Determination 1:
Wednesday, 10.21.09:
The important thing to keep in mind is 'Wallerstein's Heads-Up!'. Even though it seems, as we look around us, that the vast majority are buried, their consciousnesses embedded, in "the job" – which is designed to continuously re-inoculate with ‘passive obedience’ – more and more of us are being tossed out by this "system." The alternatives available – "from the bottom" – for coping with this intensified disrespect are everything. What we do now, we-who-are-awake, is everything...and...
...Love is a quality of seeing that money can't match.
Determination 2:
Thursday, 10.22.09:
The “contradictions of capitalism” – of its illusions of infinite expansion in a finite world – are more advanced in the U.S. than elsewhere. The tatters in the ‘democratic’ rhetoric are well in evidence here. “The system” can no longer hide ’neath its ragged lies. So…‘truth’ is beginning to stand starkly….
So…some of “the work” of unmasking happens whatever we do…because the system’s spin machine is no match for the consequences that come from the steady erosion of our dreams – the denial of possibilities all around are felt sorely by us on the ground…*
So…when we do our “Culture Work” right…we’ll find conditions ripe…
…And then there’s that “beautiful feeling of solidarity”…the note, perhaps, George meant when she wrote:
How will you know the pitch of that great bell
Too large for you to stir? Let but a flute
Play ’neath the fine-mixed metal: listen close
Till the right note flows forth, a silvery rill:
Then shall the huge bell tremble – then the mass
With myriad waves concurrent shall respond
In low soft unison.
* This is not to trivialize the very real totalitarian threat.
Determination 3:
Friday, 10.23.09:
Is not ‘solidarity’ – well-pitched – the right note? And is not ‘solidarity’ best expressed by condemnation of the practice of life-stealing – the denial of our right to be whole, self-determinative human beings – for no better reason than to keep the most narrowly-grooved snug in their ‘stylish’ illusions?
Determination 4:
Thursday, 11.05.09:
(...continued from: OTheR Log 53)
What I don't understand is why more of us aren't willing to speak out against this great wrong...
– does its omnipresence dull us to its daily sawing strokes into our tender souls?
...No, that's not true, I do understand why...
...the job is made to reinforce the constructed insecurities – the attention-seeking, the never-feeling-loved, the looking-to-‘authority’-for-approval; the trying-to-earn-the-strokes (–the palm, –the praise, –the exemption, –the gaze) – that each of us leaves ‘the family’ with – in this sick system – when we think we leave it behind – when we tell ourselves we're “grown” (which usually means “done.”)
How can we care about others’ souls, when no one cared for ours?
...Of course that's not really true, that's just the story we learn to tell ourselves...conditioned as we are to being single bits of flotsam on the sea, drifting...on our own – alone...
...too lost to see the web of relations in which we’re tied...one to another...
...and across time...
...and: Sunday, 11.15.09:
...And then there's that related phenomenon...that, having invested one's utmost gifts – at least utmost allowed under conditions of coercion – in a lifetime of hoop-jumping, and having therefore correspondingly over-valued what those gifts have become – it's hard to admit that one's triumphant 'Mind' is no more than what everyone has, tempered by luck, the favor of 'Authority', and the willingness to play one's role.
...And then there's that related phenomenon of favored self-assessment suffering if one's acknowledgment of a wrong is not followed by action to correct it....
Determination 5:
Friday, 11.06.00:
...and the black figure with hands behind and head bent forward continued to pace the walk where the dark yew-trees gave him a mute companionship in melancholy, and the little shadows of bird or leaf that fleeted across the isles of sunlight, stole along in silence as in the presence of a sorrow. Here was a man who now for the first time found himself looking into the eyes of death – who was passing through one of those rare moments of experience when we feel the truth of a commonplace, which is as different from what we call knowing it, as the vision of waters upon the earth is different from the delirious vision of the water which cannot be had to cool the burning tongue. When the commonplace ‘We must all die’ transforms itself suddenly into the acute consciousness ‘I must die – and soon’, then death grapples us, and his fingers are cruel; afterwards, he may come to fold us in his arms as our mother did, and our last moment of dim earthly discerning may be like the first. To Mr Casaubon now, it was as if he suddenly found himself on the dark river-brink and heard the plash of the oncoming oar, not discerning the forms, but expecting the summons. In such an hour the mind does not change its lifelong bias, but carriers it onwards in imagination to the other side of death, gazing backward – perhaps with the divine calm of beneficence, perhaps with the petty anxieties of self-assertion. What was Mr Casaubon's bias his acts will give us a clue to.
