated alone, as we naturally interact with our reality. But it gets more involved when another person or more are with us. We cannot control how the other person will be, their mannerisms, thoughts and feelings, likes and dislikes, all these being how that person's reality formed them. Generally we think a person is their ego, but this may be the least important in us. It is the whole person, holistically, that miraculous combination of universal interactions reflected in our Who that is important. For example, we may like their face, their appearance, perhaps their smell, since visual attraction is also entwined with our chemistries, or how they do things that attracts one to the other. There is a whole panoply of senses, the timber of our voice, our sense of humor, body language and intensity of being, all are cues to how we interact. These interactions may be friendly or less so. Alone, many of these cues are absent, but together they open up a whole universe to which we contribute and respond in our association. We are so much richer together. Sometimes it is spontaneous, a joy of meeting, conversing naturally, and we make a friend. Other times are not so easy. But in all its multiplicity, it is the love of another human being that makes a person into a friend. When we meet another person, we may pause to consider, heighten our awareness, of Who that person is. To some people, a smile is enough, followed by conversation, so we get to know them. This is reciprocal and natural for us. But at other times it does not flow, might even turn unfriendly, so we become cautious. One element of caution is if the other appears insincere, or overtly friendly with covert intentions. Distrust seeps in and diminishes the encounter. But before we are quick to judge, think of their personal reality as a reflection of their evolution, how they became the way they are. Often this is an instinctive response, but if we pause to think of it as the product of their interplay between their personality and their personal reality (in an interactive universe), we start to see them differently. This is not to say that we drop our caution, or not take precautions against hostility, but we no longer judge them an 'enemy', though we may acknowledge they are not friendly, and thus not trusted. Their hostility may not be under their control, likely themselves unawares of why they are hostile; this is especially true when hostility is socially imposed on them, an artifice of the 'other' as an enemy. Some social pressures, political or ideological, may be toxic to us. But their world on a personal level is complex, a complexity we can never fathom, what made them this way, so we must allow for tolerances that they evolved differently. Perhaps there is no bridge of dialogue or understanding between us, or that they too perceive us hostile, but one's higher level of understanding is that the other had issues unresolved for them, and to give them room to resolve them. Who they are is of their own creation, and beyond our ability to know unless they open to us. This is not always practical, and can at times be dangerous if the other's hostility is violent. It is far better to anticipate and avoid confrontation, or else seek backup help if such occurs. But the important point here is that failure of another's ability to overcome hostility is to not allow them to damage our personal reality. The universe does not judge and allows for an infinity of possibilities, but our personal reality defined by our Who is sacrosanct and is not to be violated. So it is for the more evolved person to be more aware of the encounter, and take actions that will better resolve the situation, without judgment, if a potential hostility can be avoided, or resolved. Not all encounters are so personal. Some are casual, a wave of a hand on an empty road, a tip of a hat, a bow, and nothing of real consequence follows. But at other times friendship lights up like a consuming fire, and we can't wait to see that person again. We like them, are glad to see them, we may hug in friendship. Or we may feel passionately. Is this joy innocent, or sensual? Where does this friendship come from? Friends can be intense friends, some right off, others over time, but such friendships open up universes to us. Think of your universe, your Who, opening up to their universe, their Who, reciprocally and interactively. How much richer to do this together than alone! It is that wonderful, and in the ways of an interactive universe, it can be that beautiful and personal, a friend. IDA | ||
| Astral Self - aura and being |
The astral Self - our aura and being.  Astral beauty The magic of our aural interactions is something we have not yet defined, though we intuite it as sensitivities of how our hearts and souls interact with those of others. We can at times 'feel' the auras of others, in how we warm up to them, like them, wish to be with them (or perhaps repulsed), basking in the joy of people we like; this is still inexplicable at this time. But in the mechanisms of an interrelated, interconnected universe, they are innately normal for us in our human interactions; this is how our greater universal identity, our Who, interacts with the universal identity of others in our mutual reality. In the manner of our interactive auras, though we are not aware of it, they are already talking to each other; and we merely feel the effects of their meeting, though opaque to our consciousness. But in this is magic, that wonderful feeling we can get on meeting someone, that our universal beings come together in harmony. This is from our astral Self, and that is beautiful. When the universe 'talks' to us, as it does to all of us, then we are all connected in ways still mysterious to our infinite greater being. In friendship and a smile, that is our astral being talking to each other. But more importantly, it is also where we talk to ourselves, though unconsciously, in all the things we do. All our feelings, all our thoughts, are expressed there in the astral Self, and in those of each other together. This is truly a universal phenomenon, one which binds us together as a universal humanity, from here to the stars. Managing that astral Self is then the next phase of our aural existence, that we personally interact with some level of awareness with our greater being. This is where the Je micro-mind interacts with us to form our personal, existent reality within Universal Mind. These astral interactions all show up in our lives. Though unawares at a conscious level, these interactions are known to our personal aura, as they are in relation to themselves and all auras around us. This is the magic of it, that though we do not know how, except perhaps at times in our intuitions and feelings, our auras in their astral Selves are looking out into the world. We 'see' the world and all people through our auras. Because our auras are connected to our greater being, our personal realities reflecting those connections, is what ultimately manifests for us how we are. Now try to think with your astral aura, see how the world looks with those eyes. Biologically we are still 'blind' with those eyes, as we had not yet evolved the ability to see with our astral Self, but it already exists in us as a latent potential. Our minds already respond to our feelings in all circumstances we experience, though no logical connection can explain those feelings. We have feelings, intuitions, and our micro-mind maneuvers us through our experiences, interactively with the universal Mind, to create for us our reality. There is where the logical connections exist for us, though we are still blind to them. But if we pay attention to those feelings, we are touching the world with our astral Selves in ways that can guide us on the paths chosen. That is 'seeing' with our auras, however imperfectly we can do so. It is but a first step; if taken consciously with awareness of those feelings, we are taking the first baby steps towards an aural awareness. And there, when we are true to ourselves and others, is where our respective personal auras connect us with our dimensions of being on an astral plane. This is an important first step, to see out into the world with our auras, with the eyes of our astral Self. That is why the truth is so important. And by extension this is why our freedoms of interacting by agreement, rather than coercions, are so important to us. We are empowered in an astral way when rays of truth penetrate our lives, or damaged and dimmed when deceived and abused. These are universal truths that apply to all conscious beings. They are also the reason why we seek to see the world with beauty, why we seek our art and literature with a poetic voice, and why beautiful things, beautiful music, and beautiful people, beautiful beings, are so enriching to us. We crave these things when we see with our astral eyes, because they communicate directly to our personal aura. That is how they talk to each other, aura to aura, on a universal scale. When we do this with love, we complete the circle of our astral Being. In a sense, this sublimates the gods and divinities of old, transcending their ancient visions of souls and paradise and salvation, because it connects us directly to our universal astral Being. Our minds are not there yet, but this is big. And when we get there, each of us, aura by astral aura, with the magic of aural awareness, our Earthly future will be something wonderful and beautiful. That is that world changing, and yet so simple. | ||
| Personae warrior |
Personae - guarding our 'Who' integrity.  Personae warrior An unconscious being, still un-evolved in their astral Self, is closed off in their aura. Their personae: a person; a person's perceived or evident personality, is not open to the auras of others, so their interaction is inhibited, and perhaps inhibiting to whom they meet. Our approach is guarded with caution, so our astral auras 'talking' to each other are shrouded. We cannot know them holistically, as they are unable to know us. Our encounter remains distant, and thus not as friends, nor is it as courteous, as with a more conscious being. There is no blame that they cannot look you straight in the eye; it is merely their state of being, that they are unable to do so. Then it is better to let them be without judgment, but with reserved caution. This is how we guard our integrity of Who we are. The first rule is that we do not empower them, nor allow them to dominate us in our lives. It is a fact of life we will encounter people who do not wish us well. As conscious beings, we can check them with our conscious forethought and caution. By exercising caution we disempower their sway over us. We cannot be existentialy true to ourselves in our Personae if we permit another to force us against our will, for then our astral auras are darkened by their unconscious behavior, which weakens us. This then pushes us from our consciousness, as our auras reflect damage done to our astral Self. For this, seeking approach by agreement (the art of mutual agreement) rather than coercion (whether deceit or abuse) is empowering, while failing this is disempowering. This is why it is important to be conscious of it, to not allow another person's lack of integrity, lack of evolved awareness, bring us down. When we see this, each one of us, it then empowers us to limit coercions, which disempowers them. When they have no hold on our consciousness, our Personae, they become powerless, even when they threaten violence. Once violence is threatened, however, we seek help to prevent their abuse. No one is too weak to do this, for it empowers. This is a universal principle transcending gender, ethnicity, religious beliefs, culture and geography. We are all empowered in our astral Self, our auras are free to find common bonds in friendship and goodwill; whereas we are all disempowered when damaged by ill will and malice, which forces us from our astral Self. Agreement validates and reinforces our astral reality, while disagreement threatens it. To be aware of this at a fully conscious level, from mind to our holistic astral being, is to disempower those still lacking such consciousness. Though they may still be damaging to us, even violently, or capable of treachery, they no longer have a free path to damaging our true self. And that is empowering our integrity, while it disempowers their lack of integrity. We can all do this, no one is too weak, for our Who Personae conscious of it in every instant of time individually and collectively raises our total cultural awareness. When so, then we all gain to secure our astral Self. And the world changes around us by the power of each one of us. It is that simple. En Terra | ||
| Impermanence - how we were |
