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Post by halva on Aug 3, 2006 11:57:47 GMT -5
Think Again is on another wavelength altogether.
Is our posting here part of the game?
Do we put ourselves into the game by showing our consciousness here of the real dynamics of the game?
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Post by Swamp Gas on Aug 3, 2006 12:20:16 GMT -5
Our posting here is simply the practice of First Amendment Constitutional Rights, halva. TPTB love to try and create "profiles" of posters, and we let them think we are nuts. If you know the masters of this, The Firesign Theatre, much truth was in parables, conundrums, and sheer hysteria. As long as they think we're crazy, we're OK. The trick is to act "sane" at the correct times.
Being a good friend of thinkagain for close to 15 years, yes he has a vivid imagination, and he too, like myself, throws mental challenges to the reader, but I can assure you that he is on our side. I find him amusing and very intelligent...Always have.
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Post by thinkagain on Aug 3, 2006 22:44:39 GMT -5
Swamp - thank you for the very kind words! I find you have the same characteristics as well. Halva - from the perspective of power, one can have all the insight in the universe, but without real world influence one would be irrelevant. However, everyone is part of the game - some are the players, some the rule makers and some are just the pieces on the board (or joystick in hand). Stalin is credited with stating that power is not with the ones that vote, but the ones who count the vote. Similarly, power is not with the ones who write the laws, but with the ones who execute those laws. To the extent we choose to respect each other, to treat each other as having human rights, then the words written into our legal code will be expressed by American's loftiest ideals. However, they are also contstraints on how we behave, and in the short run provide fewer options for the expression of power/authority. These ideals, when lived, provide for long-run potential. Fear is such a useful tool because it eliminates concerns for the long-run thereby making it easy to forego acutally living by our ideals. It comes down to this: the willigness to die for ones belief is influence in the spiritual world, the willingness to kill for ones property is power in the material world. Choosing to live a peaceful, non-violent life does help reduce violence today, and provides a stronger potential for peace in the future. However, it is a way of living that gets trumped by aggresiveness in any particular moment. Unless there is some cosmic being intervening on your behalf, as if you are the most important entity in the world, there will be foregone material opportunities by living a life of persuassion instead of force. This is part of the gut-check, the recognition that embracing open-mindedness, peacefullness and non-violence must be desired in itself and not for something else. Some say, the end justify the means- I say, the means are the end. understanding the above makes it easier to understand why those in power will use the facades of freedom,democracy, peace-loving, law-abiding good people, yet not hesitate to destroy countries and kill miilions of people to express their power. There is a logic there, scary as it might be. It is also why 'hippie' types are so reviled. Hippies are a threat not only to their self-perception of being free and peaceful and moral, but also are a legitimate threat to the physical/military power that provides political superiority in any particular moment, because it takes a willingness to kill for ones country (not just die for ones country) to project global power. its the same reason that the romans found the early chrisitians a threat. That we can stick our heads above the fray, and see another way of being that wastes less of the blessings from the earth, while expressing the beauty of loving respect, and the joy of peaceful co-existence, does not alleviate our responsibility to know what is going on in the fray and comprehending how someone else sees it differently. Indeed, to energize someone else with the possibility of another way of living, one must be able to speak their language and make it easy for them to appreciate another path. If we require them to speak our language first, why, really, would they bother with us? As Swampgas states, crazy enough to encourage people to give us our space, sane enough to let people know we wouldn't hurt them. let's add some more, happy enough that people want us around, not so euphoric that people feel threatened by it. Our posting here is simply the practice of First Amendment Constitutional Rights, halva. TPTB love to try and create "profiles" of posters, and we let them think we are nuts. If you know the masters of this, The Firesign Theatre, much truth was in parables, conundrums, and sheer hysteria. As long as they think we're crazy, we're OK. The trick is to act "sane" at the correct times. Being a good friend of thinkagain for close to 15 years, yes he has a vivid imagination, and he too, like myself, throws mental challenges to the reader, but I can assure you that he is on our side. I find him amusing and very intelligent...Always have.