“...for the first time found himself looking into the eyes of death...”
Consider the possibility that we are now for the first time looking into the eyes of...life....
In the present moment, this story, this false story of forced labor, is as common to us all as the story of birth...
...and death...
...and there may be a similar transformation – as to facing death – about which George writes...
...as we turn to look the falseness of our present ‘arrangements’ full in the face....
...and begin to get aquainted with Life.
Perhaps it is the flip side of the story George tells...
...and that now the possibility of Life is no longer necessarily remote, dispatched to some distant future...
...but is available to us as we speak...today...if we are willing to embrace it...
...if we choose to.
Determination 6:
Thursday, 11.12.09:
We use commodity-props to help us feel like we're living –
...the cigarette sucked with a purpose –
...the car forward-thrusting-toward –
...the furrowed-forehead pattering over the keyboard –
...the synchronous flip of the cell...matching one's fast stride.
– substitutes for what?
...the Unknown-Amorphous...
...too perilous to climb...
...too foreign to fight for...
...too buried to find.
As James Baldwin's already told us, "the bloodless can't bleed..."
...or, more accurately, grieve...
...and we have some serious grieving to do...
...as we embark on the new.
(...if you're willing to toss on that stormy sea...: OTheR Log 79)
Determination 7:
Saturday,11.14.09:
There is a purpose out there calling us that the system's noise is designed to drown.
* ...on 'authentic thoughts':
Determination 8:
Thursday, 12.10.09:
There are certain thoughts 'Power' doesn't want us to think and systematically hides from us –
– it is the 'job' of those-who-are-awake to discover this fact...
...uncover these thoughts...
...and share them.
These are 'authentic thoughts' –
– thoughts that bloom out of the dissonance we feel when we contrast what our body tells us with what the system tells us...
...thoughts that bloom when we investigate the world directly using our nature-given gifts – our capacity to "figure things out."
This is called "being able to reason"...and is... The Responsibility Of The Intellectual (Part 2).
* ...on 'authentic thoughts':
Determination 9:
Tuesday, 12.15.09:
What charts the course from "A" to "B" –
From "that-which-is" to "what-must-be"?
...What leads to the choice to put our bodies first?
...the decision to assume responsibility for our bodies in reality (i.e., as wholes)...
...and so to listen to them...–
...to hear the questions they pose...
...and then commit to following those questions?
– providing the nurturance they need...the sustenance...
...pulling them full into the sphere of our concern...
...feeling them –
...floating on the distress...
...diving into the unhappiness...
...surrendering to the drift –
What are the preconditions for letting go?
...emptying the mind of the "shoulds," "musts," "have-tos"? – the Master's voice –
...and falling into the pull of Nature's Gravity...
* ...on 'authentic thoughts':
Determination 10:
Wednesday, 12.16.09:
What must never be forgotten, or made light of, is that this diminishment of human beings called "work" is wrong...
...pinching people into boxes is wrong...
...bombarding them with pre-packaged messages that preclude the blooming of authentic thought is wrong...
– and when something is wrong...
– particularly when it is monumentally wrong –
...you work to change it.