Impermanence - how we were, and how we will be.  Buddhist sand mandala People is people. We are all uniquely human in our common humanity, yet we are all distinctly different. Each one of us has different needs, different aspirations, have different capabilities, and are powered by different dreams. These define for us how we are in life, how we will achieve, how we will manifest our reality in our existence. Our dreams were different when seventeen than those at seventy. We change all through our lives. We strive and struggle to succeed, rejoice when we do, and despair when we fail. But so does our civilization. We all go through great cycles that to us, within our limited life spans, may have seemed permanent, reaching great heights. But in truth they had proved fragile, impermanent over time. Civilizations rise and civilizations fail, as the cycles of human development go through their inevitable revolutions. But it swings both ways, that what appears dismal will ameliorate over time, and what is now gloriously lauded will in time falter and decay. This is just like life, that we grow and we die. The same holds true for social subsets and cultures. The narrower the sophistication of a culture, the smaller the population enabling it; while the broader the appeal of a culture, the more diluted is its sophistication. This is inevitable for humanity as it is. Will the boys in the 'hood and rapper Ice Cube have the same effect over time as Bach and Haydn and Mozart, or Beethoven? Different times, different levels of sophistication, where beauty has different definitions. The masses had always had their folk music and styles, but only a refined few had the education and disciplined excellence to bring this music to symphonic levels. But those were different times, where development was localized and spread only as fast as sailing ships and overland caravans carried them. Today we live in near instant communications and globe spanning jet travel. So now in our happy days things move fast, and with the dominance of mass media, it is no wonder we could traverse from rock'n roll to hiphop to rap in such a short time. Can the reversal be as fast? Probably not, as it is easier to dilute for mass consumption than to refine it. But it will swing both ways, though now faster. We can also see this impermanence for our world's future. What appears solid today will dissolve tomorrow into its diluted form (as per the second law of thermodynamics), as disorder is the more natural state. This is culture and civilization in all its forms, and is the natural mean, where only in rare instances do we rise above it, though only transiently. Most of human history is commonly ordinary, generally unenlightened, but it does at times shine with a special light that shows something new. And those are our special moments of genius when we as a humanity rise above ourselves and excel. We reach our greatest potentials, then it too will pass. Underlying all these transiences is a natural Universalism that binds us all in a common, and cosmic, destiny totality of humanity, where we are all connected. These two factors, our transience and universality, is what makes us be the way we are. Same as death is a certainty upon birth, so is civilizational collapse due in time. What was a shining star of social and moral order, where people interacted on a higher plane of mutual respect to avert coercions, where kindness and trust dominated their beliefs and actions, can revert to barbarity, where human beings regress to animalistic behaviors without regard for the rights or wellbeing of others. It takes little to forget our higher selves. But so is its converse. When we once more remember moral values that elevate society, where kindness is mindful of helping others, then we reassert our humanity and civilizations flourishes again. Go into a homelessness camp and see how they interact. Is it with goodwill or selfishness? They are people reduced to their basic drives of survival. But they came from a different world before falling to their desperate state. We are gifted now with an incredible civilization unimagined in ancient times. What would Julius Caesar have given of his empire to drive a Tesla, or hold an iPhone? It was unimaginable then. So is it unimaginable now, that we could rise above our current civilization, our common cultures of great beauty of intellect and art, as well as sitcoms and rappers, to behold a whole new world we had never dreamed. But it will happen, when we start understanding the universe we live in in new ways. So simple, yet so profound, that our common humanity could progress from its humble australopithecine beginnings, vestigially still with us today, to reach for the universality of the stars. We are all of it, a new universality.  Mandala swept away This is how we were, and this is how we will be, but it takes time. We all need to define our personal space in time. How we do this will mark our Who in this existence. It will be different for all of us, same as it will change in time individually for each of us. What is it we really want from our life? Perhaps in the end what the world offers is not what we want. Do we really want fame and fortune? In some cultures, having achieved thus we then give it all away to end our days in humble simplicity. Is living a life of virtue, helping others, of friendship, speaking and seeking the truth, living a graceful life, not more powerful than seeking fortune? In a universal sense, it is so. On a greater scale of infinite dimensions, such simple eternal truths are the drivers of our existent being in an interactive universe, what powers our existence in every step we take. Be aware of this, and all impermanence fades away like a morning fog. There is the real permanence of our life, when we feel all things deeply and love all life, love all of it. Then we manage to do good, for all people. And there lies the secret of a life well lived. IDA A Thanksgiving for all | ||
| The Irrational - miraculous |
The Irrational - rising above the tumultuous crowd.  Hieronymus Bosch's world Is it irrational to be irrational? Think about it. Logically, can we be both rational and irrational, if one cancels the other? They appear mutually exclusive. An irrational thought or feeling can be corrected with a rational response, at least in theory, while a rational thought cannot be corrected with an irrational one. Albeit, our human minds sport both potentials, sometimes willfully and other times involuntarily, so we are no strangers to our 'irrational' side of self. Most of us try to contain our irrationality, such as rage and anger, non-sequiturs, logical fallacies, or psychotic feelings when we can; but at times we actually court that 'wild side' of our mind's persona, such as in sessions of psychoanalysis, or creative expression, or irrational acts of courage. We are both worlds. In fact, it can be said without reserve that having both sides of our personality, the rational and irrational, are enviable traits of our being fully human. We cannot be rational without being in some ways irrational, to complete our human identity, the Who we are. So yes, we can be both rational and irrational, which is the cosmic paradox of being a human being, at times both a blessing and a curse. In many ways, our irrational has served us well. Think of explorers taking a plunge into the unknown. Is it truly rational to take such risks? Are not all risks essentially balanced between the rational and irrational, where an even gamble is not expected? Surely the gambler, though the odds be stacked against him, aims to win (before he ultimately loses). Any game of chance is inherently irrational, as dice have no memory. But risk taken with some rational prospects is the wind behind any enterprise, or it would never have been undertaken. Did Steve Jobs know his Apple computers and iPhones and iTunes would become the most successful and most valuable company in the world? Probably not, but he gambled on its success, and he was right. His at times irrational decisions proved right in the end. His spectacular success story was at least in part attributed to his 'irrationality' (his 'reality distortion field')! In fact, we all act 'irrationally' when we act on a hunch, a hope, a dream, a vision or intuition. Or when we shun the advice of experts, though at our own risk; they are not always right, and our 'right of first refusal', regardless of whether rational or irrational, is still our fundamental right. It is always our body, our mind and being, demanding full disclosure; but no matter how ill informed or weak our argument, we reserve the right to reject another's actions or opinions. And though there may not always be rational explanations for it, our right to choose freely has served us rather well. But there is a place where our irrationality may cause us concern. When its behavior looms large, becomes overpowering, then irrationality, like an obsession or psychological disorder, takes control of us. It then becomes too overpowering to be contained rationally, where we tend to become lost in its intoxicating energy, like at a mass rally where all shout in unison. Who could forget a Beatles concert? In fact mass gatherings, any large crowd, such as sporting events or political rallies, tend to capture the moment with the power of its irrationality. We get caught up in the tumultuous energy, feel empowered by the chorus of voices around us, sometimes dangerously so. After the game hooligan violence is the most absurd. Mass stampedes, hate fests, passionate response to provocative speeches, loud blaring music, all have their massive intoxicating irrationality effects, often bordering on hysteria. We get caught up uncontrollably in the ambient energy around us without thought. At times it turns ugly. However, when contained, our irrationality may be useful for us. Of course we will suffer effects of irrational decisions, usually negative, or look foolish for our wild assumptions and speculations. It is to be expected, if we tread where none had before. Great discoveries are seldom found by 'follow the book' participants, other than extending further upon what is already known. Truly new ideas come from unfathomable depths of the mind, which at first blush appear irrational. That is trusting one's gut even against all the known wisdom of the ages, and criticisms. We dare, open a new chink in the mysteries of our natural world with some unsuspected insight, and a whole new idea is born. Think of the DNA helix, or first telephone, Tesla's alternating current long-distance power transmissions, evolution, or plate tectonics, largely attributed to insights without firm foundations, yet proved true. The natural world in its interrelated mysteries sometimes rewards the irrational. But then, such rare rewards of discovery come from a different place, never from the tumultuous crowds.  Borobudur Buddhist temple, aerial view mandala, Java Think of how hard it is to find a moment of silence in a crowd, and it approximates a mind striving to tap into its irrational in a positive way. When one is surrounded by a sea of vocal cheering, or jeering, it takes a special effort to not get caught up with the ambient euphoria, or hysteria. Think of a moment of personal meditation, like a cloak of serene peace around us, granting us a moment of reflection, that takes us momentarily to a different place. That is taking control of the irrational with some rational reflection, to calm the mind to block the crowd's energy with a reflective vision. This is far from easy, and mostly we only later understand we were caught up in the tumult of the irrational. Now think of your mind rising above the tumult, like looking down on the crowd, and seeing instead of teeming masses a large mandala below. That is the totality of all their human interactions, formed in the myriad of connections that brings people together into a crowd. That is rising above the irrational, with a vision of all their auras interconnected into a pattern of their infinite beings. That vision is a rare moment of insight clarity, that we are all connected in wondrous ways. Though that too is somehow irrational, it is seeing reality in a new way, with new eyes, that only makes sense from that 'other side' of our mind. It is where the irrational on the 'wild side' is seeing with its infinite connections. And there, in our human interconnections, in a moment of calm, when the infinite appears irrational, we are connecting with the rational. Infinity in its infinite paradox is then rational.* Now imagine the truly irrational. Imagine one full day when there are no world conflicts, no gun fire, no attacks of any kind, not one animal hunted. Imagine a day where no child goes to bed hungry. Imagine a day where only kind words are spoken, only good deeds are done. Imagine a day where all wrongs are forgiven. Imagine a whole day where humanity is happy and at peace with itself. That would be a new world-consciousness kind of day, which now appears hopelessly irrational. This is seeing the world with the miraculous mind. But one day it can happen. IDA *(what is chaotic for us is totally orderly for itself, in interrelationship) | ||
| Ivan Alexander Username: Humancafe Registered: 12-2017 |