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Post by halva on Aug 3, 2006 22:56:06 GMT -5
I would like to see some other input before I say anything.
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Post by socrates on Aug 4, 2006 0:38:34 GMT -5
I think we are their biggest threat because we understand that there is power in numbers. "They" want us to get upset and confused. I think it goes back to what GW said about the "terrorists". He said they hate us for our freedoms. He was simply projecting on his own feeble spiritual power. GW hates us for our freedom, our freedom to independently think and love outside of their sick construct of social reality.
I also think that somehow Halva and ThinkAgain are on the same page. It's just that when we are on the net we can't see the facial expressions to go along with our thoughts.
In one scene of Taxi Driver, Travis Bickle tells his mentor that he had just said about the stupidest thing he had ever heard. Did they stop being friends? No.
I'm kinda starting to see SwampGas' idea that if we are a bit warped then we are safe. If we start making too much sense then who knows. But if we are a bit off, then "they" can just rationalize us as just being a bunch more of those zany internet forum types.
The truth hurts though on the material world. We are their biggest enemy because we are willing to speak truth to truthiness.
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Post by thinkagain on Aug 4, 2006 12:59:47 GMT -5
The challenge with speaking the "truth" during war time is the necessity to keep the soliders spirits arosed toward destroying the enemy. Any words that increase seeing the enemy as human, reduces the willingness to kill, and makes military strategy less effective - thereby increasing the likelihood of losing the war. Reducing the willingness to kill, is part of what pacifists have as their strategy to create a less violent world, in the long run. Militarists see that one does not get to the long run as dominant power without surviving and winning in the short run. This can be seen quite succinctly: would you want to see the US stop producing, buying and using weapons, as well as destroy all of the weapons it currently has now - if we were to do it unilaterally? My imagination says, "Wow, what a phenomal gesture of good will!" , my practical side says, 'Hmmm, that's going to be way too tempting for some militarily power country to pass up." Improvement of the human condition can happen, but it won't be a revolution. It will require a slow almost impercetible evolution where a few more people each day choose non-violence over violence, so slowly that militants only are aware of it as a subtle shift in the cultural background. There will ups and downs. And sites like this one play a role making sure that ideas and facts are communicated, expressed, and considered, so that the less gruesome futures seem to remain as feasible alternatives to what some would like us to believe as inevitable.And part of this is to also test our own beleifs regularly, because we too can vunerable to intransigence of thought and emotion. That there is even a crack in the blinders toward 9/11 and other events, is a hopeful sign... . The truth hurts though on the material world. We are their biggest enemy because we are willing to speak truth to truthiness.
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Post by socrates on Aug 5, 2006 20:08:21 GMT -5
I think you nailed it. We in our hearts and minds believe in peace. If such thoughts arose in a truly democratic society, the death industry would stop receiving their corporate welfare checks stained with innocent blood from illegal wars.
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Post by halva on Aug 6, 2006 1:46:06 GMT -5
Well, I see that no-one is interested in whose hand it was that Gorbachev refused to shake.
I don't think we have to need to even TRY to attack the militaristic mentality as such. For a start it is just as much an abstraction as "terrorism".
If we can break the alliance between the US and Israel, perhaps bringing Israel and the Palestinian territories into the European Union, and helping to liberate the clear-thinking political opposition in the US that is autonomous from all the factions serving the state of Israel, then the battle will be more than half won.
That may not be much in the way of input into a philosophical discussion but it is what I have to say.
I would not, by the way, be opposed to the United States having a monopoly of nuclear weapons possession and I do NOT want to see the speed of other states movement towards nuclear disarmament being regulated by what the United States is prepared or not prepared to do. That is my practical, not just my romantic or idealistic, assessment of the situation.