Determination 11:
Tuesday, 01.19.10:
Becoming The Function: How The Job Is The Booster Shot – "We live more completely in our imaginations than we know – asks: "which way out of the maze." On this question Samuel Butler cautions us:
It must be remembered that at the beginning of the nineteenth century the relations between parents and children were still far from satisfactory....The parents in Miss Austen's novels are less like savage wild beasts than those of her predecessors, but she evidently looks upon them with suspicion, and an uneasy feeling that le pere de famille est capable de tout makes itself sufficiently apparent....Moreover, Puritanism restricted natural pleasures; it substituted the Jeremiad for the Paean, and it forgot that the poor abuses of all times want countenance.
Mr. Pontifex may have been a little sterner with his children than some of his neighbours, but not much. He thrashed his boys two or three times a week and some weeks a good deal oftener, but in those days fathers were always thrashing their boys....At that time it was universally admitted that to spare the rod was to spoil the child, and St. Paul had placed disobedience to parents in very ugly company. If his children did anything which Mr. Pontifex disliked they were clearly disobedient to their father. In this case there was obviously only one course for a sensible man to take. It consisted in checking the first signs of self-will while his children were too young to offer serious resistance. If their wills were "well broken" in childhood, to use an expression then much in vogue, they would acquire habits of obedience which they would not venture to break through till they were over twenty-one years old. Then they might please themselves...
'Passive Obedience' is not a train that can be turned using individual means.
We must help each other.
Determination 12:
Friday, 01.29.10:
...Discussion continued from: What Is Our Responsibility? (6. 7, 8, 9), OTheR Log 76, and The 4 Ruses - 3 – i.e. how to choose "freedom before comfort"?
Perhaps the question has to be posed differently...perhaps it's that feeling of "being special" that is the 'comfort' we seek...salving the need we leave our families with...that stems from not being seen? – perhaps it's that to which we're attached?
We accept being ruled with the anticipation of ruling...but it's not "ruling" itself that seduces us...
...it's the eyes of others upon us...
"...Being forced to be anything at all forces us to be nothing at all..." (from Becoming The Function)
"The system" pounds into us our supposed "expendability"...
...never lets us forget that we are 'nothing' to it...
(From "OTheRLog 82":
Ranking imposes invisibility.)
...a dreadful burden we're forced to hobble under...laboring with the icy winds of Rank...full in our face....
Determination 13:
Monday, 02.01.10:
We cannot have human fellowship and sell human labor. They are mutually exclusive.
Making us believe 'the job' is 'the prize' is Fellowship's demise....
Determination 14:
Wednesday, 02.03.10:
Consolidating our refusal in a movement to end wage work appeals to our need to feel powerful – that's the 'gap' we want to fill, along with fellowship, and the earth's caress – not our 'morality' or 'good sense.'
(From Responsibility Of The 'Intellectual')
Determination 15:
Tuesday, 02.09.10:
If anyone's out there I'm certain you've seen that my latest offerings are all on the theme of our invisibility...
I don't think it's just because it's in my mind, this omnipresent theme, that it seems to stand behind these words of Adam Bede:
"...it seems to me it's the same with love and happiness as with sorrow – the more we know of it the better we can feel what other people's lives are or might be, and so we shall only be more tender to 'em, and wishful to help 'em. The more knowledge a man has, the better he'll do's work; and feeling's a sort o' knowledge."
As I read them, when I got to: "– the more...we can feel what other people's lives are or might be..."
...in my mind I heard next: "...the more we know ourselves."
Looking over the scattered bits I've been adding to unfinished blogs...blogs I've been trying to finish for like-forever...
...the following formula – in one form or another – kept popping up:
Force + Duplicity = Complicity = Invisibility (The False Face...a.k.a. The Commodity)
So I've decided to try to put some flesh on this formula...to make it more fluid so you don't have to intuit it.
We know our 'self' by knowing others'...cut off from them...from our sisters and brothers...what do we become but the very embodiment of "Done-Before-Begun"?
[Discussion continued at: The 4 Ruses – 3].
Determination 16:
Thursday, 02.11.10:
We should never forget that the word "commodity" means "counterfeit countenance"...a.k.a., "false face"... [See: The 4 Ruses – 3.]