Let us share a secret.  Not everyone loves our freedoms. In fact, any idea that we as human beings are free agents endowed with our human rights to “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”, is anathema to some. They see our inalienable rights as chaotic and cause of disorder and mischief. Rather, they would control us to fit into their perceived order of how human society should be run. This makes such ideology dangerous. As Agatha Christie wrote in one of her mysteries, “The delusion that by force you can impose the Millennium on the human race is one of the most dangerous illusions in existence.”*Any totalitarian ideology is dangerous, especially if it believes its ‘utopia’, whether secular or religious, is the right thing for everyone. It will punish you, at times severely, to enforce their vision and make you afraid if you disagree or disobey. Every age has its transitions, where the passing of an age gives room for new ideas and structure to human society. In some of these transitions are the roots of major change, millennial change that will alter society for centuries. One such expectation was the Nazi push to eradicate a group they felt a threat and replace all society with a thousand year Reich. It lasted merely a few decades of spilled blood. The same repressive ideas of Communism causing much pain and dislocation, it lasting nearly a century before it too fell. The world rallied against the first and a major world war conquered it; the latter fell of its own weight, as it was an unworkable social system. Imagine what it was like in Third century Rome, at the height of Empire. Then, and this was a Neo-Platonist age, Greco-Roman thinkers such as Plotinus observed the many competing ideologies vying for space in Imperial Rome. Largely they lived side by side, temples of different gods and religions, some from the Eastern world and some Western, coexisted with each other, existing largely in tolerance. This uneasy peace included the still novel idea from the East, a Judaic idea of the Messiah, of sin and redemption, that became known as Christianity. Initially it was tolerated as a ‘poor man’ religion, taking in the lower classes and slaves. But when the upper classes began answering to its call, when aristocratic families who were influential in Rome took the baptism, the original Emperor worship and Pagan sects began to resist. Their power was threatened, and Christianity underwent a time of persecution. But the idea survived, and in time from the period of Constantine, it became the dominant religion of Rome. Power shifted, the old religions fell into disfavor and they in turn were persecuted, their temples torn down, and the world shifted. When Christianity transitioned to being a state religion, it totally dominated the ancient world, and it too became totalitarian. By the Middle Ages it had become despotic: obey or be punished. We live in a similar transitional time. My parents were victims of both Communism and Nazism, as they experienced both totalitarian regimes. They escaped one to be captured by the other, where they suffered the labor camps, finding themselves stateless refugees at the end of the war. But there was a competing ideology where human beings were guaranteed social freedoms, freedom of thought and belief, though not guarantees of success. At the end of the war they had a choice: choose the unknowns and non-guarantees of American styled freedom in the West, or the stated guarantees and security of the Communism East? They chose freedom over security, and emigrated to the West. The American experiment of constitutional democratic government, a republic protecting our individual rights, trumped the Marxist utopian claims of being the inevitable future of society. Both ideologies claimed to be ‘by the people and for the people’, but only in a free society does ‘for the people’ actually means for each one of us; in a totalitarian society, it means for no one but the state. My parents understood this, perhaps not very well, nor that we were in one of history’s major social transitions, but they understood what it meant to live under the siren songs of utopian ideals, and they wanted none of it. On this day seventy years ago I was born in a small Bavarian village, Dillengen, Germany, of refugee parents who were brutalizes by war and totalitarianism. In my life I had the opportunity to witness our world, had traveled widely. I had seen many countries, how we all differed, and yet were in many ways the same. I traveled the West, in Europe and America, and the East, to India, Nepal, Southeast Asia, Australia, also to Central and South America, and Muslim nations in North Africa. Thus I had been with people, traveled and ate with them, rich and poor, to experience their worlds. People is people, always charming and hospitable in my travels, sometimes dangerous, but mostly generous and glad to share and learn from each other. However, I learned how in some countries they labored under ideologies totally different from mine, sometimes so dominating their lives, and their social realities, that it reflected a different existence, much of it repressive and impoverished. It was not their Colonial past that handicapped them, why they were relatively underdeveloped, but how their totalitarian ideology totally dominated them, that left them fatalistically behind. And if they disobeyed, or disbelieved, they were punished for failing to accept what they were told. That is repressive, devoid of our natural human rights, destructive, and that is what holds them back. They are forbidden from fully being themselves. We all have that potential, to be beautiful human beings, Who we are, but in many worlds their social ideology forbids them from achieving it. Thus, in the end, they suffer and are not their best they can be. Powerful forces in the world are aligned against this human achievement, something so simple, to let human beings live in freedom. We know it works. But the totalitarian mind set forcing on us Utopian dreams will not allow such freedoms, because their power is at stake. And they cannot relinquish it. So that is our secret. Which do we secretly harbor in our life? We may live under a delusion of freedom, that we are free to pursue our lives as free agents, mutually respectful of each other’s freedoms, but the reality is more complicated. There are forces in the world that would not have us free, not be fully conscious of our being, to keep us off balance, out of our center; as this freedom undermines their power, and they will not have it. I do not think there is a conspiracy per se, rather there is a mood, more like a fear, that human beings enjoying freedom will misbehave. If there is ‘trust’ in freedom, in our human ability in the functioning of an interrelated universal reality, in some parts of the world, there is also a counterpoised mistrust and fear of us that wants to control. This has always been true, with only minor moments in history when a different idea, one of enlightenment, exploration and trust, of hope in a future, that this ‘fear’ was laid aside. Jesus taught us that, with compassion, as did Buddha, with mindfulness. But the fear is always there, and during times of major transition, it surfaces again. Like incoming ocean waves, we surf our dreams and fears. But when the fears become tsunami, we lose our bearings and capsise. That is what totalitarian regimes feed on. Not that fear is not a motivator of human action. We fear hunger and cold, the threat of an enemy, fear of failure, so are spurned into action. But love and trust also are motivators, for the good, so they are a better way. Freedom, what guarantees protecting our natural human rights, feeds on the latter, though remaining conscious of the first. But power is served by fear, where fear equals force, so it is held. The insidious secret of our world is that since ancient times fear powered our world. But it came at a price. The allure of freedom, versus fear, is that we can change how we power the workings of our world. It comes down to how we perceive our existence. How we view the universe, and our existence in it, determines how we are as a human species in the world. Is our universe dualistic in a Cartesian sense, or is it unifying in a Universal sense? In one fear and force, whether from secular, militaristic, or religious impetus, whether conscious or unconscious, are the operative conditions of our civilization. In the other, trust in our universal human existence, to give free people a chance, where people have inalienable rights, powers how we manifest our reality. This is how things are. In ancient Rome, during Plotinus’s time, this transition was already evident. Pagan Rome was clearly powered by force and fear, but Christianity showed a better way. Now nearly two millennia later we are once more faced with this societal transition. Even in the West, the American experiment envisioned by the nation’s Founders, that our freedoms are protected by democratic constitutional government, seems to have run its course; government is now called upon to solve our social problems, rather than merely be the enforcers of our human rights, both domestically and from foreign threats. We may have lost our sense of liberty, so are more willing to surrender our freedoms to the ministrations of the state. Naturally, this plays into the hands of Power, to maintain its status quo. None of this is done willfully, as it is merely how an aggregate of human choices manifest our reality over time. The same dilemma is evident in much of Western civilization, why our enemies who prescribe a totalitarian agenda deem us weak and indecisive. Is this the appeal of Socialism in all its forms? Perhaps, and why its most extreme case of Communism had animated parts of the world. What could be more appealing than totalitarianism in ‘the name of the people’ as a society of guaranteed freedom from want? But it did not deliver. Based on a philosophy of fear, extreme Socialism failed. Now we experiment with various mild versions of control over society, but it is still faulty, as it comes from power rather than freedom. Perhaps a blend of liberty and socially agreed upon safeguards, consciously and universally accepted to help those who cannot help themselves, can work best? Fear itself can be a powerful motivator, but the price paid by a coercive system of totalitarian governance by force, what ultimately abuses our human rights, is too high a price. So power by fear is not desirable. Such is the major transition of our modern times. And like in the ancient days of Rome’s Third century, we are faced with an inevitable outcome of how our world will go. It will be our choice, which is why it is so important we be prepared and mindfully conscious of it. So freedom is anathema for some. It scares them, why they gravitate into the open arms of a dictatorial totalitarian world. They lack trust, do not perceive themselves as free agents in a universe designed to serve free men and women, so they return in fear to what they had always known, social control. But as the waves of human migrations to the West show, not everyone is powered by fear. Many have chosen independence, to face an unknown future, to trust in their their own abilities and motivations to succeed in life; as did my parents; to believe in their dreams and themselves. For some in power, this is threatening, because it undermines their visions of a new world order. But as Agatha Christie reminded us, Utopian ideologies are the most dangerous delusions, because they can only be delivered by force, as history has shown. For the world to progress in this time of transition, it must passionately embrace a universal vision that we are stronger when free, each one of us free to live our lives by Who we are. This is the great future challenge, to usher a world better than one powered by force. We can build a future we want. The secret is a world of courage and compassion, of trust in freedom, and respect for the individual, greater than the deleterious world of fear we leave behind. There is something that does not love our freedom. Disempower it. IDA *(They came to Baghdad, 1951) Also see: Presumed innocence and individual rights | ||
| Ivan Alexander Username: Humancafe Registered: 12-2017 |
