Unbridled Progress - Page 2 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

Wandering the information superhighway, he came upon the last refuge of civilization, PoFo, the only forum on the internet ...

All general discussion about politics that doesn't belong in any of the other forums.

Moderator: PoFo Political Circus Mods

By RhetoricThug
#15180897


How An Aristocracy May Emerge From Industry

Thus at the very moment that industrial science constantly lowers the standing of workers, it raises that of the bosses.

While the worker, more and more, restricts his intelligence to the study of one single detail, the boss daily surveys an increasing field of operation and his mind expands as the former's narrows. Soon the one will need only physical strength without intelligence; the other needs knowledge and almost genius for success. The one increasingly looks like the administrator of a vast empire, the other, a brute.

So, the employer and the worker share nothing in common on this earth and their differences grow daily. They exist as two links at each end of a long chain. Each holds a place made for him from which he does not move. The one is dependent upon the other.

The dependency the one has upon the other is never-ending, narrow, and unavoidable; the one is born to obey as the other is to give orders.

What is this, if not aristocracy?

As conditions become more and more equal in the body of the nation, the need for manufactured products is universal and ever greater; the cheap prices which bring goods within the reach of modest fortunes become a great ingredient of success.

Richer and better educated men emerge daily to devote their wealth and knowledge to industry; by opening great workshops with a strict division of labor they seek to satisfy the new demands which are evident on all sides.

Thus, as the mass of the nation turns to democracy, the particular class which runs industry becomes more aristocratic. Men resemble each other more in one context and appear increasingly different in another; inequality grows in the smaller social group as it reduces in society at large.

Thus it is that, when we trace things back to their source, a natural impulse appears to be prompting the emergence of an aristocracy from the very heart of democracy.

But that aristocracy is not like any that preceded it.

In the first, you will notice that it is an exception, a monstrosity in the general fabric of society, since it applies only to industry and a few industrial professions.

The small aristocratic societies formed by certain industries inside the immense democratic whole of our day contain, as they did in the great aristocracies of ancient times, some men who are very wealthy and a multitude who are wretchedly poor.

These poor men have few ways of escaping from their social conditions to become rich but the wealthy are constantly becoming poor or leave the world of business after realizing their profits. Thus, the elements which form the poorer classes are virtually fixed but those that produce the richer classes are not so. In fact, although there are rich men richer classes do not exist, for the wealthy do not share a common spirit or objective or traditions or hopes; there are individual members, therefore, but no definite corporate body.

Not only are the rich not firmly united to each other, but you can also say that no true link exists between rich and poorer.

They are not forever fixed, one close to the other; moment by moment, self-interest pulls them together, only to separate them later. The worker depends upon the employer in general but not on any particular employer. These two men see each other at the factory but do not know each other anywhere else; and while they have one point of contact, in all other respects they keep their distance. The industrialist only asks the worker for his labor and the latter only expects wages. The one is committed to protect, nor the other to defend; they are not linked in any permanent way, either by habit or duty.

Thus business aristocracy seldom lives among the industrial population it manages; it aims not to rule them but to use them.

An artistrocracy so constituted cannot have a great hold over its employees and, even if it succeeded in grabbing them for a moment, they escape soon enough. It does not know what it wants and cannot act.

The landed aristocracy of past centuries was obliged by law, or believed itself obliged by custom, to help its servants and to relieve their distress. However, this present industrial aristocracy, having impoverished and brutalized the men it exploits, leaves public charity to feed them in times of crisis. This is a natural consequences of what has been said before. Between the worker and employer, there are many points of contacts but no real relationship.

Generally speaking, I think that the industrial aristocracy which we see rising before eyes is one of the most harsh ever to appear on the earth; but at the same time, it is one of the most restrained and least dangerous.

However, this is the direction in which the friends of democracy constantly fix their anxious gaze; for if ever aristocracy and the permanent inequality of social conditions were to infiltrate the world once again, it is predictable that this is the door by which they would enter.

-Alexis de Tocqueville, 1835




What happens at Sun Valley, the secret gathering of unelected billionaire kings?

We are developing a private class of billionaire kings whose will is omnipotent and untouchable by any democratic force.

There comes a moment in every good gangster movie when all of the villains come together in a remote hideaway to make nefarious plans. If the good guys are smart, this is the moment they swoop in and arrest everyone. In real life America, though, we consistently squander these opportunities, opting instead to sit back and gawk at the villains like a bunch of dazed paparazzi. It’s never too late to change that.

Did you make it to the Allen & Co conference in Sun Valley, Idaho this past week? If you did, go directly to jail. The investment bank sponsors the annual schmooze-fest and “summer camp for billionaires” for the same reason that companies give away their luxury products in Oscars gift baskets: because if you spoil rich people enough, they may develop sufficiently warm feelings towards you to throw you some business one day. At Sun Valley each year, the billionaires are feted by the mere millionaires; the millionaires drum up enough deals to allow them to buy their third and fourth homes; and somewhere down the line, you can get a job as a housekeeper for one of those homes. This is the wondrous model of American capitalism in action – a tiny handful of wealthy people eat cake, and an entire nation gathers downstream, hoping to snatch up a few falling crumbs.

The Sun Valley conference is primarily known as a place where tech and media moguls gather to do a little fly fishing and strike multibillion-dollar merger deals, while various members of the financial press flit about the periphery of the resort like a bunch of tabloid hacks desperate for a snapshot of Mark Zuckerberg in the season’s latest fleece vest. More fundamentally, the conference is, like Davos, a mechanism for the concentration of wealth, dressed up as something friendlier. Here, America’s wealthiest mega-billionaires gather with the chief executive of America’s most powerful companies, the director of the CIA, and America’s most worthless pseudo-journalists (hello, Anderson Cooper) to develop the social and business connections that allow the top 0.00001% of earners to continue to accumulate a share of our nation’s wealth that already exceeds the famously cartoonish inequality of the Gilded Age of Rockefeller and Carnegie. Everything that happens at Sun Valley will contribute to the ability of attendees like Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Mike Bloomberg to increase their society-warping fortunes. They and their fellow billionaires got more than 50% richer during the pandemic year, by doing absolutely nothing but sitting back and watching their capital grow as millions around the world suffered and died. Their power over the course of this country grows ever more unassailable and unaccountable to anything other than their own whims. We are developing a private class of billionaire kings whose will is omnipotent and untouchable by any democratic force. This is the state of affairs that the Sun Valley conference serves to intensify. It is, by any reasonable measure, a threat to the long term stability of our country that far exceeds anything the Taliban could ever dream up.

Yet there is a noticeable lack of Special Forces troops rappelling into the scenic Idaho woods to capture Oprah Winfrey and Tim Cook as they go whitewater rafting. The collective wealth of the small group of people inside that Sun Valley resort is estimated to be a trillion dollars – meaning that confiscating it all could end homelessness in America for the next decade, with a few hundred billion left over. Instead of pursuing this obviously good idea, we opt instead to leave all of that wealth in the hands of the rich, so that Sun Valley attendees Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson can use it to race one another to become the biggest asshole ever to go to space.

It is odd that a nation obsessed with identifying threats has developed such a blind spot to the existential threat posed by the rich getting infinitely richer. Americans stockpile guns to fight off imaginary home invaders, flee to gated exurbs to hide from imaginary street crime, and launch doomed forever wars to battle imaginary foreign terrorists. But 40 years of wage stagnation, rising inequality, and the nightmarish gig-ification of all aspects of economic life are not enough to prompt us to cast a wary glance at an annual confab of all the people responsible for creating the conditions that have made it impossible to work one job and retire with dignity. The people who have, in fact, sucked up all of the money that no longer belongs to the mythical American middle class cavort openly in Sun Valley while we fearmonger about antifa breaking the windows of some coffee shop. It is enough to make me think that we are not so skilled at threat assessment, after all.

