Real Rules

Real Rules, by someone who knows...please read this!

Protect the Commons!

Please Donate to Wikipedia Today! even just $5.00

Closed Systems

Systems which are closed can have connections which are supported by elements or conditions fictional to the system in which they live.  A television show is a closed system, a virtual terrarium of life and light, and we get to observe as meaning germinates between the characters and elements of the story-lines.

I'm not a trained thinker, but perhaps another closed system is life itself, if we could see that we are just like slugs on the ocean floor, notches are being grooved into our brains in response to our experience, much like lower life forms adapting to their surroundings.  So why the worry about where the "soul" goes?

Do We Live In a Two-Dictator System?

The carefull analysis of a man I met today is that we currently live in a two-dictator system, one boss being the Republicans and the other master being the Democrats, "and the only choice is dumb or dumber."  He believe's it'll kill us, not in this lifetime, but maybe our kids kids will see it.

I respect his opinion.  He has an outsider's perspective, having lived abroad but living here for the past 35 years, but with relatives abroad, he sees the middle-east in a pretty down to earth way.  He says this is the best place on earth, but what was created to be right has gotten screwed up, and I think he's right.

Did Republicans Justify Their Salary to Their Bosses?

I wonder if the Republicans were blocking extended UI benefits, not because they wanted to extend the tax breaks to the rich, but, fine difference, because they felt they had to be able to prove to their constituents, that they could deliver, in the face of whatever.
And, as much as i might bitch about the Republicans selling access to legislators for contributions, I wonder now if that's the reason we can't admit the emperor isn't wearing any clothes in Israel, well, except for the bloody boot on the Palestinian's throats.  Do the Democrats sell American's National interests abroad for campaign contributions (from Jewish people)?  I don't think we really think "manifest destiny" flies in this age, or any, so there has to be some real reason we've allowed them to march accross the Jordan, and why we stand with them at the exclusion of all the other players on the field.
So, I wonder how much of this BS about justifying our salaries is really going on.  Already, the DEA has had a chilling effect on Pain doctors accross the US, just to justify their salary.  So I guess it's not too surprising that the Democrats and Republicans do the same, except in each of these cases it's worked against We the People.
I've just re-registered as un-declared.

ps: I have nothing against people who are Jewish, or people who live in Israel, but there are people among them who clearly are only interested in marching accross the desert, and killing and driving out the Palestinian's.

New Year's Resolution NOW - Stop 'Rocking the Jukebox'

November 15, this year, TV news reported on a study

Wandering mind could mean unhappiness

Dr. Jeffrey Janata, University Hospitals Case Medical Center

I thought about this, and the personal quandary I've been in about the possibility that I've been accessing my emotions a bit too freely, possibly as a sub-component of my adictive genes.  It has increased my enjoyment of movies ten fold!  I can cry through half of Grey's Anatomy.  Part of that is of course the meanings that I attach to, or reflect upon, the situations and characters backgrounds.

When I would sit outside smoking a cigarette, I would hear a jumble of bits and pieces - not simply un-focused, but drifting "with meaning."  I felt like Alia Atreide's in the Dune trilogy, being stuck with the voices of her ancesters in her head all the time, except mine weren't distinct voices, but side thoughts and meanings and bits of musicals (of course there has to be music, songs would repeat for hours, usually AM top40 from my childhood.

perhaps in 1980 I read Shunryu Suzuki's, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, and it taught me that in Zen they "Practice" in one form of meditation I think by clearing the mind, and as thoughts or concerns pop up we should examine each, and cherish it's contribution, and then gently let it pass from our field of thought until only a blank screen is left.  Of course that cannot be a steady state, thoughts are bound to come up, so maybe that's why they call it practice.  I did it a couple of weeks, twenty minutes a day, in front of a blank wall, sitting full lotus (ouch).  So, I knew in a rudimentary sense what Zen Practice was about, but that was when I was a teenager, more concerned about enlightenment than anything concrete (but reading books, and thinking about stuff was as far as I went...thought about the Monestary, but since I grew up identifying with Quai Chang on Kung Fu, I thought that was really a part of my make-up, crazy I know).

I also remember reading an article, perhaps in Pop Psychology in the eighties, about how a skier doesn't dwell upon all of their experiences while speeding down a mountain, they draw from but are like a train being towed by a locomotive, pulling from the cars as needed, but with a clear mind.

I have been, or had been, looking for some form of mental excercise that would lead to better focus, to quiet the voices (not that they were really voices).  In reflection upon the study in the news, I started to think of my un-focused quasi-emotional state I would drift in, and started to think it was like rocking a jukebox, playing just the tunes I liked, letting this web of meanings and thoughts flow over me...kind of like a juke box.  So, anyway, now I have a discipline to stop rocking the jukebox (all of the time).

I thought the thing on the News might be right, give it a chance, and so my mantra now is simply, stop rocking the jukebox, and the thought that comes right after it is, 'be in the present,' and it sharpens me right up, the jukebox is quietened right down.

I have a lot of studying to do, i'll report back on my success or failure, but this new found mental quiet is so cool.  I still rock the emotional scale, at a moment's notice, but it's just puncuation mostly.