Retro back to the primitive.  The beat of the primitive has always drawn us. It fascinates us still, perhaps more than ever. Like the talking drums of the African jungle, we sway and writhe to their beat, in Jazz and Rock’n Roll, in much of our popular music where the drumming beat continues. Or the primitive movement in art, where the Aboriginal instincts in us reveal primordial shapes surreal in their ritualistic design, yet somehow strangely familiar. Something like it is in the new popularity of Polynesian tattoos, or Native body markings, especially body piercing with ornaments. Not merely in the earlobes, which had been with us since distant antiquity, but rings and studs through our tongue and nose and lips, or nipples. These have been puzzling cultural norms of late, like we yearn to return to some natural state, though they are clearly manmade. The primitive is never far behind us, and it calls us like a distant beat of shuffling feet to clap-sticks, low guttural voices singing some long forgotten songs, calling us back to the Paleolithic contrasting our modernity. Every culture, every civilization, reaches its heights peaking in the beauty of its creations. We as a people all reach our greatest heights of excellence at different times, in different ways. The ancient Egyptians built their great pyramids and temples from some four millennia ago. Ancient Greeks flowered their civilization centuries before the Christian era, and Roman civilization reached its height some two centuries after our current era. Our great scientific age began in the sixteenth century, ongoing in the twenty first, with new discoveries soaring us into new achievements in technologies and medicine. And how about our socio-economic achievements, starting at about the European Age of Enlightenment and through the centuries opening up our world to economic affluence unparalleled in earlier times; and social achievements of protecting our human freedoms, eliminating slavery, and granting us freedom of thought and expression the world had never known. Think of the great music of the eighteenth century, the Mozarts and Bachs and all their successors. Or the great writers capturing the essence of our collective souls as a civilization, and great films. Some of these achievements, of different peoples in different times, evidenced their character and beauty of excellence in all the ways our current civilization enjoys, however imperfectly, to make the world we have today, of technological achievements, in the arts and literature, ease of travel, all connected with near instant communications worldwide. This did not come free, but at a price of hard work and a conscious concerted effort, working together as a world. We are all of that, but things pass. Where our present Age dawned in Europe, their successors may be in Asia, or Africa. We all have that potential for human greatness. Nevertheless, the primitive is always there, no matter how great the manifest achievements, to undo the civilizational genius of a people. This was as true for ancient Egyptians as it is today. We are always drawn back to the beat of the primordial, it calling to us from the depths of our racial memories, where we all came from. The human mind is a complex, multifaceted thing. The present high achievements of civilization are grounded in reason. We have built on the rational to express our minds in all the goods and systems we have in place today. Though we may enjoy the freedoms of the irrational, especially in the arts, in our story telling, where fantastic creatures dwell, stretching our imagination into science fiction and fairytales, it is in our reason that we find the workable connections of our universe. This has led to our developing mathematics, our scientific discoveries, and all of our technologies. We understand how things work, and we use this understanding to our benefit. From our distant ancestors who mastered fire and making tools, to our space programs exploring distant planets, to our great computing machines and our hand held smart devices, we had progressed by reason. The birth of our present civilization can be traced to the ancient Greeks who reasoned a logical reality amidst the ancient beliefs of superstition. It spilled over to religion, where the arbitrary gods were displaced with our understanding of the fundamental forces of our natural world. God does not step in to run human affairs, but they are of our doing, how we understand and interact with how works the universe. We are still but on the first rung of understanding the Cosmos, with many discoveries yet awaiting, but already our reason has understood enough to build the technologies. Likewise our modern socio-economic systems, based on a fundamental trust in our reason, ethics and trust in one another, and our future, to achieve what no civilization had achieved before. This is also true for understanding our natural world, from the interlinked eco-systems and living environment to how works the human body in sickness and health. Our medicines are derived of deep understanding of nature, not the mysterious incantations of witch doctors. The primitive had been displaced by the rational, and that is a process ongoing. But the call of the primitive is never far, still rooted in some deep stirrings of the irrational in our collective soul. It is the irrational that finds comfort in astrology, or God. We are all of that, because that is the multifaceted reality of how works our mind, that we can be both rational and irrational. Perhaps that is the greatest freedom the rational mind can enjoy with its irrational, that the stress of what is real can be relieved in play by fantasy if the burden is too great. The same can be said of our perception of time, that it is both rational and irrational. In Paleolithic times, time was a notch on a stick, a scratch on a bone, marking the days. Later we studied the heavens to mark the calendar with lunar and solar cycles. Today we have atomic clocks to mark nano-seconds with near absolute precision. We even understand time in relativistic terms, where the proper time mathematics of observing light speed derived time is variable. Ancient Indian mathematicians may have developed our present ‘Arabic’ numbering system, but it stopped there, until the European Renaissance developed mathematical algorithms used in computing all with precision today. The geometry of Pythagoras had been transcended with Euler’s equations, or Newton’s physics, for example. Time had been measured through the millennia, but it was modern time that tied the world together in a universal measurement of time. Yet, the primitive concept of circular time and its magical realism is never far behind. Native peoples have a different sense of time from the linear arrow of time we accept today. Theirs is not the punctuality of a Swiss watch, nor the precision of astrophysical measurements, but the cycles of how works the human mind. Sometimes it is on time, other times it is free of time, yet somehow in following the cycles of crops, or herd migrations, life’s great cycles, it all works out. We had reached new heights in transcending the primitive notions of nature and time, surpassing a dysfunctional reality of superstitious beliefs with rational reason, but it is still uneven. There is still the draw of the primitive in how we structure society. Our news media has an inordinate obsession with crime and death, for example. Is it rational to murder one another? Is war? Yet these are very much part and parcel of our civilizational reality, worldwide, in that there is no distinction between modern and primitive. In a rational world such crimes would be rare. Sherlock Holmes would have no crimes to solve, street muggings unheard of, popular crime novels an anachronistic curiosity. Yet there it is, with us in the news everyday, gang slayings, abducted girls sold into sex slavery, murdering others for their nefarious god, or mass slayings, murder out of rage. This too is part of the human mind. Anthropologists visiting the Amazon jungles or Papua New Guinea highlands reported how friendly the people were once over their suspicions. They would accept them in their tribe, sing and dance for them, smiling sweetly. Then something would go amiss and they were murdered. This is still how humanity is in its natural state, where both the rational and irrational coexist in us. And perhaps this is still the beat of the primitive in us, overriding reason. It is more rational, for example, to structure society on a basis of fundamental freedoms safeguarded from coercions by rule of constitutional law. Tribal society has no such structure. In our global consciousness this is all still new for us, so our world reflects both realities, the rational and the primitive. The American experiment in the post-Enlightenment Age, now adopted largely by Western styled society, even in parts of Asia and Africa, has set the template for structuring society on principles safeguarding our natural freedoms with rule of law and democratically elected government. That was a gift of the Age of Reason. But it is a fragile gift, one easily lost if we go retro to an age of fear and repression. The rational mind understands the power of freedom, but it demands a conscious awareness the irrational does not possess. When superstition and the irrational dominate, there is an atmosphere of fear. It takes courage and will to overcome this fear, something the rational can do. But the irrational will be helpless to overcome the ill effects of fear, of injustice, of official corruption, of tyrannical tendencies of men in power. To have fairness and rule of law takes rational reason, or else the converse is a relapse to strong man rule and dictatorship, or gang warfare. The institutions that safeguard our freedoms are carefully constructed to discourage imperial dictatorship and official corruptions, however ineffective, to make a level field of equal opportunity for all, without class distinction or subservient groveling. That is the mark of a modern person who understands with reserve the value of our freedoms. Unfortunately the primitive lacks this understanding. Freedom is a hard taskmaster, it demands a concerted effort of the rational to make it true, to enable trust and disable falsehood. It is because we have both the rational and irrational in the mind that the strictures demanded of freedom are sometimes too burdensome, so we go retro into the irrational to escape it. But here is the paradox, that once you abandon freedom you are cast into an atmosphere of fear, and that irrational part of the mind reverts back to totalitarianism. Once freedom is lost to the irrational, it is very difficult to regain. Retro fear is anti-reason, irrational in its superstitious beliefs, and ultimately dangerous to our newly achieved civilization. This is where we are today. It seems so benign to entertain the irrational in us, forsake our reason for the pleasures of immoral behavior, to have fun, to dance wild, to indulge escapism, mind altering drugs for recreation, to enjoy our freedoms with abandon. Why not body piercing and tattoos? What’s the harm? Surely the youth of today will enjoy its freedoms, only to awaken to social responsibility in time. But there is the catch, that once freedom is separated from the rational, whether through faulty education of youth, lack of personal discipline, abandoned cultural morality norms, or disdain for critical and rational thinking, we enter a slippery slope where our freedoms erode, a little at first, and then full speed ahead to their loss. Awaiting us with open arms is the primitive, welcoming us back into the grasp of its well known tribalism, ergo totalitarianism. And there is the error thinking the retro harmless, because it ill disposes us to safeguard the freedoms we had so carefully constructed. And once that freedom is lost, civilization reverts back to Paleo-primitive tribalism, which is always with us. There is no blame, the universe does not judge, and we are free to manifest our world reality to reflect Who we are. We are both the rational and irrational, so either reality on our social, civilizational scale is doable. It is beautiful to watch us enjoy our freedoms and decorate our bodies, or to sit back and ponder. Which way will it go? Into the future or into the past? Just watch. IDA Also see: Not religion but culture Mathematics Is Now A Racist Equation: White Privilege Vs Black Privilege | ||
| Ivan Alexander Username: Humancafe Registered: 12-2017 |
Where are our happy news stories?  It’s nice to see happy stories in the news, rather than being daily buried in stories of death and destruction. Here is a ‘hoppy’ ending story: Rabbit Rescued From Fire In Famous Video Released Back To The Wild. This is the kind of news that inspires and restores faith, with hope in our human nature to help and heal. Not all news need be sordid or horrific. Such acts of kindness and caring for others is such a simple thing to do, but it spreads out into expanding ripples of good. Here are some other sources of Good News: Daily Good News Positive News Good News - Huff Post Good News - Fox News WCPO-TV Good News Happy News Good News Clearing House These positive stories are still a small minority, as they reflect the world. Why not make them the majority? That would be a better world. A happy ending: Stray dog steals book on “abandonment” (video) | ||
| Ivan Alexander Username: Humancafe Registered: 12-2017 |
Make us a World.  Make us a world where the birds sing, where the trees are green, and skies are blue. Makes us a world where mountains rise majestically, where the grassy plains stretch forever, where the oceans roil and forests teem with life. Make us a world where human voices are happy, where children laugh, where bees are plentiful, where flowers bloom, and where the joy of life is felt everywhere. Bring into our homes eternal joy, with happy voices of children, where cats play and dogs adore us, where food is harmony and there is always warmth between us. Do not let us stray into discord or angry words, where violence is a long forgotten thing, where truth is a prized possession, and where wonder and awareness, and listening, are in tune with our spiritual selves. Let us open our eyes to all the Beauty You have created, and let us be free to dream our perpetual dreams, alive in a universe You created for all Life to rejoice in. This is our spiritual quest, of knowledge and learning, of discovery of the many wonders of our world, that You are everywhere and everything, and we are gifted with Your healing presence in us. Make us a beautiful world, an awakened new world, where we can be Who we really are. Make us a world we can love one another. Each one of us, each day, make it better than you found it, cleaner, more compassionate, uplifted, understood, and given more joy. That is a world we can do. IDA Also see: We are Cosmic Children of Stars | ||