There is always next year. In 2022, the billionaires will return to Sun Valley. By then, they will almost certainly be richer, and more powerful, and control an even more grotesque share of the fruits of everyone’s labor. They will have continued to bust unions, consolidate control of industries, and wield disproportionate influence over all of our lives, solely for their own benefit. The case for rounding them up and redistributing their wealth will only have grown more convincing. And fortunately, we know exactly where they all will be.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... aire-kings
#15196770
Art at its most significant is a Distant Early Warning System that can always be relied on to tell the old culture what is beginning to happen to it.



An ill wind comes arising
Across the cities of the plain
There’s no swimming in the heavy water —
No singing in the acid rain
Red alert
Red alert

It’s so hard to stay together
Passing through revolving doors
We need someone to talk to
And someone to sweep the floors —
Incomplete
Incomplete

The world weighs on my shoulders
But what am I to do?
You sometimes drive me crazy —
But I worry about you

I know it makes no difference
To what you’re going through
But I see the tip of the iceberg —
And I worry about you…


Cruising under your radar
Watching from satellites
Take a page from the red book —
Keep them in your sights
Red alert
Red alert

Left and rights of passage
Black and whites of youth
Who can face the knowledge
That the truth is not the truth?
Obsolete
Absolute

Absalom
Absalom

Wages haven't kept pace with productivity in many years due to continually gains in unbridled progress. A distant early warning system for those that wish to experience a humane form of human organization. As a species, we're tiredly excused by ideologies and further forms of dogma. Restless in our pursuit of abstracted contrivance and distractions which supposedly entertain the poor and rich alike as we wallow in pitiful and petty grievances that justify passions unlike any notion of life we assume peacefully on earth. A maddened menace made men of mad men and mocks material mindsets that plea non-existent. In tryst when, kind men and women cry a blind wind, directionless in sound. There's no political solution to our troubled evolution.

President Richard Nixon’s actions in 1971 to end dollar convertibility to gold and implement wage/price controls were intended to address the international dilemma of a looming gold run and the domestic problem of inflation. The new economic policy marked the beginning of the end of the Bretton Woods international monetary system and temporarily halted inflation.

The international monetary system after World War II was dubbed the Bretton Woods system after the meeting of forty-four countries in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in 1944. The countries agreed to keep their currencies fixed (but adjustable in exceptional situations) to the dollar, and the dollar was fixed to gold. Since 1958, when the Bretton Woods system became operational, countries settled their international balances in dollars, and U.S. dollars were convertible to gold at a fixed exchange rate of $35 an ounce. The United States had the responsibility of keeping the dollar price of gold fixed and had to adjust the supply of dollars to maintain confidence in future gold convertibility.

https://www.federalreservehistory.org/e ... ility-ends


Starting in the late 1970s, policymakers began dismantling all the policy bulwarks helping to ensure that typical workers’ wages grew with productivity. Excess unemployment was tolerated to keep any chance of inflation in check. Raises in the federal minimum wage became smaller and rarer. Labor law failed to keep pace with growing employer hostility toward unions. Tax rates on top incomes were lowered. And anti-worker deregulatory pushes—from the deregulation of the trucking and airline industries to the retreat of anti-trust policy to the dismantling of financial regulations and more—succeeded again and again.

In essence, policy choices made to suppress wage growth prevented  potential  pay growth fueled by rising productivity from translating into actual pay growth for most workers. The result of this policy shift was the sharp divergence between productivity and typical workers’ pay shown in the graph.

From 1979 to 2020, net productivity rose 61.8%, while the hourly pay of typical workers grew far slower—increasing only 17.5% over four decades (after adjusting for inflation).

https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/


A global continuum and economic forum depend wholly upon an ecological awareness and our ability to recognize how dependent we're on the ways of extraction and abstraction of the idealistic notion of scarcity.



Oh, you wired me awake
And hit me with a hand of broken nails
Yeah, you tied my lead and pulled my chain
To watch my blood begin to boil
But I'm gonna break, I'm gonna break my
I'm gonna break my rusty cage and run
Yeah, I'm gonna break, I'm gonna break my
I'm gonna break my rusty cage and run
Too cold to start a fire
I'm burning diesel, burning dinosaur bones
Yeah, I'll take the river down to still water
And ride a pack of dogs
But I'm gonna break, I'm gonna break my
I'm gonna break my rusty cage and run
Yeah, I'm gonna break, I'm gonna break my
I'm gonna break my rusty cage and run
Hit like a Phillips head into my brain
It's gonna be too dark to sleep again
Cutting my teeth on bars and rusty chains
I'm gonna break my rusty cage and run
When the forest burns along the road
Like God's eyes in my headlights
And when the dogs are looking for their bones
And it's raining icepicks on your steel shore
Well, I'm gonna break, I'm gonna break my
I'm gonna break my rusty cage and run
Well, I'm gonna break, I'm gonna break my
I'm gonna break my rusty cage and run



...



It is in vain, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace-- but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
By RhetoricThug
#15196997
(Soundtrack)


Against all odds, revolutionary mammals from all walks of life began to recognize and reorganize the power within them. Whether it be the Earth heating up, anticipating to cool down, I'm not sure; but, we're obligated to note a shift in consciousness occurring across the genome. It's an evolutionary menagerie rich in the facet that we're poorly equipped to consider the effects our lives have on all aspects of being present. This doesn't have to be the big "get even," this doesn't have to be anything at all. The future was wide open.

Life in its derivative form resembled the commemorative slogans ancient authors of yore decreed as mimetic lore of maimed brains as they hurled themselves at the great lie of all past tense presence. We aim to be the bane of humanity through an obscure cycle of insanity. One vs many, amassed for orphaned portals made of men & women who pinned pens upon rants who rent happenstance to the monthly user of abused and boorish blemishes that spoil oil war etiquette to embellish great dictators with the color of clocks.

Rock-n-growl at rallies, townies tally alleys, "turn left, turn right," quoth the satellite. A racket of open caskets crack whips as a rickety and well-worn Cratchit tasked with grappling branches of ancestral brackets gasped as his gasket ran out of telluric credits. Whew! what a head trip, I've been numerically vetted. My social security is a VIN number and my body is a running car-bon based organism, we must reach zero emissions on a post human planet.

Go gut yourself for expecting more, you dirty word whore. I'm a human behind verbiage and shan't shit sentences for infractions upon the code of endemic media meant to rewrite rustled rage and bargain for blasted keys of undifferentiated genius. I am YOU. I know YOU really want to tell me goodbye. It's animistically a risk for fit risqué wit topped to the dip to pass on pith and grit. Let's admire more wishes and improve on deliberations wise enough to disguise itself in the language of plain people.
#15198928
How Much More Money?



What Future Does Man Have?


J.Krishnamurti: I thought we were going to talk about the future of man.

Dr .David Bohm: Yes.

JK: I mean, really, when we talk about man, we're talking about humanity.

DB: The whole of mankind.

JK: Whole of mankind, not the British or the French or the Russian or the American, but the whole of human beings.

DB: The future is all inter linked anyway.

JK: As things are, apart from what one observes the world has become tremendously dangerous.

DB: Yes.

JK: Terrorists, wars, and the national divisions and racial divisions, some dictators who want to destroy the world and so on and so on. And also religiously there is tremendous separation.

DB: Yes, and I think there is the economic crisis and the ecological crisis which are...

JK: Yes, ecological and economic problems - problems seem to be multiplying more and more. So, what' s the future of man? What's the future of not only the present generation, but the coming generations?

DB: Yes, well, the future looks very grim.

JK: Very grim. If you were quite young and I was quite young, what would we do knowing all this. What would be our reaction, what would be our life, our way of earning a livelihood and so on?

DB: Yes, well, I've often thought of that. For example, I've asked myself, would I go into science again.

JK: Yes.

DB: And, I'm not at all certain now because science does not seem to be relevant to this crisis.

JK: No, no, on the contrary, they are helping…

DB: …to make it worse. Science might help but in fact it isn't…

JK: So what would you do? I think I would stick to what I'm doing.

DB: Well, that would be easy for you.

JK: For me it would be easy.

DB: But there are several problems, of course, I don't know if you want to discuss them. If a person is just starting out he has to make a living - right?

JK: Of course.