* ...on 'authentic thoughts':
Determination 17:
Saturday, 02.13.10:
Re the 1998 Iranian film The Mirror by Jafar Panahi...
The blurbs on the box raved in praise of its gaze into Iranian ways...
...but its power for me was chiefly in its ability to reveal our need....
...to be large....
...and that following the orders of others not only denies this need but...
...wears it away.
In The Hidden Malevolence: AKA Michael Moore's Dilemma, I expressed sadness that in Capitalism Michael Moore did not follow his questions – a quality of love and trust that distinguished Bowling For Columbine. I talked about the importance of "following your questions" in Waking Up. Let me share an example I just discovered of this critical capacity I found by choosing the communal alternative of using the libraries.
In the 1998 Iranian film The Mirror by Jafar Panahi, he wants to show us the dangerous urbanity of class society – the deadly city streets we surrender our children to without a peep – from a child's eyes....
To accentuate the contrast between innocence and the commercial imperative he tells her she must appear helpless and fearful...and makes her more pitiable by giving her a broken arm...
...but the film gets away from him...because the actor he's chosen is too fresh from the river to know how to dissemble that well.
She knows what we must learn too...that what we put in our bodies – the thoughts, actions and food – matters....
Children know this instinctively...we must follow their example...and refuse.
"I don't want to be in the film anymore...."
Determination 18:
Sunday, 02.14.10:
Rather than expending our limited time deconstructing crimes – which offer few substantive distinctions generation to generation (over the course of class society) – why not find out what is true, fertilize it and help it spread round the globe like microremediates cleansing subterraneously? Let's make hearty progeny...and fling our seeds raucously. Rather than waste precious time striving to be "the best!" let's rack our brains for ways to save the whole of humanity...and all the earth's progeny...
That this is what we must do is rock-solid true....if we are to beat back the pitiful-power-drunk-few.
(From: The Responsibility Of 'The Intellectual' which also discusses the importance of being poets...)
Determination 19:
Saturday, 02.20.10:
A friend gave me what the blurbs claim is the definitive biography of George Eliot. I poke in it very judiciously for her words and events...but avoid like the plague the biographer's surmises...because it was clear he didn't 'get' her at all.
...It's what those asleep don't get...we have our eyes on something else...
...this ain't it...this ain't it...
...we can feel it...when we're quiet...when we look behind...we see...
...what we're supposed to have...what we're supposed to be...and...
...this...ain't...it...
(From: ...who 'sees'?)
Determination 20:
Friday, 02.26.10:
And when we find ourselves scrappling instead of living we're doomed...as it's our creative powers that make us human...and to sell them to the highest bidder is the death of them – and us.
(From: "...commodification is taking something alive and making it dead..." )
Determination 21:
Tuesday, 03.02.10:
On the following day three more bodies arrived for dissection. The same public appeared, but this time the atmosphere was less tense, for they knew me and had seen my work. Those present took a more lively interest, made a number of astute and provocative comments, and on certain points the discussion grew quite animated.
After the departure of the SS doctors, several French and Greek doctors paid me a call and asked if I would instruct them in the technique of lumbar punctures. They also requested me to grant them authorization to try the operation on some of the bodies given me, a request I readily granted. I was deeply moved to find that, even inside the barbed wire fences, they continued to manifest such an interest in their profession. They attempted the puncture, and after six or seven tries at last succeeded, then withdrew, quite pleased with their afternoon's work. (Miklos Nyiszli, Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account, p. 35-6)
When trained to accept the crude mental pattern "obedience"...
...instead of free to allow complex associations to form...
...ones in which our life is infused...and so goes on beyond us...
...ones in which all is accepted, none denied...
...ones that suspend us in the mystery...out of which our 'name' alchemically bonds...
...when this inheritance is denied...and complexity removed from our eyes...
...and all we see is what 'Power' wants us to be...
...we're capable of any atrocity.