| Ivan Alexander Username: Humancafe Registered: 12-2017 |
Who cares?... Why we all need validation.  “Who cares?” Is this not a term of denial, a cynical that we do not care? Or is it an affirmation, that we all need to care and be cared for? This is what means validation, that we care for ourselves and others, and we need for others to care of us. Personal validation is universal for us. Whether positive validation that gratifies, or negative validation that seeks attention, we are all involved with each other at some level. That is the human condition, though it can be extended to contacts with all living things, especially our animal friends, even our gardens. We are all gratified by supporting caring, praise, caresses and hugs, or just an acknowledgment, all make us feel good. We shrink from criticism, disapproval, and especially abuse, violence and deceit. Whether just sharing food or in loving embrace, or just feeling safe, there is the warmth of being cared for and loved. These are all validations of our being, the Who we are. ‘Who cares?’ is not necessarily a cynical view, but more generally a positive sentiment, that we do care. We all want validation, that we matter, that we care for others, and they care for us, and find joy in such caring. This is the normal human condition, we matter. The aberration is that we don’t care, are sullen and unhappy with ourselves and others, withdrawn and uncaring, we hurt. This is universal, as ubiqutous as Facebook. So the answer to “who cares?” is we all do. Sometimes this caring is delayed, not immediately shown or realized. It takes time, and in an interrelated universe, it may take time for our caring to come to fruition. With patience and an open mind, the universe reveals itself. No matter how smart or brilliant, some ideas take time to develop enough for universal acceptance where people care. For an extreme example, the Heliocentric theory had been around since at least the 3rd century BC, but it was not recognized until the 16th century! That took a long time. So is it with our personal interactions with others, sometimes response is immediate, other times it may take longer before our validation is realized. At the infinite limits of the universe, our personal reality, our universal Who, connects with all the conditions of reality that are affected by our actions and choices, at the quantum level our individual thoughts. It all comes to bear, but it may take time for it to happen. Then one day, like the tumblers in a sophisticated lock, it all falls into place, and what we strove for and dreamed becomes reality, unlocked at both the personal level and the universal. Our astral self comes in contact with every other astral self; at infinity we are all connected, and everything falls into place. And that is when a new consciousness is born, and then validation, both personal and universal, comes into being. Does the universe care? No, it is infintely neutral; we care. The universe made us the way we are, good and bad. It is for us to choose to care, to offer validation. We are all connected, so how we choose, how we are conscious, reflects upon Who we are. Choose validation, and that is what the universe delivers. IDA | ||
| Ivan Alexander Username: Humancafe Registered: 12-2017 |
Trans-Consciousness connections.  It happens at any joyful celebration, at festivals and fairs, at times of gift giving and holidays, at music concerts, times with friends, at parties, when a special dance takes place in our minds in a trans-conscious way that brings us all together. These moments are personal to us while at the same time shared by many in a joyful way. Earlier we wrote: The idea behind this statement is that we are largely unawares of this mechanism at work in our daily existence. We are not yet able physiologically to access the Universal Mind, so can only impute this philosophically via interrelationship. Also, the universe does not judge, so we are left to our own conscioussness to assess cause and effect in our daily lives. Our being radiates to infinity, where we are all connected, whether or not we are aware of it, in our trans-consciousness, which in turn radiates back to us. In the same article referenced, it continued: We are all affected by this, how we think, what we believe, how we are and what we do. Collectively as a world and individually we reflect the sum total of both our personal experience and that of others who had preceded us for millennia. Common consent, when it happens, is endemic to us. It shows in all our works and culture, in our arts and literature, philosophies and beliefs; as well our myths of heroes and villains, even in the passionate activities of our ancient gods replete with vengeance and jealousies, as well as nobility and compassion. We are all of it in our trans-consciousness inter-connections living on the planet. In some ways it is a magical world, something Joseph Campbell would have described in his Power of Myth series. Our interconnections are wide and many, showing up in all the things we humans are drawn to and dream. As we do the universe does with us. That is the power of trans-consciousness we all are part of and personally possess. Is this why we like or dislike each other? And when we tap into it together, our consciousness rises to a new level of awareness. It may be shocking to discover at first, but gradually tamed into serenity, that we are all connected as a world. And when we truly understand this, it is a time of joy. What about religion? Is there a future for religion, or is it a passing historical event? We seem to be hard-wired for religion, our intuitive sense of God and the mysterious is universal to our world. The most beautiful thing of religion is its continuity, we have always worshipped, still carried on thousands of years later. It need not stop, though in the future it may be different. Atheism can never take firm root if we are infinitely interconnected, and the mysterious infinite or spiritual will always beckon. What may change is how we treat the world organized religions in the future, taking from them their best spiritual traditions while abandoning its domineering overreach. We are each one of us individually wired to explore our innate, our inner and outer being, to discover with creativity and love Who we really are. This is where we are going, into a world free of coercions where we find agreement and exchange, of ideas and ourselves, as the more beautiful and real universal reality. That will be the dominance of our future, where we are at last truly free to be ourselves. And it will be beautiful. Finally in that same article: Spread goodwill and it ripples out into the world. This is the beauty of our trans-consciousness, that we are connected, even if unawares of these connections, in this life and all past lives preceding. In each one of us is a fragment of the other, now and always, so though we may feel insignificant at times we carry in us the legacy of all humanity. All of us carry Caesar or Alexander in us as much as Gandhi or Buddha. See the world and meet humanity in all its forms. See us in our joyful moments, and our sorrows, how we love our children, how we smile in kindness, how we all hope and dream, our rituals and quests, how we come together in celebration. See if you do not agree with our trans-consciousness reality, whether in reality or metaphorically at infinity: We are all connected! Also see: Simultaneity - in social and cultural human developments Strangely beautiful Gong Yoga A New Direction for the World Transition towards a new World Awareness See Discussion: DISCUSS Extrapolations from an interconnected universe ’Interrelationship’ is only part of story | ||
| Ivan Alexander Username: Humancafe Registered: 12-2017 |
How Diversified are We?  Amazon warrior on horse As human beings we are generally pretty much the same. But each one of us is a unique individual who is inherently different. I may consider myself an American of European origin, but my genetic ancestry is more complicated, showing my Eastern European roots stretching from Poland, Ukraine, Russia, Romania, Slovakia, to Greece. (My mother’s family (H11a) came from the Carpathian mountains, my father’s (E-V13) came from central Ukraine.) But also according to my DNA report done by 23 and Me, there are traces of Manchurian, Mongolian, Central Asian, Ashkenazi Jew, perhaps Siberian, and odd traces of Native American. How can that be? Did an offspring of Russian-Native American ancestry travel back to Europe? Or was it the common ancestry of northern Siberians who later crossed the Bering Straits? My 23 and Me results make for strange reading:  ,   ,  As the above results show, there is a broad diversity in my genetic ancestry,* though Americans tend to be broadly diversified, origins from all over the world. I may not have present African genes (my Maternal Haplogroup H11 stems from Eastern Africa 18,000 years ago), but I do have history in Uzbekistan and the Altai mountains (land of discovered 5th century BC burial site of the Ice Maiden, who may have been a Scythian, warrior or princess) in my genetic makeup. No doubt similar diversities will be found in the DNA of most people tested. We humans have been a traveling lot, and whether through intermarriage or conquest had mixed over the millennia into the diversified composite we are today. In a way we are all related, dating back tens of thousands of years. This includes our common Neanderthal ancestry (except for modern day Africans, but weren’t we all from Africa?) which shows up in our DNA (usually under 4 percent) so they are not truly extinct as a human species, but have merged into our common identity as modern human beings. In this way we are all interconnected, part of a very large diversified human family. In fact, we are all diversified, genetically, each one of us, so the idea of imposing social diversification is redundant, an elitism that countervenes our natural equality. It is to artificially overwrite the genetic diversifications that already exist in each one of us that had taken place over millennia. No human being alive is not the product of an interrelationship common to all humanity. Each one of us is free to express our uniqueness in the framework of a diversified humanity, by choosing our partners, our social interactions, and in how we manifest the end product of our inherent diversity in how we live our lives. This is only natural, and to claim we need broader social diversification is to negate the million years of how we had chosen, collectively and individually, to live our lives, of how we evolved. In our inherent diversity we celebrate our personal uniqueness. So who were my ancestors? If they were Slavs and Scythians, they were a fiercely freedom loving people who were highly mobile and valued gender equality. In a way, they reflect my own identity. But our genetic diversity also reflects a universal characteristic of all peoples of the world. We are Who we are because of them, as much as we are of our own choices and deeds. So why not enjoy our unique diversity as we already are, and celebrate our differences in all the mosaics that are our common humanity? We are all beautiful. *(My latest 23 and Me ancestry research update shows 83.7% Eastern European (37% Polish, Krakow, balance Ukrainian & Russian) and 14.5% Southern European (includes Greece, Italy, Iberian, Romanian, Hungarian), 0.5% Ashkenazi Jewish, 0.6% Central and East Asian & American Indigenous, 0.6% Siberian… well diversified.) Ivan Also see: Genetic impact of African slave trade revealed in DNA | ||
| Ivan Alexander Username: Humancafe Registered: 12-2017 |