DB: There are very few opportunities now, and most of these are in jobs, which are very limited.

JK: Limited and unemployment right throughout the world. I wonder what he would do, knowing that the future is grim, very depressing, dangerous and so uncertain. Where would you begin?

DB: Yes, well I think one would have to stand back from all these particular problems of my own needs and the needs of the people around me.

JK: Are you saying one should really forget oneself for the time being?

DB: Yes.

JK: Even if I did forget myself and when I look at this world in which I am going to live, and have some kind of career or a profession, and the unemployment, what would I do? This is a problem that I think most young people are facing.

DB: Yes. That's clear. Well, have you something that you would suggest?

JK: Eh?

DB: Is there something you could suggest?

JK: You see, I don't think in terms of evolution.

DB: Yes, I understand that. That's the point that I was expecting we would discuss…

JK: Yes. I don't think there is psychological evolution at all.

DB: Yes. Now, we have discussed this quite often so I think I understand to some extent what you mean. But I think the people who are new to this, who are viewing this tape, are not going to understand.

JK: Yes, we will discuss it. But I want to discuss this whole question, if you will: why are we concerned about the future? The whole future is now.

DB: Yes, in some sense the whole future is now but we have to make that clear. This goes very much against the whole traditional way of thinking.

JK: Yes, I know. Mankind thinks in terms of evolution, continuance and so on.

DB: Maybe we could approach it in another way. That is, evolution seems in the present era to be the most natural way to think. So I would like to ask you what objections do you have to thinking in terms of evolution. Could I explain a point: that that has many meanings, this word.

JK: Of course. We are talking psychologically.

DB: Yes, now the first point is -- let's dispose of physical evolution.

JK: I mean an acorn will grow into an oak.

DB: Yes. Well, also the species have evolved; for example from plants to animals and to man.

JK: Yes, we have taken a million years to be what we are.

DB: You have no question that that has happened?

JK: No, that has happened.

DB: It may continue to happen.

JK: That is evolution.

DB: That is a valid process.

JK: Of course. That is a valid, natural process.

DB: It takes place in time. And therefore in that region the past, present and future are important - right?

JK: Yes, obviously. I don't know a certain language and I need time to learn it.

DB: Well, also it takes time to improve the brain. You see, the brain started out small, and then it got bigger and bigger, that took a million years.

JK: Yes, and becomes much more complex and so on. All that needs time. All that is movement in space and time.

DB: Yes. So you admit physical time and neurophysiological time.

JK: Neurophysiological time, absolutely. Of course. Any sane man would.

DB: Yes. Now most people also admit psychological time, what they call mental time.

JK: Yes, that is what we are talking about. Whether there is such a thing as psychological tomorrow, psychological evolution.

DB: Or yesterday. Yes, now at first sight, I am afraid this will sound strange. You see, it seems I can remember yesterday, and there is tomorrow, I can anticipate. And it has happened many times, you know days have succeeded each other. So I do have the experience of time, you see, from yesterday to today to tomorrow - right?

JK: Of course. That is simple enough.

DB: That is simple enough. Now what is it you are denying?

JK: I deny that I will be something, become better.

DB: That I can change and be... But now there are two ways of looking at that. One way is: will I intentionally become better because I am trying? Or, secondly some people feel that evolution is a kind of natural, inevitable process, in which we are being swept along, like in a current, and we are perhaps becoming better, worse, or something else is happening to us.

JK: Psychologically.

DB: Psychologically, yes, which takes time, which may not be the result of my trying to become better. It may or may not be. Some people may think one way, some another. But are you denying also that there is a sort of natural psychological evolution, as there was a natural biological evolution?

JK: I am denying that, yes.

DB: Yes. Now, why do you deny it?

JK: Because first of all, what is the psyche?

DB: Yes.

JK: The 'me', the ego, and so on, what is it?

DB: Yes, now the word psyche has many meanings. It may mean the mind for example. Do you mean that the ego is the same thing?

JK: The ego. I am talking of the ego, the 'me'.

DB: Yes. Now some people who are thinking of evolution are thinking there will be an evolution in which the ‘me’ is transcended. That it will rise to a higher level.

JK: Does the transition need time?

DB: So there are two questions: one is: will the 'me' ever improve? That is one argument. And another argument, is even if we suppose we want to get beyond the ‘me’, can that be done in time?

JK: That cannot be done in time.

DB: Yes, now we have to make it clear why not.

JK: Yes. I will. We will go into it. What is the 'me'? If the psyche has such different meanings, the 'me' is the whole movement which thought has brought about.

DB: Why do you say that?

JK: The 'me' is the consciousness, my consciousness, the 'me' is my name, form, and all the various experiences that I have had, remembrances and so on. The whole structure of the ‘me’ is put together by thought.

DB: Yes, well that again would be something, which some people might find hard to accept.

JK: Of course. We are discussing it.

DB: Let us try to bring it out. Now, the first experience, the first feeling I have about the ‘me’ is that the 'me' is there independently and that the ‘me’ is thinking.

JK: Is the 'me' independent of my thinking?

DB: Well my own first feeling is the 'me' is there independent of my thinking, and it is the 'me' that is thinking, you see.

JK: Yes.

DB: Like I am here and I could move my arm or head. I could think.

JK: Yes.

DB: Now, is that an illusion?

JK: No.

DB: Why?

JK: Because the 'me' - when I move my arm there is the intention to grasp something, to take something, to put something, which is also, first, it is the movement of thought, and that makes the arm move and so on. My contention is - and I am ready to accept it as false or true - that thought is the basis of all this.

DB: Yes. Your contention is that the whole sense of the 'me' and what it is doing is coming out of thought. Now what you mean by thought, though, is not merely intellectual thought?

JK: No, no, of course not. Thought is the whole movement of experience, knowledge and memory.

DB: That sounds to me as if you mean the consciousness as a whole.

JK: As a whole, that's right.

DB: And you are saying that that movement is the 'me' - right?

JK: The whole content of that consciousness is the 'me'. That 'me' is not different from my consciousness.

DB: Yes. Well someone might feel - well, I think one could say that I am my consciousness, for if I am not conscious, I am not here.

JK: Of course.

DB: Now, is consciousness nothing but what you have just described, which includes thought, feeling, intention...

JK: ...intention, aspirations...

DB: ...memories...

JK: ...memories, beliefs, dogmas, the rituals that are performed, the whole, like a computer that has been programmed.

DB: Yes. Now that certainly is in consciousness. Everybody would agree but some people would feel, or many people would feel that there is more to it than that. That consciousness may go beyond that.

JK: Let's go into it. Let's go into it.

DB: Yes.

JK: The content of our consciousness makes up the consciousness, the content.

DB: Yes, I think that requires some understanding. The ordinary use of the word content is quite different. If you say that the content of a glass is water, the glass is one thing and the water is another. The glass contains the water; otherwise the word content would suggest that something contains it - right?

JK: All right. Consciousness is made up of all that is remembered: beliefs, dogmas, rituals, the nationalities, fears, pleasures, sorrow.

DB: Now, if all that were absent, would there be no consciousness?

JK: Not as we know it.

DB: But there would still be a kind of consciousness?

JK: A totally different kind.

DB: Well, then, I think you really mean to say that consciousness, as we know it, is made up...

JK: …is the result of multiple activities of thought. Thought has put all this together, which is my consciousness - the reactions, the responses, the memories, the remembrances, extraordinary complex intricacies, subtleties, all that is, makes up consciousness as we know it. The question is: does consciousness has a future?

DB: Yes. Does it have a past?

JK: Of course. Remembrance.

DB: Remembrance, yes. Why do you say it has no future then?

JK: If it has a future, it will be exactly the same kind of thing, moving. The same activities, same thoughts, modified, but the pattern will be repeated over and over again.

DB: Yes. Are you saying that thought can only repeat?

JK: Yes.

DB: But there is a feeling that thought can develop new ideas for example.

JK: But thought being limited, because knowledge is limited, if you admit that knowledge will always be limited.

DB: Yes, well, that again might require some discussion.

JK: Of course, we must discuss it.