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Post by thinkagain on Aug 6, 2006 3:14:57 GMT -5
Whose hand did Gorbachev refuse to shake? I think its fair to say, from a pracitical perspective, that every country that has nuclear weapons now, wants to be the last to give it up. That's the core challenge of disarmament. As long as America is perceived as militaristic, imperialistic, and growingly unstable (again not just America, any country), and given that mutual assured destruction seemed to keep the Cold War cold, expecting that any country is going to unilaterally reduce its stockpile (short of a crippling economy that can not sustain them) seems, to me, a little unreasonable and not pragmatic. Beyond this, everytime we destroy an economic infrastructure it would tend to increase the likelihood of WMD's being resold - because of the need to sell something to generate revenue to buy practical things like food, water and shelter, as well as the things that keep the owners of WMD in power. I agree with you that a different relationship between the us and israel (and hence palestine) could radicaly improve the situation. In the big picture, though, war and military activity will continue as long it provides someone with profit and influence. What seems to be a long run feasibility is thus a war cycle, akin to a business cycle. In much the same way that nuclear reactors are controlled by increasing or decreasing the reaction rate, increasing militant media raises the level of hostility. One way, i beleive, to create a less dangerous world is to pay profts to mitliary suppliers only during peace time. The idea being that during war the supplier selling for above cost is hindering the war effort. The share of revnue that would have been profit would then accrue during war time, and would then be paid (with interest) when the war is over. Its an approach that apeals to the conservative patriot, while at the same time tends to encourage corporations to have less wartime (i.e. the can receive their profits know, instead of waiting.. and, to end wars sooner, so that waiting for profits is shortened) and would have an overall impact of reducing the share of humanities time and energy actually being at war. My prefernece would be to see a world with wmds, military venturism and economies oriented to manufacturing the war machine and its operators, but practially - in the same way some speak of harm reduction from drug use as a reasonalbe basis for decriminilization... maybe we need to consider how to encourage harm reduction from weapons use. i know that at where i work, we've looked at financial data for the last 105 years, and can succinctly say that avoiding war is the best stategy for economic globalization. While that completely leaves out the benefits to culture, health, social cohession and general happiness, it implies that part of the change in media coverage of 9/11 info could be an outgrowth of corporations starting to put the breaks on this administrations agressiveness. So, to answer a previous question of yours, yes we are part of the game, even when we might not want to play anymore. And our role is to keep the alternative stories alive long enough so that the RPTB (real powers that be) can keep competitive control over TPTB. It helps, though, to have the facts and science overwhelmingly supportive of our arguments. One is at choice to go with the current , against the current, be stable like a buoy, or wonder around like floatsom;however the waves we face seem to be beyond any individual control. Well, I see that no-one is interested in whose hand it was that Gorbachev refused to shake. I don't think we have to need to even TRY to attack the militaristic mentality as such. For a start it is just as much an abstraction as "terrorism". If we can break the alliance between the US and Israel, perhaps bringing Israel and the Palestinian territories into the European Union, and helping to liberate the clear-thinking political opposition in the US that is autonomous from all the factions serving the state of Israel, then the battle will be more than half won. That may not be much in the way of input into a philosophical discussion but it is what I have to say. I would not, by the way, be opposed to the United States having a monopoly of nuclear weapons possession and I do NOT want to see the speed of other states movement towards nuclear disarmament being regulated by what the United States is prepared or not prepared to do. That is my practical, not just my romantic or idealistic, assessment of the situation.
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Post by halva on Aug 6, 2006 23:44:01 GMT -5
It was Edward Teller's hand that Gorbachev refused to shake.
I'm glad that we are in agreement that severance of Israeli/US umbilical cord would be a step forward.
The problem is that it is now so much easier to find Americans who reject Israel than it is to find Europeans with the positive attitude towards Israel that unfortunately seems to be a prerequisite for getting support for the idea of Israeli EU membership.
I'm not going to continue the nuclear weapons discussion. My argument is with the gatekeepers of the anti-nuclear movement and I've outlined it in articles that are on-line at Chossudovsky's Global Research and at Spectrezine.org. The subject has gone onto the back burner for me at the moment.
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