Stop the World... we have a pandemic virus.  (interactive) The terrible aspects of both common flu and coronavirus Covid-19 are that both can be severe enough to cause death. The annual mortality for common flu is usually above 22,000, whereas we are still counting on the coronavirus, at this writing it being over 9,900. (See how common flu and Covid-19 virus compare) But where the common flu, which is an annual pandemic causes little alarm, the Covid-19 pandemic has caused global mobilization to stop it from spreading. This may be justified because we as yet do not know enough about the coronavirus to roll with it as we do with flu, so we are justifiably alarmed. If not addressed with warnings and isolation, can it mushroom into a worldwide killing pandemic comparable to what happened with the Spanish flu a century ago, where deaths were in the millions? This new coronavirus of apparent origin in Wuhan, China, has sparked a global emergency surpassing that of Ebola, SARS, and MERS. There may be an underlying cause for this, first because it is new, and second because of its proximity to secret bio research centers in Wuhan. So we do not really know what we are dealing with. Will this virus eventually mutate out into non-lethal form (mutates every two weeks), or will warm weather of summer put it down the way of common flus? At this point, we still don’t know. But the quarantine response in many countries may at least limit infection of more deadly strain, so it is a reasonable policy, though uncomfortable with sacrifices for the public and with economic repercussions. Witnessing onerous public panic responses such as frenzied hoarding of food and toilet paper, closing all public meeting places like restaurants and cafes, closing schools, and limiting gatherings to very small groups or none, we are left with a kind of ‘Marshal law’ for combating an invisible and virtually unknown enemy. Difficult decisions must be made. For example, should medical doctors who proved positive Covid-19 be allowed to break quarantine and help with the recovery of those infected in hospital, in some restricted areas? This enemy knows no borders and has no ethnic targets, it attacks all equally. So this is truly a global threat. What is puzzling is the public official response to this pandemic, which at first was downplayed both in China and later in Europe and the USA, when the mood changed drastically within a few weeks, where the response became alarmist. People were ordered to limit travel, self quarantine if suspected of exposure, stop all gatherings, in some countries personal isolation where permits were required to venture out of the house, cruise ships denied docking, air travel curtailed or canceled, tourist attractions closed, and hospitals overwhelmed with more cases than they could handle. And of course, sanitizing hands and touched surfaces, and wearing surgical masks. So a flu of unknown origin with a death rate still below that of the common flu got a draconian official response from governing bodies. Why the panic? And what is the fallout from this panic? First off it hit stock markets worldwide. This would be expected as it became clearly evident business is being forced into slowdown, if not closures. Secondly it hit jobs as people were laid off from manufacturing and businesses dealing with the public, such as travel, eating and drinking establishments, hotels, theaters, libraries, museums, malls, music and sports events, fairs, etc. No doubt the negative public mood affects big item buying, such as cars and major appliances. All this filters back to the stock market. The response from central banks and governments has been to dramatically loosen credit and promise to aid directly industries affected by quarantine lockdowns. In the U.S. the Treasury will soon be sending out checks of up to $1000 to families to help alleviate the economic burden of economic slowdown and imposed restrictions. This is very much the right response, as it is a necessary step to shelter our economies from implosion. It could even be furthered by officially imposing a ‘rent holiday’ for payments on housing and apartments. Landlords and banks would take a hit like the airlines and restaurants, but it is a necessary sacrifice to maintain economic wellbeing for when life returns to normal. The consumer must be protected during these trying economic times if the economy is not to suffer lethal damage. With these measures in place, the stock market, a good barometer of future economic activity, is already signalling that we may have put the worst behind us. Nevertheless in Europe and other countries, the death rate is still climbing, where more than a thousand deaths per day are being reported. This is serious. If nothing else, think of all the lockdowns and quarantines as a trial run to have in place the necessary infrastructure in the event there was a real viral bio-weapon released on a population. We must be prepared. The next few weeks will show whether all the efforts being put into containing Covid-19 will bring in positive results. If the infection rates starts to ease, as it had already in China and South Korea, and if the return of warm weather in Europe and North America slows down infections, then we would have turned the tide on this pandemic. Within a month we should know better what we are dealing with, whether this is a replay of the Spanish flu or another coronavirus common flu. But already in this viral pandemic we have the best in human nature. People supporting each other with acts of courtesy and kindness, of helping each other, the kind of self sacrifice by heroic medical staff and doctors to treat the infected, first responders, firefighters and police, all who risked their lives to help others; people singing to lift morale for those confined; taxi drivers donating free rides shuttling doctors and nurses to hospital, all these show who we are in a time of crisis, that we are better. Let’s hope for the best, that Covid-19 will not prove a runaway killer but mutate into a less deadly strain we can cope with. And then all the hard work and sacrifice will have been worthy. Update: As of today, 26 March 2020, the number of coronavirus Covid-19 infections surpassed half a million; deaths reported surpassed 23,000. https://corona.help/#countries-nav Also see: Coronavirus: How to understand the death toll - BBC 5 Million Cases Worldwide -650,000 Deaths Annually: The Seasonal Flu Virus is a "Serious Concern", But the Wuhan Coronavirus Grabs the Headlines - Global Research. - printed 27 January 2020, Wuhan This just in: Californians may have developed some herd immunity to coronavirus last year, researcher theorizes Research paper on COVID-19 vis-a-vis air pollution, cold temperatures, and small business activity, and efficacy of lockdown. Viz,: Understanding the Heterogeneity of Adverse COVID-19 Outcomes: the Role of Poor Quality of Air and Lockdown Decisions However, it appears the main contributing factor to coronavirus infection and death seems to be small particle pollution, followed by cold dry climate conditions, and artisan (small business) activities. ADDENDUM: Just in (25 April 2020) Coronavirus: Has Sweden got its science right? - BBC Perhaps in hindsight, hitting the pause button on the economy may have been an overreaction. Sweden’s response was more measured without lockdown, but they did focus on monitoring nursing care facilities, where nearly 50% of deaths occurred, with cautions for public distancing and good hygiene methods may have led to coronavirus deaths and infections being no worse than countries with economic lockdowns. They also allowed schools to remain open so parents can go to work. Rather than political solutions to Covid-19, Sweden opted for medical advice from doctors who better understood the threat posed by this ‘unknown’ virus, where social distancing was the crux of their social strategy. So theirs was a scientific solution, and it left them no worse for it. This update just in: COVID-19 'has NO credible natural ancestor' and WAS created by Chinese scientists - Daily Mail (May 2021) | ||
| Ivan Alexander Username: Humancafe Registered: 12-2017 |
Covid-19 update: Update 26 June 2020: it’s been over three months since the world went on lockdown, now mostly lifted, so we have some idea of what damage Covid-19 virus has done. The world confirmed cases of infection stand just under ten million, while the death rate is shy of half a million. Working the numbers, based on a world population of about seven billion, the world infection rate to date is about 0.15%, while the death rate worldwide is about 0.007% (about 4.7% death rate of people infected). Comparing this to the Spanish flu a century ago, the numbers pale; there were over 500 million infected, with over 50 million deaths. This is certainly no Black Death in Medieval Europe where the death rate was over 30% of their population. So why the intense media coverage, and why nations’ responses of national health crisis emergency? Certainly this coronavirus is worst than the seasonal common flu, but not that much. Have we turned this pandemic into world media theater? Time to calm down the media noise and let this virus run its course. With either herd immunity, still distant, or an effective vaccine, or medical treatment, Covid-19 will end up a blip in human history. Also see: Covid-19 deaths per capita This just in: One-Dose COVID Shot, Explained - Video, Johnson & Johnson vaccine Is it Time for Intellectuals to Talk about God? by Dr. Naomi Wolf (Jan 2022 - a Covid social postmortem update) | ||
| Ivan Alexander Username: Humancafe Registered: 12-2017 |
When the universe works with you, or with you against it.  Sisyphus It’s a basic premise that the universe is in agreement with you. After all, it allowed you to exist, supports your chances of survival if you are still alive, and allows an infinite number of possibilities in response to your choices and actions, if they don’t kill you. So it is in total agreement with your existence, from birth until death, to materialize for you that existence, all in perfect agreement. Where this agreement falters, or fails, is when you violate that agreement and work against it, to thwart it or to somehow cheat on your existence. Then, since the universe is non-judgmental, it will frustrate you and make you suffer circumstances not only to your not liking it, but one that could prove fatal. This is the big picture, the fundamental thesis of agreement, that while in agreement all works easily for you, but in disagreement it becomes more complicated. One works with you as you work with it; the other works against you as you work against it. The underlying supposition is that all is always in agreement; the universe cannot be any other way. From an infinity of interrelations, interconnections both in space and time, all things including us are as those infinite connections of interrelationship, down to quarks and atoms, are as they had formed around us to manifest our reality. There is no escape. (We don't actually know what an 'infinite interrelationship' looks like, nor can we really understand it.) But we humans are clever so we found a way to escape. Once our minds developed consciousness, which itself may be the product of that infinite interrelationship, we discovered we could make choices and take actions that are willfully contrary to the state of things as they are. We can move things, ourselves in reality, and move into the reality of others. How clever of us! We have found we can manipulate reality, and each other, to manifest reality not as it is but as we wish it to be. Mind, this is not some mindless manipulation for survival but calculated decisions to effect an outcome to our liking. What’s not to like? The universe is all accepting, within the parameters of our physical existence, and non-judgmental, so we can do pretty much as we please. First we discovered we could surpass the use of crude stones by fashioning them into sharp tools, then we discovered how to manipulate fire, that primordial form of hot plasma, then we domesticated animals to work for us, then each other to conquer and slave for us, then machinery, then electricity, electronics, and so on. So in our abilities to manipulate reality, and each other, we developed dominion over our sphere of influence. But it didn’t stop there. By manipulating our existential reality we also dominated our interconnected universal reality to reflect our being in it. Back and forth over millennia we fashioned ourselves into our being as we are, in our minds Who we are, and with that both scientifically and socially, as well psychologically, we defined ourselves as modern progressive human beings. So if the universe is always in agreement, no matter how absurd the outcome, the only converse possible within its intimate matrix of existence is that we human beings in our minds and bodies are the wild card of how it will manifest its existence for us. We then either live in agreement with this universe, or we live in disagreement with its reality. Therefore, we manipulate what is at hand, that we can control, to suit our needs and purposes to manifest the desired outcome, why we made tools. But when in disagreement, our choices become limited to what is possible, or more probable, as opposed to the impossible. So we choose and await the outcome, mostly we do this unconsciously, and then either reap reward and satisfaction with our work, or suffer disappointment. Now abstract this to the next level, that all our outcomes when successful are from our being in agreement with our universe, our existential reality; but conversely when failing in outcome we are in disagreement with our existence. Does this not simplify the principle to an axiom? Hence, does this principle not apply to all our human endeavors, from mere survival to how we interact with all others, including all living things? Does this seem absurd? Yes, it appears absurd if the universe has no meaning, and we blindly stumble through life as best we can, usually burdened with false expectations. ‘Why isn’t God on our side?’ for example. On the other hand, if the universe is self designed to manifest thinking and feeling living entities, conscious beings, including us, then the absurdism gets negated by a kind of emergent determinism: we either work in agreement with the universe, or we work against it. Does this not reduce to an absolute