DB: Now, why do you say knowledge is always limited?

JK: Because you as a scientist, you are experimenting, adding, searching, so you are adding, and after you some other person will add more. So knowledge, which is born of experience, is limited.

DB: Yes, well some people have said it is and they would hope to obtain perfect knowledge, or absolute knowledge of the laws of nature.

JK: The laws of nature are not the laws of human being.

DB: Well, do you want to restrict the discussion then to knowledge about the human being?

JK: Of course, that's all we can talk about.

DB: All right. So we are saying that man cannot obtain unlimited knowledge of the psyche?

JK: Yes, that's right.

DB: There is always more that is unknown.

JK: There is always more and more that is unknown. So, once we admit that knowledge is limited then thought is limited.

DB: Thought depends on knowledge and the knowledge does not cover everything.

JK: That's right.

DB: Therefore thought will not be able to handle everything that happens.

JK: That's right. That is what the politicians and all the other people are doing. They think thought can solve every problem.

DB: Yes. You can see in the case of politicians that knowledge is very limited, in fact it is almost non-existent! (laughter) But, therefore when you lack the adequate knowledge of what you are dealing with, you create confusion.

JK: Yes. So then as thought is limited, our consciousness, which has been put together by thought, is limited.

DB: Yes. That means we can only repeat; stay in the same circle.

JK: The same circle.

DB: You see one of the ideas might be, if you compare with science, that people might think though my knowledge is limited, I am constantly discovering.

JK: But what you discover is added to, but is still limited.

DB: It is still limited. That's the point. I think one of the ideas behind a scientific approach is that though knowledge is limited, I can discover and keep up with the actuality.

JK: But that is also limited.

DB: My discoveries are limited. And there is always the unknown, which I have not discovered.

JK: That is why I am saying the unknown, the limitless, cannot be captured by thought.

DB: Yes.

JK: Because thought in itself is limited. If you and I agree to that - not only agree, but it is a fact.

DB: Yes, well perhaps we should bring it out still more. That is, thought is limited even though there is a very strong predisposition, feeling, tendency, to feel that thought can do anything.

JK: Anything. It can't. See what it has done in the world!

DB: Well, I agree that is has done some terrible things, but that doesn't prove that it is always wrong. You see maybe you could always blame it on the people who have used it wrongly, you see. (Both laugh)

JK: I know, that is a good old trick! But thought in itself is limited, therefore whatever it does, is limited.

DB: Yes, and it is limited in a very serious way is what you are saying.

JK: That's right. Of course, in a very, very serious way.

DB: Well, could we bring that out, say what that way is, I mean?

JK: That way is what is happening in the world. The totalitarian ideals are the invention of thought.

DB: We could say that the very word totalitarian, means they wanted to cover the totality but they couldn't and the thing collapsed.

JK: It is collapsing.

DB: Collapsing. But, there are those who say they are not totalitarians.

JK: But the republicans, the democrats, the idealists and so on -- all their thinking is limited.

DB: Yes, it is limited in a way that is...

JK: ...very destructive.

DB: ...that is very serious and destructive. Now in what way - could we bring that out? You see I could say, 'OK my thought is limited but it may not be all that serious'. Why is it so important?

JK: That is fairly simple: because whatever action is born of limited thought must breed conflict, inevitably. Dividing humanity geographically into nationalities, and dividing religiously, has created havoc in the world.

DB: Yes, now let's connect that with the limitation of thought. My knowledge is limited - right? How does that lead me to divide the world?

JK: Aren't we seeking security?

DB: Yes.

JK: And we thought there was security in the family, security in the tribe, security in nationalism. So we thought there is security in division.

DB: Yes. Take the tribe, for example: One may feel insecure because one then says, 'With the tribe, I am secure.' That is a conclusion. And I think I know enough to be sure that is so, but I don't. Other things happen that I don't know about, which makes me very insecure. Other tribes come along.

JK: The very division creates insecurity.

DB: Yes, it helps to create it, but I am trying to say that I don't know enough to know that -- right? I don't see that.

JK: One doesn't see it, because one has not looked at the world as a whole.

DB: Well, the thought that aims at security attempts to know everything that is important. As soon as it knows everything important it says, 'This will bring security' – yet, not only are there a lot of things it doesn't know, but also one thing it doesn't know is that this very thought itself is divisive.

JK: If I say I am an individual, it is limited.

DB: Yes.

JK: I am concerned with myself; that is very limited.

DB: Yes, we have to get this clear. If I say this is a table, which is limited, it creates no conflict - right?

JK: No, there is no conflict there.

DB: Now, when I say this is ‘me’, that creates conflict.

JK: The 'me' is a divisive entity.

DB: Let's see more clearly why.

JK: Because it is separative: it is concerned with itself. The 'me' identifying with the greater, the nation is still divisive.

DB: Yes, well, I define myself in the interest of security, so that I know what I am as opposed to what you are and I protect myself - right? Now this creates a division between me and you.

JK: We and they, and so on.

DB: We and they. Now that comes from my limited thought because I don't understand that we are really closely related and connected.

JK: That's it. We are human beings.

DB: Yes, we are all human beings.

JK: All human beings have more or less the same problems.

DB: No, I haven't understood that. My thought, my knowledge is limited, I think that we can make a distinction and protect ourselves and me and not the others.

JK: Yes, that's right.

DB: But in the very act of doing that I create instability.

JK: That's right. You create...

DB: ...insecurity.

JK: Insecurity. So if we see that, not merely intellectually or verbally, but actually feel it, that we are the rest of humanity, then the responsibility becomes immense.

DB: Yes, well, how can you do anything about that responsibility?

JK: Then, I either contribute to the whole mess, or keep out of it. That is: to be at peace, to have order in oneself…

DB: Well, I think we have touched on an important point. We say the whole of humanity, of mankind, is one, and therefore to create division there, is...

JK: ...is dangerous.

DB: Yes. Whereas, to create division between the table and me, is not dangerous because in some sense we are not one. That is, only in some very general sense, we are one. Now, mankind doesn't realise that it is all one.

JK: Why? Why?

DB: Well, let's go into that. This is a crucial point. It is clear it doesn't because there are so many divisions and not only nations and religions but from one person to another.

JK: I know. Why is there this division?

DB: Well, the first is, the feeling, at least in the modern era, that every human being is an individual. This may not have been so strong in the past.

JK: That is what I question. I question altogether whether we are individuals.

DB: Yes, well that is a big question because...

JK: Of course. We said just now the consciousness which is ‘me’ is similar to the rest of mankind. They all suffer; they all have fears; they are all insecure; they have their own particular gods and rituals, all put together by thought.

DB: Yes, well I think this calls for some - you know, it is - there are two questions here. One is, not everybody feels that he is similar - most people feel they have some unique distinction…

JK: What do you mean 'unique distinction'? Distinction in doing something?

DB: Well, there may be many things. For example one nation may feel that it is able to do certain things better than another, one person has some special quality, or...

JK: Of course. You are more intellectual than I am. Somebody else is better in this or that.

DB: He may take pride in his own special abilities, or advantages.

JK: But, when you put that away, basically we are the same.

DB: We have to say what does it mean - you are saying that these things which you have just described are...

JK: ...superficial.

DB: Yes. Well now the things that are basic are what?

JK: Fear, sorrow, pain, anxiety, loneliness, and all the human travails.

DB: Well, many people might feel that the basic things are the highest achievements of mankind.

JK: What has he achieved?

DB: For one thing people may feel proud of the achievement of man in science, art, culture and technology.

JK: We have achieved in all those directions, certainly we have. Vast technology, communication, travel, medicines, surgery have advanced tremendously.

DB: Yes, I mean it is really remarkable in many ways.

JK: There is no question about it. But what have we achieved psychologically?

DB: Yes, I mean one point is to say that none of this has affected us psychologically.

JK: Yes, that's right.

DB: And the psychological question is more important than any of the others because if the psychological question is not cleared up, the rest is dangerous.

JK: Yes. Quite right. That's just it. If we psychologically are limited, then whatever we do will be limited, and the technology will then be used by our limited psyche...

