Ever feel like blogger is consipiring to keep you from posting??

*&$%*&#$%*&$#(*!!!!!!!!!!

I do.
Ok, that's better.

This post is not quite the book meme that Michael Hawkins passed along to me, but it should vaguely resemble it...

The Baghavad Gita is something I read during a very difficult period of change in my life. It helped me to find my own strength when it seemed to be needed.

Recently I picked up a copy of Carlos Castanedas' Tales of Power and after getting into it and finding I'd begun a series of books out of sequence, I was only spurred to keep on so that I could get to the rest.

Follow the Path with Heart.

Right now I'm reading The Secret History of the World and it is compelling to say the least, could blow your mind, or confirm your own thoughts, and will surely present notions or facts that you didn't already know.

Here goes nothing

This could go rather wrong...here's a new template.

While I'm on a slow roll...

....I started out with the intention of posting the book list that I was meme'd by Michael Hawkins' at Spontaneous Arising, but ended up in a dream puppet's stumblings and found this bit of Foamy Custard:

[.....]
A number of times in American history, the populace has glanced outside the duality struggles of content and briefly viewed the controlling symbols of context. Artists have glimpsed outside the duality and have allowed a large number of the ruled to see the rulers. And visionaries have also seen outside the duality. These are times when third parties in America have had their greatest impact.

But these times have been rare. Much more common has been the dominance of one of the symbols, equality or freedom, at the expense of the other. In the first half of the 20th century, the symbol of equality dominated America and the world in the form of mass communications, mass production, mass culture, totalitarian, communist, Fascist and Nazi political systems. As Erich Fromm observed, the overriding desire was to 'escape from freedom' during this period of time.

The second half of the 20th century, though, saw the decline of the equality symbol and the rise of the symbol of freedom. Much of the impetus for late capitalism and consumerism has been fired by this 'escape from equality' and a 'return to freedom.' This desire to escape from equality and return to freedom is behind the rise of postmodernism and relative narratives over meta-narratives. It is also responsible for a lack of standards of morality, for celebrity culture and Hollywood and the growth of the religious right and evangelical fundamentalists. It is also behind the growth of a segmented, niche marketplace full of numerous cable TV channels and the explosion of brands and consumer choice.
[.....]

I thought it quite timely to be posing such questions of our current state in the world. Thinking in such terms individually to discern shit from shine-o-la excercises the muscle that has for too long now fallen into a state of atrophy. Too many, for too long, have allowed others, betters, more accomplished, more wealthy, more powerful, to present us public opininion 'free, courtesy of the house' for us to follow and display. Goods to purchase and appropriate social conduct all available for free marketing to You.

This market obediance has led us to the place and time that we find ourselves in today and that same programming is what me must undo collectively.

This would be a truly fruitful situation from which a productive counterculture could be a feasible reality; but if we're to make that future a reality, there is a lot of collective self-improvement to be done.

Counterculture?

I've been in very low gear as far as posting goes lately, so I decided to post a short rant that I made over at Mickey Z's the other day. I've edited only slightly, nothing of the context is skewed.....

image via

I don't think we can possibly hope for any effective counterculture to be bourne of humanity until and unless we fully regain control of our everyday lives in the system which we currently have.

This is no small task and it requires the awareness and involvement of the majority of the population as individuals to take responsibility for the results of their individual actions, both materially and psychologically.

We must relinquish our "Consumer Status" and reclaim our "Status as Citizens".

I think this becomes a feasible option only after we see and understand the many nuances of manipulation that exist by great effort on the part of those who hold power on our planet.

Until then, I believe it is more ‘narcissistic and infantile indifference’ to think that our current global political, social and economic situation will remain unchanged; or if there existed a sussessful counterculture such as you suggest, it would revert to an equally tenuous situation before more than a couple of decades at most.


This article [suggested by my fellow Expendable JOS] serves to lift the corner of the veil and aids in the appreciation of the magnitude of effert that is put toward controlling our social conditions.

The Magic Hour

This striking photo and many others at mr. damon's skychurch