simplicity, a truism applying to all our human endeavors? We human beings have become very good at designing systems, including systems of how to socially manage others, our political systems. There is usually an underlying philosophy of beliefs as to what is human nature. In the Judeo-Christian sphere Man is fallen, sinful, and in need of redemption. In the Marxist ideology, individuals are selfish and need to be redesigned into a communal mindset beneficial for all equally. In Progressivism, man is generally good, just needs to be managed to not do harm to oneself and others as much as humanly possible. From each belief springs a system of how to socially manipulate others, whether or not by their agreement. So an overbearing, overreaching system is designed around which human beings are then corralled into acceptance and obedience to suit the belief system. This is as true of Marxism as Islam, or Utopianism as Humanism. Each has its tenets and expectations of what human beings should be, and how to achieve those expectations. But is this not absurd in itself? If the universe already has a system in place, one of infinite dimensions, that is axiomatic in its agreements, then does this manmade system of social interactions not violate its basic truism? One cannot be loyal to two masters! Either we accept a priori that we are in agreement with our universal reality, or we submit to our manmade systems of reality; we cannot do both. Therefore, if we agree to submit to a manmade reality social system, then we forfeit our agreement with our infinite universal reality, what made us being Who we are, to limit our existence within the boundaries dictated to us. One is inherently a basis of freedom within the parameters of our universal existence; while the other is intrinsically illiberal in its outcome. Which system do we prefer? Which works better in the end? Therein lies the paradox of absurdism, that by thinking the universe had no meaning and no purpose, we designed for ourselves a constraining parallel system, whether religious or secular political, to give ourselves meaning. But in so doing, we had to superimpose our own system of agreements over the universal one already existential; and in so doing we forced upon ourselves a coercive system to replace the universal one. Which has more meaning? In one human beings must be manipulated to fit in accordance with the precepts and beliefs of the designed social order; while in the other the only stipulation is for an existence in agreement with our universal reality, that we do not coerce one another but seek to interact by agreement instead. It is that simple! Easy formula: Either we shun coercion and seek life in agreement with others and ourselves, or we submit to a lesser system that will manipulate us to conform to its will. One frees us, within the parameters of an interrelationship universe; the other of necessity coerces us. Step back and see the cosmic humor. We did this to ourselves! By seeking meaning in our existence we created a system that took that meaning away. Is this not a beautiful absurdism? Could our devilish cleverness have built a better cage for ourselves? The universe in its infinite patience let us, like a Sisyphean endless journey, do the absurd. It must be laughing! IDA “As the universe manifests itself as an infinite variety of patterns and forms, the more an individual realizes himself to be one with that universe, the more of an individual he becomes.” - Alan Watts Also see: Can an idea know itself? | ||
| Ivan Alexander Username: Humancafe Registered: 12-2017 |
The one hundred mile long city of the future.  In the Tabuk province of northwestern Saudi Arabia there is a plan to build a futuristic green city named NEOM (Wiki). It is a proposal by progressive Prince bin Salman’s vision of a city that is totally green, pedestrian on the surface with transportation services below ground, including a super-fast pneumatic hyperloop service to speed passengers along the hundred mile city.  Other services will also be below ground while the surface will be totally eco-friendly and free of vehicles. There are plans to build solar energy hydrogen generating plants for H2 fuel for vehicles used, all green power. The airport at Sharma had already been built, and the construction of NEOM’s infrastructure is expected to be completed by 2025. 
 This futuristic city is an ambitious plan to attract up to one million residents of all nations, a truly multicultural, green urban environment, with its own legal system and governance separate from that of the Saudi Kingdom. To fulfill this dream will necessitate changes to the Kingdom’s present legacy of human rights and gender equality, where the dignity of the individual is respected, and where freedom of thought and belief is sacrosanct. Presumed innocence and democratic representative government are foundational to how work modern society, working to engender our interactions through agreement rather than coercions, laws that encourage us to be Who we are in cooperative individualism. The future city, if Neom’s vision model is to be adopted worldwide, is to be a progressive manifestation of humanity where we all are evolving as a planetary consciousness. We are all connected.  | ||
| Ivan Alexander Username: Humancafe Registered: 12-2017 |
Universal Conflict versus Agreement.  (interactive) There is something in our universe that loves a conflict, it is ubiquitous: stars eating stars, black holes devouring neighbors, animal life eating each other, humans warring. These are the staples of our vast universal reality, our cosmic violent entropy taken to its natural conclusion. But there is a counter force, one that brings together instead, in harmony and growth, what makes life possible. This is the cooperative nature of the universe, where the laws of agreement overcome the chaos of conflict, yet both are real. This is the infinitely mysterious universe we inhabit, and what we who have gained human consciousness struggle to fathom. Why is there both conflict and agreement cooperation in the universe? There is also something primordial about conflict, it had been with us since the birth of the world. Everything competes, first life competed for space, plant life competes with other plants, animals are territorial, humans compete for gain and attention. This is the way of things. But conversely everything finds accommodation, compromise, cooperation when advantageous, so both realities, conflict and cooperation, exist side by side in the greater scheme of things. In infinity there appears no interrelationship advantage to side with one or the other; the universe does not judge. If we take this competition as a positive force, a force for rebalancing and redefining conditions, then no matter how disruptive or violent, the end result is a reaffirmation how the competition plays out; from it settles a kind of redefined eqilibrium. It is same for us. From our primordial past we humans had been competing, in conflict over space, over food and resources, control of other humans, tribalism, over women, over how we are to believe. These had been our human conditions from primitive times to today, and they are still. We have a primordial, primitive side to our nature that in many ways defines us, though we like to believe we have risen above this atavistic urge to fight; in fact, this urge is evident in our everyday existence, grievously in the news, daily attacks on our streets, great war conflicts worldwide. Is this not who we are, always at each other in conflict? Yes, but there is more. Where conflict and competition may be dynamic, forcing events to change, they may not be the best solution to a problem. As conscious human beings, and we are not yet all conscious equally, we use our intelligence, what marks us different from the animal world, to rise above our primitive urges to resolve differences with force. We think of ways to effect changes without resorting to violence. This conscious effort is a monumental change in us, one that has catapulted us from a simple, brutish survival existence to one of historical achievements. Without the benefit of trust and agreed upon cooperation, we would have been left in our brutish past existence. But we are more, able to form alliances and agreements that transcend force and conflict, that bring us together as community and cooperative behavior. Witness worldwide communications, travel, markets and ingenuity meeting our needs, democratic government by rule of law, education of our young, and caring for our weak; all these are testimony to our achievements as human beings with a mind. And having a mind, we demand more consciousness, less conflict, less coercion to allow us to be Who we are, and greater accomplishments by agreements rather than coercions. Is this not Habeas Mentem, that we have a mind? Therein lies the future, that though the universe does not judge and is as endowed with conflict as cooperation, we who are conscious human beings do judge. The universe is for us what we are in our hearts. We separate the beautiful, the harmonious, the aware from the unconscious, the violent. So when a human being wantonly attacks another, cowardly from behind, or attacks the weak, we immediately see in this as the ugly primitive asserting itself. But it is not the path of the future, for such attack is retrograde. A conscious, intelligent mind is more than this, and to excuse such violence does not enhance a positive competition but instead rewards a negative, coercive reality. Taken to any dimensions of human society, such coercions and violence are to backtrack to the regressive, primordial forces of our nature, undoing human achievements, where mind is absent. Looking back at the whole picture of the universe, with us emerging as intelligent, progressive, conscious and loving human beings, we see infinity manifest itself as universal Mind, our minds, who understand and make better, rather than attack and destroy. This is our human legacy, to be mind aware, and ultimately it is our destiny. Soon, in the not too distant future, humans will venture into space. How will we present ourselves? Will we be seen as progressive, conscious human beings? Or will we be judged as violent primitives? The only real validation of coercion is to stop coercion. Will we know how to do this? Will we validate a universal mindfulness that transcends chaos and the primordial primitive? Or will we fail the test? The universe is ambivalent, we could go either way without blame. But same as a resolution through conflict will rearrange reality one way, violently; a cooperative, agreeable resolution will redefine our reality another way, peacefully. One will leave us with the primitive, the other will advance us into greater consciousness as a human species. Which will we choose? This is where we are going, it is our future. The universe is infinitely magnanimous in its response to our actions, from its grand perspective we could go either way. However, if we fail the test we will be severely restricted, and shunned universally. Therefore, we must make every effort to overcome the primitive, the coercive, and instead to promote the progressive, the cooperative, if we are to not be left behind in the greater scheme of things. Can we reach for that next level? Before us lies an unimaginable future if we choose universal consciousness over primordial chaos. When our minds awaken to their connection to the stars, our future will become unbelievably magical. IDA Also see: Inventory of the oppressors and the oppressed | ||
| Ivan Alexander Username: Humancafe Registered: 12-2017 |