DB: Yes, the master is this limited psyche and not the rational structure of technology. And in fact technology then becomes a dangerous instrument. Now, so that is one point: that the psyche is at the core of it all, and if the psyche is not in order, then the rest is useless.

JK: If the house is in order...

DB: Then the second question is: although we are saying that there are certain basic disorders in the psyche, or lack of order which is common to us all, we may all have a potential for something else, but are we all one really? That is, even though we are all similar, that doesn't say that we are all the same, we are all one.

JK: We said that in our consciousness, basically, we all stand on the same ground.

DB: Yes, but from the fact that the human body is similar, doesn't prove they are all the same.

JK: Of course not. Your body is different from mine.

DB: Yes we are in different places, different entities and so on. But I think you are trying to say that the consciousness is not an individual entity...

JK: That's right.

DB: ...the body is an entity, which has a certain individuality.

JK: That's right. That all seems so clear.

DB: It may be clear. But I think...

JK: Your body is different from mine. I have a different name from you.

DB: Yes, well we are so different - though similar material, it is different. We can't exchange bodies because the proteins in one body may not agree with those in the other. Now many people feel that way about the mind, saying that there is a chemistry between people, which may agree or disagree.

JK: Yes, but actually if you go deeper into the question, consciousness is shared by all human beings. That's my whole...

DB: Yes. Now the feeling is that the consciousness is individual and that it is communicated, as it were, that it is...

JK: I think that is an illusion because we are sticking to something that is not so.

DB: Yes, well do you want to say that there is one consciousness of mankind?

JK: It is all one.

DB: It is all one. That is important because whether it is many or one is a crucial question.

JK: Yes, yes.

DB: Now it could be many, which are then communicating and building up the larger unit. Or you think from the very beginning it is all one?

JK: From the very beginning it is all one.

DB: And the sense of separateness is an illusion -- right?

JK: That is what I am saying over and over again. That seems so logical, sane. The other is insanity.

DB: Yes, now people don't feel, at least one doesn't immediately feel that the notion of separate existence is insane because one extrapolates from the body to the mind, one says it is quite sensible to say my body is separate from yours, and inside my body is my mind. Now are you saying the mind is not inside the body?

JK: That is quite a different question. Now, just a minute. Let's finish with the other, first. If each one of us thinks that we are separate individuals psychically, what we have done in the world is a colossal mess.

DB: Well if we think we are separate when we are not separate, then it will clearly be a colossal mess.

JK: That is what is happening. Each one thinks he has to do what he wants to do -- fulfill himself. So he is struggling in his separateness to achieve peace and security, a security and peace which is totally denied by that…

DB: Well the reason it is denied is because there is no separation. You see, if there were really separation, it would be a rational thing to try to do. But if we are trying to separate what is inseparable, the result will be chaos.

JK: That's right. That's right.

DB: Now that is clear, but I think that it will not be clear to people immediately that the consciousness of mankind is one inseparable whole.

JK: Yes sir, inseparable whole - absolutely right.

DB: Many questions will arise if you even consider the notion, but I don't know if we have gone far enough into this yet. One question is: why do we think we are separate?

JK: Why? Why do I think I am separate? That is my conditioning.

DB: Yes, but, how did we ever adopt such a foolish conditioning?

JK: From childhood it is mine - my toy, not yours.

DB: Yes, but the first feeling you get is, I say it is mine because I feel I am separate, you see. Now it isn't clear how the mind, which was one, came to this illusion that it is all broken up into many pieces.

JK: I think it is again the activity of thought. Thought in its very nature, thought is divisive, fragmentary and therefore I am a fragment.

DB: Thought will create a sense of fragments. You could see, for example, that once we decide to set up a nation, then we will be separate, think we are separate from the other nation and all sorts of things, consequences follow which make the whole thing seem independently real. You have all sorts of separate languages, separate laws and you set up a boundary. And, after a while you see so much evidence of separation that you forget how it started and you say that was there always and we are merely proceeding from what was there always.

JK: Of course. That's why, Sir, I feel if once we grasp the nature of thought, the structure of thought, how thought operates; what is the source of thought, and therefore it is always limited, if we really see that, then...

DB: Now the source of thought is what? Is it memory?

JK: Memory. Memory is the remembrance of things past, which is knowledge and knowledge is the outcome of experience and experience is always limited.

DB: Yes, well, thought includes, of course, also the attempt to go forward, to use logic, to take into account discoveries and insights, you know.

JK: As we were saying some time ago, thought is time.

DB: Yes. All right. Thought is time. Now, that requires more discussion too, because you see the first experience is to say time is there first, and thought is taking place in time.

JK: Ah, no.

DB: For example if we say that movement is taking place, the body is moving, and this requires time.

JK: To go from here to there needs time.

DB: Yes, yes.

JK: To learn a language needs time.

DB: Yes. To grow a plant needs time.

JK: You know, the whole thing. To paint a picture takes time.

DB: We also say to think takes time.

JK: So we think in terms of time.

DB: Yes. You see the first point that one would tend to look at is to say just as everything takes time, to think takes time -- right? Now you are saying something else, which is thought is time.

JK: Thought is time.

DB: That is psychically speaking, psychologically speaking.

JK: Psychologically, of course, of course.

DB: Now how do we understand that?

JK: How do we understand what?

DB: Thought is time. You see it is not obvious.

JK: Oh yes. Would you say thought is movement and time is movement.

DB: That's movement. Now these are... you see time is a mysterious thing, people have argued about it. We could say that time requires movement. I could understand that we cannot have time without movement.

JK: Time is movement.

DB: Time is movement. Now...

JK: Time is not separate from movement.

DB: Now I don't say it is separate from movement, but you see to say time is movement, you see if we said time and movement are one.

JK: Yes I'm saying that.

DB: Yes. They cannot be separated - right?

JK: No.

DB: Because that seems fairly clear. Now there is physical movement which means physical time - right?

JK: Physical time, hot and cold, and also dark and light, sunset and sunrise. All that.

DB: Yes. Now then we have the movement of thought. Now that brings in the question of the nature of thought. You see is thought nothing but a movement in the nervous system, in the brain? Would you say that?

JK: Yes, yes.

DB: Some people have said it includes the movement of the nervous system but there might be something beyond.

JK: What is time, sir, actually? Actually, what is time? Time is hope.

DB: Psychologically.

JK: Psychologically. I am talking entirely psychologically for the moment. Becoming is time. Achieving is time. Now take the question of becoming: I want to become something, psychologically. I want to become non-violent - take that, for example. That is altogether a fallacy.

DB: Yes, well, we understand it is a fallacy but the reason it is a fallacy is that there is no time of that kind, is that it?

JK: No. No sir. Human beings are violent.

DB: Yes.

JK: And they have been talking a great deal, Tolstoy, and in India, of non-violence. The fact is we are violent.

DB: Yes, but...

JK: Just a minute, let me. And the non-violence is not real. But we want to become that.

DB: Yes but you see it is again an extension of the kind of thought that we have with regard to material things. You see if you see a desert, the desert is real and you say the garden is not real, but in your mind is the garden, which will come when you put the water there. So we say we can plan for the future when the desert will become fertile. Now we have to be careful, we say we are violent but we cannot by similar planning become non-violent.

JK: No.

DB: Now why is that?

JK: Why? Because the non-violent state cannot exist when there is violence.

DB: Yes.

JK: That's an ideal.

DB: Well one has to make it more clear because in the same sense the fertile state and the desert don't exist together either. You see I think that you are saying that in the case of the mind when you are violent it has no meaning.

JK: That is the only state.

DB: That is all there is.

JK: Yes, not the other.

DB: The movement towards the other is illusory.

JK: Illusory.

DB: Yes.

JK: So all ideals are illusory, psychologically. The ideal of building a marvelous bridge is not illusory.

DB: No that...

JK: You can plan it but to have psychological ideals...

DB: Yes, if you are violent and you continue to be violent while you are trying to be non-violent...

JK: ...it is so obvious...

DB: ...it has no meaning.