(Both discussed in: The Ruses Used To Rend Us )
** "The most important Manhattan Projects of the future will be..."
Determination 22:
Wednesday, 03.03.10:
"...The most important Manhattan Projects of the future will be vast government-sponsored enquiries into what the politicians and the participating scientists will call 'the problem of happiness' – in other words, the problem of making people love their servitude..."
But...I think they've decided that...
...the "happiness project" may be dispensed with,
...and that they can manage manufactured unhappiness,
...if 'chaos' and 'crises' pummel our consciousness...
...such that survivors are pounded into 'Passive Obedience'...
...and the rest of us deleted from "what exists."
– So how can we begin to make ourselves rather than cooperating with the plans of others to make us? (...Continued at Becoming The Function.)
Determination 23:
* A word or phrase you'd like to taze?
Wednesday, 03.10.10:
Brothers and sisters: I think it's also our responsibility, as we give ourselves that sacred silence, that divine distance from the diversionary drivel, and as we commune with the earth (both within and without) and relearn how to reason and think authentically...that we stop repeating (unconsciously) words or phrases that are quite obviously lies...and that promote still more lies.... If you share the ones that offend you the most I'll pass them along here:
Is there a word or phrase you'd like to taze?
...or set ablaze...in innumerable ways...
...because of the walls they raise and the ways they degrade...?
...for example...:
"We need jobs."
"The experts say..."
(From: What Is Our Responsibility To Others?)
Determination 24:
** "being an artist" means...
Wednesday, 03.17.10:
..."being an artist" means feeling and then expressing it, which is, in its essence, bearing witness...
...a.k.a. really living....because to be truly alive means to feel. (This is explored further at: The Communal Alternative.)
Determination 25:
Tuesday, 03.23.10:
Now is the time to set aside...
...the red-herring project called...
..."perfection of 'mind'"....
(See: The Responsibility Of...'Intellectuals'?...'Poets'? (Part 2))
Determination 26:
Friday, 03.26.10:
...There is often something poisonous in the air of public rooms. Strong men can stand it, but it tells on people in proportion to the delicacy of their systems. (George Eliot)
Recently I attended an elementary school "play." The duplicity in the room...the pretense...was suffocating.
(I don't just mean the stage...
...or the truth that actors are slaves...
...I mean the "smile to beguile"...
...or the pretense of "content"...
...when the artificiality is omnipresent...
...and your body longs for movement.)
When I saw tiny humans absorbing...
...the lie that "to live" means 'performing'....
I came away from the spectacle convinced...
...that the chief evil we must renounce is "performance"...
(Continued at: The Muck Of State)
Determination 27:
Sunday, 03.28.10:
We on the Left have a really hard time...keeping our eyes firmly locked on the real prize...
...while we devote our days fighting for our "rights"......
...the earth is snatched from our sights overnight...
If we were to look long...
...I think we'd see......
...that all the hard work we do for a salary...
...is ultimately checked...
...by the financial industry...
...which bides its time...
...finding it fun to be patient...
...waiting to see its long-term "vision"...
...come to fruition.
If you recognize the Abyss...between our success and theirs...
...how do you imagine it can be repaired...
...with air?...
...with fragmented efforts unfolding haphazardly...
...in which the left hand never knows what the right...
...has in it...?
When will we want with as much ferocity...
...as we feel for our paychecks...
– and the chance they advance to "get seen" –
...the earth that feeds us...?
...the only thing that can free us......
...fill the cavity caused....
...by our addiction to "jobs"...?
...And the "fellowship" you think you feel...? –
...at that happy conjunction with your 'function'...?
...when "the system" says "you're done"...
...the boot in the ass will reveal...
...it ain't real....
Nobody in a job can do anything but their job...that's the whole point. "A future freedom without bosses" is in no one's job description. If we want it, we have to work for it....And the only way we can be free is if we embrace across the categories (individual freedom is premised on general freedom...and vice versa.)