Dreams of Africania.  The name Africania comes from a beautiful children’s book titled by the same name. It would represent the establishment of an American state created for the progressive ideals of people of color, African-Americans, who desire to have a ‘homeland’ they can rule by their own democratic principles and jurisdiction; their own administered economic development, and indigenous educational system and police force within the context of the constitutionality of a United States Federal government. In effect, Africania is a ‘state within a state’, with real estate, a voluntary population, and resources apportioned for its own development and well being. This idea is inspired in response to vocal disapproval, expressed by some this 4th of July, of how the United States evolved since 1776 and its Declaration of Independence. Critics have said that Independence Day is not their holiday of liberty, as it failed to include a large portion of the population as equals, the Africans brought to America as slaves, and still enslaved at the time of its signing. To these critics Juneteenth is a more meaningful holiday of emancipation, hence liberty, than the 4th. We all as Americans have the free right to express our opinions and passions, so the expressed grievance is as valid as our desire to celebrate Independence Day for all Americans, as well as Juneteenth, freely. The governmental administration of Africania would be entirely decided by its African-American constituency.* Within the parameters of the US Constitution and its Bill of Rights, governance ‘by the people and for the people’ would be its main objective. The location of this new state may be selected by vote of predominantly African-American counties and jurisdictions, so they may not be a continuous land area, but patchwork-quilt-like, where the African origin population exceeds the national average by a high margin. For example Baltimore, Detroit, Atlanta, Saint Louis, and surrounding suburbs, parts of Deep South, might select to join Africania as their new voting representation. The aim and purpose is to grant as much indigenous autonomy as possible to the American-African population as is practicable. The effective result is a new state, or American territory, represented by its own people for its own freedom and benefit. If it were practical, a large contiguous area of land, say the area of Delaware and parts of New Jersey and Maryland, might be appropriated, with compensation for those who oppose it, to establish Africania as a separate US state; or it could be incorporated into the nation as a patchwork of separate federal districts, with their own administration and laws. The highest order of Africania is human dignity. Every human being deserves the best they can be both in body and mind, and in the spirit of freedom to be Who they are. Africania is to embody these principles of the beauty and freedom of the individual. We all come to maturity in our own way, both personally and culturally, as is evidenced by how we live, what we believe in. We who came to these shores from other continents all developed what was for us our cultural history, and the same is true for the Africans who were brought here against their will. But in the new future of an African-American cultural history, the role of self determination is inextricable of its value in dignity, that all the challenges and successes of society should be of their doings and pride. Africania is not to be a client state of the Federal government but truly independent, able to face its own challenges and arrive at its own solutions. Where the US government may assist, it may not dictate, either in policies of education, economic development, or family values. These are indigenous cultural values that a free people must fashion for themselves, to release it from conscription to a welfare system detrimental to its development. If there are societal shortcomings in Africania, whether crime, or gun violence, or poor health, these are for the Africanians to resolve, and not to be dictated from outside.# The world is free to interact, if invited, but not free to dominate if they are to be a free people. The vision of an Africanian state is the culmination of a people’s grievances over centuries, and it is the only true and honorable solution to their unhappy state of affairs. We should all celebrate gladly what is for us a day of liberation, of freedom and human dignity, without denigrating the celebration of others. For some it will be July 14th Bastille Day, or July 4th Independence Day, or Juneteenth, or the October Revolution. Each celebration is our own, and each free society can choose how to honor all those who fought for it and died protecting those freedoms. Every people has that right, to be who they are in their own image, and be the best they can be. That is our human legacy going forth. Africania can aim for a great future legacy of what African-Americans have come to represent. This is theirs. * (Not by ’race’ which is a throwback to nineteenth century racial classification, an obsolete label, a taxonomic classification given to Homo Sapiens who happen to be of a certain color. In fact “race” does not exist.) | ||
| Ivan Alexander Username: Humancafe Registered: 12-2017 |
Ukraine Emergency appeal. The Ukrainian people are putting up a brave resistance against Putin’s war on Ukraine, valiantly fighting for their freedom and homeland. We are all connected. See: Can Putin win on Ukraine?  (interactive) UKRAINIAN RED CROSS - Ukraine Emergency appeal - Червоний Хрест України Donate what you can to help. God bless Ukraine. | ||
| Ivan Alexander Username: Humancafe Registered: 12-2017 |
Tracking the main idea.  An idea should be easy. That is the basic premise of a simple universe, that it is understandable. On these pages of Humancafe we had described many ideas, but in the end it all reduced down to this: Those many ideas morphed into a whole, what is the main track of all our discussions: we are defined in Who we are by our interrelationship totality definition from our universal reality. When we truly understand this it is with great humility; those still arrogant are yet to learn it. All other threads and discussions lead us back to this, that our Who is sacrosanct for each one of us; this is why our personal freedoms, to seek through agreement and be protected from coercions, is such a fundamental human right, to respect our definition of Who we are from our universal reality. Other discussions likewise manifest over time to reflect areas of interest that help keep us on the main track. Extrapolations from an interrelated universe shows the fractal characteristics of the basic idea of interrelationship, why our personal freedoms are so important to us. From these seminal ideas will evolve new philosophies of how we view and understand the universe and our place in it. Same as Plato’s Republic ideas were supplanted when we universally abandoned slavery, so will current ideologies be superseded when we abandon the right to coercions. In effect, is this not already being played out on the battlefield of Ukraine, where a fear ridden, regressive dictator’s massive coercive war to impose his will on a free people, to the condemnation of the world, may succeed; or will freedom win? This is the main track of our future world: will we bow to coercions or rise up to our freedom? The answer is still in our future, but as the world gathered in support of Ukraine, excepting world dictatorships, to fight against Russia’s oppression, the future outcome is already being decided. Let us not derail on this. Ivan | ||
| Ivan Alexander Username: Humancafe Registered: 12-2017 |
Habeas Mentem evolution, continued. This is a follow up on Habeas Mentem evolution (Feb 2013). The book was first published in 1986 as Man in all that Is (Peter E. Randall publisher). The bulk of it was written long hand at 2 Neptune street, Newburyport MA, residence in an old Colonial salt box (dated c. 1657) by the side of the Merrimack river, between 1980 and 1985. (Some earlier writings were at residences in Boston’s Back Bay, and later at a retreat cabin on an island on Moose Pond in Denmark, Maine.) It was a joy writing on cold New England winter nights sitting at a high backed antique settle by a fire in the large walk-in fireplace in the keeping room, and some written at my antique (school master’s) standup desk in the buttery off the kitchen, with a view of the river. “Man in All that Is - Habeas Mentem” took many years to write (the third section was written at Surf st. residence in Orange Co., California), with much editing, finally transferred to computer disks. When HumanCafe site was launched, Dec 1998, it was recreated as Habeas Mentem. Some pictures of 2 Neptune house, and Moose pond island   IDA FULL TEXT of Habeas Mentem - the Given Word | ||
| Ivan Alexander Username: Humancafe Registered: 12-2017 |
Confessions of a cultured Yogurt - a metaphor (pint size version)  Hi, my name is Lactobacillus bulgaricus Yogurt, but my friends call me Basyl. Our family is large, including our cousins Streptococcus thermophilus. We are all cultured bacteria, all busy fermenting milk into our family name, Yogurt. Some of us prefer to work with whole milk, others with low fat, even coconut and soy. Mostly we enjoy our work, but it can be challenging at times. We all have our assigned duties in our work, some probiotic while others are just loafers. Nevertheless, we all face the future together, officially lactobacillus charged with making yogurt, and some of our distant cousins in other parts of the world, using goat or yak milk, are making cheese. This is who we are, and it is work we enjoy. But not all work is fun. There are temperatures to consider. Too cool and we fall asleep. If too warm, like when milk is boiled, alas we die. So though some think our work is easy, it has its challenges. Mostly our disagreements are of a culinary nature. Some of the Yogurt family complain for added sugars, saying it spoils our purity. We like to think we are naturally sweet. But honey is mostly okay. We have a saying, “Nature knows best.” Almost all dislike artificial colorings. But added fruit, with its natural sugars, gets general praise. When we work with these additives, we hold a conference to discuss their pros and cons. "Basyl, what does the council say about our nutritional value?" This is a question asked over and over again. It falls to me to give them reasonable answers. For some reason I cannot understand, I have been gifted with a special sense not given to all my Yogurt cousins. I am aware of myself and can think of them in the third person. They think "I and I", while I think "we and I". This is something they cannot do, since they can only think collectively as one, “I.” So this strange ability of mine makes them think of me different. Am I a freak of nature? For example, I like opera. No, I just think different. Still, they were looking for an answer. So I repeated what I told them before. "Our product is rich in minerals, like potassium and phosphorus, and vitamins, like Choline and vitamin A…” …They ask me, and so I explain. "What about time, Basyl? Is it true we will die, in time?" This was a difficult question, though I had answered it before, how we divide and multiply and never really die. I decided to answer them in a new way. "Imagine that time is like a strait arrow flying." They gave a puzzled look, so I explained what "straight" means. "Say you line up all our cousins in a row, that would be straight." They guffawed, saying that all the cousins would jostle each other, so this could never happen. So I tried another way. "Say you like to eat lactose, but rather than eating this way and that, you ate always in the same direction in front of you. That would be straight!" That they understood, so I added "now imagine that there are two straight lines parallel to each other." That drew blank looks, so I explained "parallel" as two lines going forward together without ever meeting. They nodded. "Okay, so these two lines would go on forever, kind of like flying into the future. But that future is fuzzy. We can see the past, but the future is relative." They gave me another blank look. "Remember Einstein? He said time is relative?" They answered gleefully in unison "And he likes Swiss cheese on rye!" I answered “yes, but that's not the point.” Obviously they didn't understand, so I added "When time is relative, it depends on how it is measured. And if at some point in the future the two parallel lines meet, time ends, that is when our life radiates away and we die."… “Oh,” they answered, repeating what all believed, “and Nature knows best…” Then one day Nature delivered something wonderful to our Yogurt family. There was word coming down the production line that a new brand of yogurt was being introduced. Information was sketchy, but it was rumored to be coming from France. Naturally we all were very excited by this news, though our family was originally from Bulgaria, so spent much time in gossip while we worked. "Who can they be? Do they speak different from us?" Everyone had questions, but none could answer. So they turned to me. "Basyl, what does a french yogurt sound like? What do they eat? How do they divide?" I must admit I knew little of them, but told them something. "French yogurts are like Greeks, they are creamy and rich." This produced "Aahhs" from them. "Now you may be surprised to hear this. But they love to divide. For them it is 'Toujour l'amour'." This elicited some giggles, though I meant it in a serious way. Dividing and multiplying is important for us Yogurts. So when our Yogurt cousins said they wanted to introduce me, Basyl, to a new French yogurt, I was all a flutter, I must confess. "Hi Basyl," she called to me as my cousins were bringing her straight to me. Before me was a beautiful lacta-bacilles, speaking with a pleasant soft voice and charming accent, which immediately turned my head. The Yogurt cousins now stepped back and watched us with gleeful expectation. "Very nice to meet you. But I am at a disadvantage,” I said. “You know my name but I don't know yours." She gave off a light giggle, a gleam in her eyes. "My name is Gala, I am of the Ya-ourt family. We're from Paris." This was most astounding news, since I had heard of the Yaourts, a famous and very large family with billions of cousins. But she was different somehow, something about how she looked at me, how she spoke. Still, I couldn't quite tune in to what it was about her that made her very special. She seemed to have a sense of herself… And then the heavens opened as she spoke four magic words, and I was totally in love. She said, "Have you read Einstein?" IDA For full quart version see: http://www.humancafe.com/discus/messages/1177/1751.html?1505529762#POST5862 |