JK: No meaning and yet that has become such an important thing. So the becoming, which is either becoming 'what is' or becoming away from 'what is'.

DB: 'What should be', yes.

JK: I question both.

DB: Yes, well if you say there can be no sense to becoming in the way of self-improvement, that's...

JK: (laughs) Self-improvement is something so utterly ugly. So we are saying, sir, that the source of all this is a movement of thought as time. When once we admit time psychologically all the other ideals, non-violence, achieving some super state and so on and so on become utterly illusory.

DB: Yes. Now when you talk of the movement of thought as time, it seems to me that to say that that movement of thought, that time which comes from the movement of thought is illusory, is it?

JK: Yes.

DB: We sense it as time but it is not a real kind of time.

JK: That is why we asked: what is time?

DB: Yes.

JK: I need time to go from here to there. I need - if I want to learn some engineering, I must study it, it takes time. That same movement is carried over into the psyche. We say I need time to be good. I need time to be enlightened.

DB: Yes, that will always create a conflict.

JK: Yes.

DB: One part of you and another. So that movement in which you say I need time also creates a division in the psyche.

JK: Yes, that's right.

DB: Say between the observer and the observed.

JK: Yes, that's right. We are saying the observer is the observed.

DB: And therefore there is no time.

JK: That's right.

DB: Psychologically.

JK: The experience, the thinker, is the thought. There is no thinker separate from thought.

DB: All that you are saying, you know, seems very reasonable, but I think that it goes so strongly against the tradition that we are used to...

JK: Of course, of course.

DB: ...that it will be extraordinarily hard for people to really, generally speaking, to...

JK: No, most people, sir, don't want - they want a comfortable way of living: 'Let me carry on as I am, for God's sake, leave me alone.'

DB: Yes, but that is the result of so much conflict...

JK: So much conflict.

DB: ...that people are worn out by it, I think.

JK: But in escaping from conflict, or not resolving conflict, conflict exists, whether you like it or not. So is it - that is the whole point - is it possible to live a life without conflict? Can we have peace on this earth?

DB: Yes, well, it seems clear from what has been said that the activity of thought cannot bring about peace; psychologically, it inherently brings about conflict.

JK: Yes, if we once really see or acknowledge that, our whole activity would be totally different.

DB: But are you saying there is an activity, which is not thought then?

JK: Which is not?

DB: Which is beyond thought?

JK: Yes.

DB: And which is not only beyond thought but which does not require the co-operation of thought?

JK: Certainly not.

DB: That it is possible for this to go on when thought is absent?

JK: That is the real point. We have often discussed this, whether there is anything beyond thought. Not something holy, sacred -- I am not talking of that. I am talking: is there an activity, which is not touched by thought? We are saying there is. And that activity is the highest form of intelligence.

DB: Yes, well, now we have brought in intelligence.

JK: I know, I purposely brought it in! So intelligence is not the activity of cunning thought. There is intelligence to build a table.

DB: Yes well intelligence can use thought, as you have often said.

JK: Intelligence can use thought.

DB: Yes, that is thought can be the action of intelligence - would you put it that way?

JK: Yes.

DB: Or it could be the action of memory?

JK: That's it. Either it is the action born of memory and therefore memory is limited, therefore thought is limited and it has its own activity, which then brings about conflict.

DB: Yes, I think this would connect up with what people are saying about computers. You see every computer must eventually depend on some kind of memory, on memory, which is put in, programmed. And that must be limited - right?

JK: Of course.

DB: Because the - therefore when we operate from memory we are not very different from a computer; the other way around perhaps, the computer is not very different from us.

JK: I would say once a Hindu has been programmed for the last five thousand years to be a Hindu, or in this country you have been programmed as British, or as a Catholic or as a Protestant. So we are all programmed up to a certain extent.

DB: Yes, now then we could say there - you are bringing in the notion of an intelligence which is free of the programme, which is creative perhaps and...

JK: Yes, that's right. That intelligence has nothing to do with memory and knowledge.

DB: Yes. It may act in memory and knowledge but it is has nothing to do with it...

JK: Yes it can act through memory, etc. That's right. I mean how do you find out whether it has any reality, not just imagination and romantic nonsense, how do you find out? To come to that one has to go into the whole question of suffering, whether there is an ending to suffering, and as long as suffering and fear and the pursuit of pleasure exists, there cannot be love.

DB: Yes, well there are many questions there. Now the first point is say suffering, or including pleasure, fear, suffering and I suppose we could include anger and violence and greed in that.

JK: Of course, otherwise...

DB: We could say first of all that all those are the response of memory.

JK: Yes.

DB: They are nothing to do with intelligence.

JK: That's right, sir, they are all part of thought and memory.

DB: And that as long as they are going on, it seems to me that intelligence cannot operate in thought.

JK: That's right.

DB: Through thought.

JK: So there must be freedom from suffering.

DB: Yes, well that is a very key point. Now...

JK: That is really a very serious and deep question. Whether it is possible to end suffering, which is the ending of me.

DB: Yes again, it may seem repetitious but the feeling is that I am there and I either suffer or don't suffer. I either enjoy things or suffer.

JK: Yes, I know that.

DB: Now, I think you are saying that suffering arises from thought, it is thought.

JK: Identified.

DB: Yes. And that...

JK: Attachment.

DB: So what is it that suffers? It seems to me, that memory may produce pleasure and then when it doesn't work and is frustrated, it produces pain and suffering.

JK: Not only that. Suffering is much more complex, isn't it?

DB: Yes.

JK: Suffering - what is suffering?

DB: Yes, well, that is...

JK: The meaning of the word is to have pain, to have grief, to feel utterly lost, lonely.

DB: Well it seems to me that it is not only pain, but a kind of a total pain, a very pervasive...

JK: But suffering is the loss of someone.

DB: Or the loss of something very important.

JK: Yes, of course. Loss of my wife, or loss of my son, brother, husband, or whatever it is, and the desperate sense of loneliness.

DB: Or else just simply the fact that the whole world is going into such a state.

JK: Of course, sir. I mean all the wars. And the wars have been going on for thousands of years. That is why I am saying we are carrying on with the same pattern of the last five thousands years or more, of wars.

DB: Yes now one can easily see that the violence and hatred in wars will interfere with intelligence.

JK: Obviously.

DB: Now it is not quite so obvious, I think, you see some people have felt that by going through suffering people become...

JK: ...intelligent?..

DB: ...purified, like going through the crucible, the metal is being purified in the crucible - right?

JK: I know. That through suffering, you learn. You are purified. This is, through suffering your ego is vanished, dissolved.

DB: Yes dissolved, refined.

JK: It doesn't. People have suffered immensely. How many wars, how many tears and the destructive nature of governments?

DB: Yes, they've suffered any number of things.

JK: One can multiply them - unemployment, ignorance...

DB: ...ignorance of disease, pain, everything. But you see what is suffering really? Why does it destroy intelligence, or interfere or prevent it? Why does suffering prevent intelligence? What is going on really?

JK: Suffering is a shock -- I suffer, I have pain, it is the essence of the 'me'.

DB: Yes, the difficulty with suffering is that it is the 'me' that is there that is suffering. And this 'me' is really being sorry for itself in some way.

JK: My suffering is different from your suffering.

DB: That isolates itself, yes.

JK: Yes.

DB: It creates an illusion of some kind.

JK: We don't see suffering is shared by all humanity.

DB: Yes, but suppose we see it is shared by all humanity?

JK: Then I begin to question what suffering is. It is not my suffering.

DB: Yes, well, that is important. In order to understand the nature of suffering, I have to get out of this idea that it is my suffering because as long as I believe it is my suffering, I have an illusory notion of the whole thing.

JK: And I can never end it.

DB: Well, not if you are dealing with an illusion - you can do nothing with it. You see why - we have to come back. Why is suffering the suffering of many? At first it seems that I feel pain in the tooth, or else I have a loss, or something has happened to me, and the other person seems perfectly happy.

JK: Happy, yes, that's right. But also he is suffering too, in his own way.

DB: Yes. At the moment he doesn't see it, but he has his problems too.

JK: So suffering is common to all humanity.

DB: Yes but the fact that it is common is not enough to make it all one.

JK: It is actual.

DB: Yes, but I want to say, are you saying that the suffering of mankind is all one, inseparable?

JK: Yes sir. That is what I have been saying.

DB: As is the consciousness of mankind.

JK: Yes, that's right.

DB: That when anybody suffers the whole of mankind is suffering.

JK: If one country kills hundreds and thousands of human beings - no, the whole point is we have suffered, from the beginning of time we have suffered, and we haven't solved it.

DB: Now, that's clear that it hasn't been solved. We haven't solved it.

JK: We haven't ended suffering.

DB: But I think you have said something, and the thing you said is that the reason we haven't solved it because we are treating it as personal or as in a small group where it cannot - that is an illusion. Any attempt to deal with an illusion cannot solve anything.

JK: That is why - all the problems that humanity has now, psychologically as well as in other ways, is the result of thought. And we are pursuing the same pattern of thought, and thought will never solve any of these problems. So there is another kind of instrument, which is intelligence.

DB: Yes, well that opens up an entirely different subject.

JK: Yes, I know.

DB: And you also mentioned love as well.

JK: Yes.

DB: And compassion.

JK: Without love and compassion there is no intelligence. And you cannot be compassionate if you are attached to some religion, like an animal tied to a post.

DB: Yes well, as soon as your self is threatened then it all vanishes, you see.

JK: Of course. But you see, self hides behind...

DB: ...other things. I mean noble ideals.

JK: Yes, yes. It has immense capacity to hide itself. So what is the future of mankind? From what one observes it is leading to destruction.

DB: That is the way it seems to be going, yes.

JK: Very gloomy, grim, dangerous and if one has children what is their future? To enter into all this? And go through all the misery of it all? So education becomes extraordinarily important. But now, education is merely the accumulation of knowledge.

DB: Yes well every instrument that man has invented, discovered, or developed has been turned toward destruction.

JK: Yes sir. Absolutely. They are destroying nature, there are very few tigers now.

DB: They are destroying forests and agricultural land.

JK: Over population. Nobody seems to care.

DB: I think people - there are two things: one is people are immersed in their own problems - right?

JK: Immersed in their own little plans to save humanity!

DB: Well, some; most people are just immersed in their plans to save themselves.

K: Of course (laughs).

DB: But those others have plans to save humanity, but I think also there is a tendency toward despair implicit in what is happening now in that people don't think anything can be done.

JK: Yes. And if they think something can be done they form little groups and little theories.

DB: Yes, well there are those who are very confident in what they are doing and those who...

JK: Most Prime Ministers are very confident. They don't know what they are doing really.

DB: Yes but then most people haven't much confidence in what they are doing.

JK: I know, I know. If you have tremendous confidence, I accept your confidence and go with you. So what then is the future of man, mankind, the future of humanity? I wonder if anybody is concerned with it. Or each person, or each group is only concerned with its own survival?

DB: Well I think the first concern almost always has been with survival, of either the individual or the group. You see that has been the history of mankind.

JK: Therefore perpetual wars, perpetual insecurity.

DB: Yes, but this, as you said, is the result of thought which makes the mistake on the basis of being incomplete to identify the self, you know, with the group and so on.

JK: You happen to listen to all this. You agree to all this; you see the truth of all this. Those in power will not even listen to you.

DB: No.

JK: They are creating more and more misery, more and more - the world becoming dangerous, how do you then - what is the point of you and I agreeing, seeing something true? This is what people are asking: what is the point of you and I seeing something to be true and what effect has it?

DB: Yes, well, it seems to me that if we think in terms of the effects, we are bringing in the very thing, which is behind the trouble -- time. That is, the first response would be we must quickly get in and do something to change the course of events.

JK: Therefore form a society, foundation, organisation and all the rest of it.

DB: But you see our mistake is to feel that we must think about something, and that thought is incomplete. We don't really know what is going on and people have made theories about it, but they don't know.

JK: No, but come down to it: if that is a wrong question, then as a human being, who is mankind, what is my responsibility?

DB: Well I think it is the same...

JK: Apart from effect and all the rest of it.

DB: Yes, we can't look toward effects. But it's the same as with 'A' and 'B', that 'A' sees, and 'B' does not - right? Now suppose 'A' sees something and most of the rest of mankind does not. Then it seems, one could say mankind is in some way dreaming, asleep, you know, it's dreaming.

JK: It is caught in illusion.

DB: Illusion. And the point is that, if somebody sees something, then his responsibility is to help awaken the others out of the illusion.

JK: That is just it. I mean this has been the problem. That is why the Buddhists have projected the idea of the Bodhisattva, who is compassionate and is the essence of all compassion, and he is waiting to save humanity. It sounds nice. It is a happy feeling that there is somebody doing this. But in actuality we won't do anything that is not comfortable, satisfying, secure, both psychologically and physically.

DB: Yes, well that is the source of the illusion, basically.

JK: How does one make another see all this? They haven't time, they haven't the energy, they haven't even the inclination. They want to be amused. How does one make 'X' see this whole thing so clearly that he says, 'All right, I have got it, I will work. And I see I am responsible...' and all the rest of it. I think that is the tragedy of those who see and those who do not.

https://www.dailygood.org/story/1825/wh ... shnamurti/

The Progress Trap

The progress trap leads to scientific totalitarianism executed by elitist-social-machinists.

Recently, a propagandized curtailing of free thought, has detailed and augmented its meticulous agenda (The Great Reset). The WEF is about to have a great narrative to go with the great reset agenda: perspective, but newly inked perceptions have unveiled a new trajectory for humanity. Klaus decided to believe in his ego and repeat an adage known by the saying: We Cannot Predict the Future, But We Can Invent It

Dennis Gabor? Abraham Lincoln? Ilya Prigogine? Alan Kay? Steven Lisberger? Peter Drucker? Forrest C. Shaklee? Anonymous? https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/09/2 ... he-future/

“We are here to develop the great narrative, a story for the future,” said Schwab.

“In order to shape the future, you have first to imagine the future, you have to design the future, and then you have to execute it,” he added.

IF we don't wish to be enslaved we must revolt now and rebuke the technological industrial system.

“But the conquest of the physical world is not man’s only duty. He is also enjoined to conquer the great wilderness of himself. The precise role of the artist, then, is to illuminate that darkness, blaze roads through that vast forest, so that we will not, in all our doing, lose sight of its purpose, which is, after all, to make the world a more human dwelling place.”

“It's time for our own mutiny, and we can choose to be rebels or slaves.” - Burnt Children of Dying Civilizations
By RhetoricThug
#15199559


-RT
By RhetoricThug
#15228858


-RT
By late
#15228859
Goofy thread.

The OP said this was unprecedented. Not true, the Robber Baron era was, in some ways, worse.

TR ended the Robber Baron era with Progressive policies, we need to do that again.
#15258659
late wrote:Goofy thread.

The OP said this was unprecedented. Not true, the Robber Baron era was, in some ways, worse.

TR ended the Robber Baron era with Progressive policies, we need to do that again.

Goofy idea.

The only way we can possibly stop ourselves from robbing ourselves is to recognize that we're robbing ourselves.
By Rich
#15258672
RhetoricThug wrote:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVYXWVs0Prc

Interesting that you should pick a song by John Lennon the Middle Class Beatle. John Lennon had the confidence of middle class authority and always considered the Beatles his band. He disbanded it when his working class band mates started getting too uppity. Its not surprising then that a Middle Class arty type like John Lennon should be the one to dabble with Marxism and end up as the political Beatle.
By RhetoricThug
#15258788


Rich wrote:Interesting that you should pick a song by John Lennon the Middle Class Beatle. John Lennon had the confidence of middle class authority and always considered the Beatles his band. He disbanded it when his working class band mates started getting too uppity. Its not surprising then that a Middle Class arty type like John Lennon should be the one to dabble with Marxism and end up as the political Beatle.
A working class hero is something to be. And as George Orwell said, all art is propaganda. The Beatles drew inspiration from the Beatniks and Bob Dylan. Remember, all four members traveled to India together, on a spiritual pilgrimage. An inner awakening affects everyone differently and John understood the power of his music. Music is a tribal rhythm that has the power to reorganize the tempo of society.

Interestingly, Lennon had an intriguing discussion with Marshall McLuhan in 1969 (You know, the guy who liked long walks on the beach with Buckminster Fuller). McLuhan was on a quest to prove how new ideas diffuse in our milieu and accurately predicated that the artist is the antenna of the human race. I think of art, at its most significant, as a DEW line, a Distant Early Warning system that can always be relied on to tell the old culture what is beginning to happen to it. Which may have encouraged Rush to write Distant Early Warning System. Who knows what clicks and when molecular dots connect 4D. But I digress, because this reference material is a rabbit hole too deep for ALICE. That chatterbot owes me royalties.

The Noosphere is a very intricate teacher. But I'm just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round. It's amazing how the interplay of planetary information coalesces to produce a creative force. These mind games give rise to progress as tender terra-firma dependent stalwart neuronauts tinker with their tactful techno-tools inside a pneumato-systolic astral-ship.

Marxism plays a role in the roleplaying, when we retrieve the past and project the future through this present moment. Can you imagine, an immense amount of pickled-brained parrots peacocking & pioneering progress under the repetitious pressure of self-immolation? Which myth can we perpetuate today, can I join or die for this mantra and cause an effect to solicit social dissonance and stimulate sex magick? Afterall, there's nothing strange about the reproduction pattern of the Mind. O-O-O me sooo HORNY! John Lennon was uncomfortable with being the sex organ of unbridled progress.
By late
#15258959
RhetoricThug wrote:
Mental diarrhea



You are babbling.

This is way over your head. I linked to Price of Inequality, read it.
User avatar
By ckaihatsu
#15258965
late wrote:
Goofy thread.

The OP said this was unprecedented. Not true, the Robber Baron era was, in some ways, worse.

TR ended the Robber Baron era with Progressive policies, we need to do that again.



---



Theodore Roosevelt wrote to a friend in the year 1897: "In strict confidence . . . I should welcome almost any war, for I think this country needs one."

The year of the massacre at Wounded Knee, 1890, it was officially declared by the Bureau of the Census that the internal frontier was closed. The profit system, with its natural tendency for expansion, had already begun to look overseas. The severe depression that began in 1893 strengthened an idea developing within the political and financial elite of the country: that overseas markets for American goods might relieve the problem of underconsumption at home and prevent the economic crises that in the 1890s brought class war.

And would not a foreign adventure deflect some of the rebellious energy that went into strikes and protest movements toward an external enemy? Would it not unite people with government, with the armed forces, instead of against them? This was probably not a conscious plan among most of the elite -- but a natural development from the twin drives of capitalism and nationalism.

Expansion overseas was not a new idea. Even before the war against Mexico carried the United States to the Pacific, the Monroe Doctrine looked southward into and beyond the Caribbean. Issued in 1823 when the countries of Latin America were winning independence from Spanish control, it made plain to European nations that the United States considered Latin America its sphere of influence. Not long after, some Americans began thinking into the Pacific: of Hawaii, Japan, and the great markets of China.



https://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon ... ire12.html
User avatar
By ckaihatsu
#15258979
late wrote:
ZRP: Zero Relevance Project, when did you join?



Do you do anything besides *rote rejoinders*, late -- ?

Got the little box of *index cards* to flip through -- ?
By RhetoricThug
#15259010
@ckaihatsu Stop arguing bro, be real.

late wrote:You are babbling.

This is way over your head. I linked to Price of Inequality, read it.
That wasn't a very nice way to greet your neighbor, late. The literature you prescribed is sitting on my library shelf. Had you a better candace for small talk, I wouldn't need to circumscribe my blathering. You take the fun out of this banter. Poo-poo, late, poo-poo on you, good sir. I threw my finest derby hat on the ground and spat on it when I read your reply. There's a good chance I'll sleep with your wife after this exchange of ill-mannered words.

Why do you believe this is over my head when I poetically initiate a dialogue on the subject discussed in Price of Inequality? Would you rather have me formulate ratios and press statistics, citing literacy levels in the United States of America? Trouble is, most young people don't have time to read double-standards or grasp macro-economic trends when they're busy lifting themselves up by the bootstraps to wage slave their way to a corporate salary.

Yes, yes, it's for the privileged to read and weep. Stand tall in universities and proclaim such tragedies while the homeless sleep on the street. If you want to slight someone for mental diarrhea, I suggest you go vote. There, in the voting booth, you'll find lewd forms of mental diarrhea begging for your partisanship. It'll be a wonderful lesson in the right to remain silent. You've arrested my patience for unfriendly remarks and arrogant assertions.

Crime at the top is the reason for crime at the bottom. Some say, one must organize the bottom to rise to the problems at the top. These issues stem from internal struggles which cannot be resolved by stating that there's a pervasive and well-documented economic trend that may or may not affect future generations. The rise of third world economies and their emulation or replication of Western economies slows, when we consider the energy dilemma and climate crisis. Wealth inequality ends when Natural Law disrupts and rebalances the budget and flow of commerce.

Natural Law is based in the fact that human energy is dependent on planetary dynamics. Post-industrial society is completely divorced from Natural Law and has a parasitic relationship with planetary dynamics. Ultimately, there's a timeframe for our species to reinvent its relationship or suffer the consequences, because energy potential is a math formula and the entire planet is not capable of sustaining Western levels of consumption & wealth inequality.

Maaaaaaan, Ima' go smoke a blunt & load some liquor, because you got me bugging (said a sadist and privileged consumer of hopelessness). Guzzle-guzzle-guzzle a cup full-throttle. It's like you're behind a screen, dead to the reverberation of your mental anguish. Stop peeing in the pool man, I swim here too. And for all the admirers out there, this one is for you. Wave your arms in the air if you feel this. Smash your computer and go commune with nature. Peace, one love. RT out. For real, late, you really dropped the ball dawg. You're not invited to my birthday party this year. Bummer, well, DEAL WITH IT!

Soundtrack


C'mon man, I saw you state you're 70 something, how are you going to mimetically mime time/space or this state of noospheric interplay? I'm the renewable and honorable confession of your DNA.
Last edited by RhetoricThug on 14 Dec 2022 09:47, edited 2 times in total.
By late
#15259013
RhetoricThug wrote:[usermention=59984]


DEAL WITH IT!




Actually, someone dealt with me.

He was a severely dyslexic marine that had been left in an orphanage, when he was a child. One of the nurses noticed he had taught himself to read. His issues made things quite difficult, but he joined the marines, and used the GI bill to go to college. He got a phd in the science side of psychology.

The class was basic science methodology. Like you, I was a BS artist, and he had no tolerance for BS.

Live and learn..

Postscript... we have surprisingly similar backgrounds. I am still a big fan of both McLuhan and Bucky Fuller. If you read Stiglitz, then you're a Progessive. I had an interest in the philosophy of science, but interpret that as more of a deficit than a skill...
By RhetoricThug
#15259014
C'mon man.


late wrote:Actually, someone dealt with me.

He was a dyslexic marine that had been left in an orphanage, when he was a child. One of the nurses noticed he had taught himself to read. His issues made things quite difficult, but he joined the marines, and used the GI bill to go to college. He got a phd in the science side of psychology.

This class was basic science methodology. Like you, I was a BS artist, and he had no tolerance for BS.

Live and learn..
This is a bluff, an attempt to reply to my original response. It lacks heart and sincerity. Where is the direct engagement and level-headed approach to the content? I'm sorry you're physically and mentally abused by a potentially fictional character. If you'd like me to go into detail, I can write you a detailed paragraph describing the ailments you face.

Hmmm, it the Ukraine aid package is all over main[…]

The rapes by Hamas, real or imagained are irreleva[…]

@Rugoz You are a fuckin' moralist, Russia coul[…]

Moving on to the next misuse of language that sho[…]