(From: You Know How I Know You're A Slave? (Addendum))
Determination 28:
Tuesday, 03.30.10:
"The system" has shaped us to fit into it...so we have become...through passive obedience...barren off-shoots of "state power"...unable to sustain ourselves without it...which (as I'm sure you can see) is a completely... unnatural...way to be. (From The Muck Of State)
Determination 29:
Sunday, 04.04.10:
I can almost feel the waves...
...of aloneness across the decades...
...that come from being maligned...
...when you have your eyes on a higher prize...
...(and here Barack also comes to mind.)
...
In the grand, new story of our conception...
...all the dismissed form a single resistance...
...in defense of our right to a fully realized existence...
...that unites humankind...
...reunites us with our 'tribes'...
...and with our earth...
...in a process of self-naming that means a NEW birth.
(From The Muck Of State)
Determination 30:
*** "'Passive Obedience' is an inherently unstable state...."
Tuesday, 04.06.10:
Because our inherent nature is 'freedom,'...because the earth continuously seeks to reclaim her own...
..."Passive Obedience" is an inherently unstable state....
...So the seeming omnipotence of "the system" is actually illusion...(and they know this better than you and I do...)....
...The need for an "Echo Chamber" means "weakness"... not "strength"....
...Eternal vigilance is the price 'power' must pay...
...for maintaining Passive Obedience.
(From The Muck Of State)
Determination 31:
**** "On this issue of controlling us by controlling our unconscious...."
Monday, 04.26.10:
But while the conscious mind of the system-trained is literal...
...the unconscious...
– so long as life clings –
...thinks metaphorically.
Now the podrunks goal is to keep our unconscious very very busy...
...a whole lifetime of unconscious busy-ness...
...is what they hope for us...
They long...lust...
...desire for us...
...to die as utterly confused...
...as when we left school:
"How much nicer [children] are, and how much more they know, than those who profess to teach them." (Samuel Butler, The Way Of All Flesh)
(From "The 4 Ruses – 2 (Part 2)" (in progress). On this issue of controlling us by controlling our unconscious see also (in progress): The Communal Alternative and "The 4 Ruses – 3".)
Determination 32:
***** "Life is like a fugue..."
Saturday, 05.01.10:
He did not understand that if he waited and listened and observed, another idea of some kind would probably occur to him some day, and that the development of this would in its turn suggest still further ones. He did not yet know that the very worst way of getting hold of ideas is to go hunting expressly after them. The way to get them is to study something of which one is fond, and to note down whatever crosses one's mind in reference to it, either during study or relaxation, in a little notebook kept always in the waistcoat pocket. Ernest has come to know all about this now, but it took him a long time to find it out, for this is not the kind of thing that is taught at schools and universities.
Nor yet did he know that ideas, no less than the living beings in whose minds they arise, must be begotten by parents not very unlike themselves, the most original still differing but slightly from the parents that have given rise to them. Life is like a fugue, everything must grow out of the subject and there must be nothing new. Nor, again, did he see how hard it is to say where one idea ends and another begins, nor yet how closely this is paralleled in the difficulty of saying where a life begins or ends, or an action or indeed anything, there being an unity in spite of infinite multitude, and an infinite multitude in spite of unity. (Samuel Butler, The Way Of All Flesh)
(If the most important things to know in life are – I think it is fair to say – kept hidden from us by "the system"...it's worth considering that if we want our children to develop to their fullest...we need to begin again...embracing the earth this time as friend.) [See City Hands (Part 2), which is building a discussion based on Fromm's distinction between 'Intelligence' and 'Reason'.]
Determination 33:
Wednesday, 05.12.10:
We have to always keep in mind...
...what supports their ability to live exclusive lives....
...Once you recognize that our coerced labor is not 'necessary'...
...in any larger societal-goal sense,...
...the question arises...
..."why does it still exist?"...
...and then...
..."who benefits?"...
...And to answer these as with every peculiarity...
...in a greed-based system...
...you gotta follow the money....
(From first audio interview: 05.02.10)
Determination: Our Future Freedom Is A Mathematical Certainty (But Let's Shorten The Duration Of The Stress)
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* Footnote 1:
** Footnote 2: