Rumi on Blindness

"The eye goes blind when it only wants to see why."--Rumi

Cheating On One Religion

I read this a few days back. Since I don't get out of Washburn County much let alone the country, it's interesting to learn how the Japanese handle religion.

"People in America are very committed to their religions. A religion to them is like a wife/husband or girl/boyfriend. You can only have one of them! If you are a Christian and you do yoga, you are cheating on Jesus!

"The Japanese, on the other hand, are very religiously promiscuous. They’re like polyamorists when it comes to religion. Lots of people over there go to Buddhist temples on the Buddhist holidays, Shinto shrines on the Shinto holidays and maybe even occasionally to Christian churches on the Christian holidays like Christmas or Easter. Lots of non-Christian Japanese people have church weddings, often with foreign guys pretending to be preachers. It’s no big deal."--Brad Warner on his blog titled: Hardcore Zen

Initiatory Books

Lately I've been thinking of Daniel Quinn's and Derrick Jensen's work somewhat as books of initiation. I've also thought of my struggle to express myself here and in my journal as an initiation also. Why? Because I think Western Civilization is dying. It's at its end. And when the majority of the people in this society don't understand this on a conscious level one needs someone to articulate this to them or they'll think that they are going nuts. And eventually after one has this articulated to them they have the urge to express themselves also. Anyway, I ran across these quotes in A Terrible Love of War by the 20th century philosopher Michael Foucault that rationally explains what I'm getting at.

"For Nietzsche, Bataille, and Blanchot, experience has the function of wrenching the subject from itself, of seeing to it that the subject is no longer itself, or that it is brought to its annihilation or its dissolution. This is a project of desubjectivism."

"...however boring, however erudite my books may be, I've always conceived of them as direct experiences aimed at pulling myself free of myself, at preventing me from being the same."

"Which means that at the end of a book we would establish new relationships with the subject at issue: the I who wrote the book and those who have read it would have a different relationship with madness, with its contemporary status, and its history in the modern world."

Simple Marriage Quote

"It's better to marry than to burn."--St. Paul

The Reasons For War: Does The Land Demand Blood Sacrifice?

James Hillman on why the Civil War might have been fought:

"Suppose the entire American Civil War that has permanently marked the land and scarred the character of the American people was a sacrifice by a secular Christian society to a god or gods that had not been honestly remembered until the war, gods of the land, gods honored who had been there for centuries before the combatants donned the blue and the gray.

"Suppose the gods in this 'new world' soil were saying: 'You may not land here; you cannot claim this land by labor alone, nor by law or treaty, nor even by expulsion of others and the rights of victors. To claim this land you shall pay for it with your own blood, and until you have paid you have not truly landed; you remain colonists, attached still in soul to another mother as refugees from her, rebels against her, secretly fawning upon her, and have not let this land bring forth its birth in freedom.'"--Pg.103, A Terrible Love of War

Suppose this is why Derrick Jensen has often said that we must ask the land what it wants. It has its own wants and desires that we must pay attention to before we act to help it. I don't know. I do know that Heraclitus once said: "The true nature of things loves to hide and to stay hidden."

Quinn Quote Saturday

Imagining extinction this morning. One of the affects Quinn's work had on me was that it opened me to the possibility, and perhaps the inevitability, of the human species going extinct much like the dinosaurs.

B's Beattitudes

Blessed are those who do
not exalt themselves above
their neighbors in the
community of life, for their
children shall have a world
to live in.

Blessed are those who
listen to their neighbors in
the community of life, for
they shall escape extinction.

Blessed are those who
refrain from imposing on
others their "one right way
for people to live," for
cultural diversity shall be
restored among them.

Blessed are those who
hunger and thirst for the
survival of all human
cultures, for they shall
preserve a legacy of wisdom
accumulated from the
beginning of time.

Blessed are those who do
not fancy themselves to be
rulers or managers or
stewards of the world, for
the world thrived for three
billion years without their
rule or their management
or their stewardship.

My First Book Of Rumi

My first book of Rumi fell into my hands on February, 20th. It's title: A Year with Rumi: Daily Readings. This book was given to President Obama as a gift from the author during the beginning of his first term as President. Rumi is the President's favorite poet. The poem on the day I received the book knocked my socks off and made me laugh at the same time.

Imagining is Like

Imagining is like feeling around
in a dark lane, or washing
your eyes with blood.

You are the truth
from foot foot to brow, Now,
what else would you like to know?

Citizenship and War

This quote by Machiavelli and James Hillman's commentary on it is stunning and inspiring.

"A prince...should have no other aim or thought, nor take up any other things for his study, but war; [he] ought...never let his thoughts stray from the exercise of war; and in peace he ought to practise it more than in war."

James Hillman goes onto say: "The prince, as generous metaphor for responsible citizen and concerned member of the polis, will keep a focused mind, a mind undistracted by the multiple diversions of peace, and a psyche neither numbed nor in denial. And he will maintain this clarity not merely by meditating or praying to benefit his own 'mental health,' but for the common good and the defense of the community. Hence, the prince 'ought never let his thoughts stray from...war.'" Pg. 36, A Terrible Love of War

I'm also beginning to see why Derrick Jensen titled one of his CD's: Now This War Has Two Sides.

Gods and Porno Flicks

Could it be that Aphrodite finds her way into one's home through the porno flick? Maybe Jung is right, if we look hard enough we'll find the gods in our diseases.

Philosophy: A Frozen Form of Mythology

I'm going to take a stab at answering the questions I asked yesterday. Here is what I've come up with: I've heard it said that the gods speak through mythology and poetry. It's universal. I've also heard it said that philosophy is a frozen form of mythology. In other words, every philosophical idea is associated with a myth. Perhaps this is why an author like Daniel Quinn (Well, he had Ishmael say it to Alan) can say one cannot argue with mythology. It is universal and fluid unlike philosophy which becomes frozen and stiff.

I know that it would be bliss if there was a cafe down the road for me to sit and discuss these ideas.

Wingless Angels

"Philosophy will clip an angels wings."--John Keats

What's Keats saying here? Reading too much philosophy will never get you off the ground? Was he just being a high-flying spirit boy when he said this?

It's time to cut firewood. That'll ground the brain, and work some this coffee out of my system.

Stuck in Muck

I've always been interested in psychology, especially after getting to know depression and anxiety well in my late teens and early twenties. They scared the shit out of me to be quite honest. I never thought I'd climb back out of whatever hole I was in during that period. And once I did, I've never wanted to go back, atleast not to that degree. This, of course, leads me to a quote that has been popping into my head the past week or so. I made an attempt to find it yesterday and couldn't, but this morning I was successful.

"It must be remembered that sensations of the ugly and evil impress us more violently than those of what is agreeable...sickness makes the rougher mark...Illness...makes itself by it very incongruity."--Plotinus

Whatever the hell had a hold of me then left a mark.

Teach A Hundred

"What you do is teach a hundred what I've taught you, and inspire each of them to teach a hundred. That's how it's always done" - Daniel Quinn, Pg. 248, Ishmael

Another Quote on Beauty

Lately I've been thinking a lot about Beauty. I don't think we consider it enough.

"The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man."-- Fyodor Dostoyevski

D.H Lawrence on Beauty

Question: What is Beauty?

Answer: According to D.H. Lawrence "Beauty is a mystery. You can neither eat it nor make flannel out of it."

New Strategy To Save The USPS

I've got a new strategy this morning. If any of you have friends or family working within the United States Postal Service please pass this PETITION onto them and urge them to pass it on to others within the USPS. My thinking is that if approximately one-fifth of USPS's work force signs this thing we'll reach our 100,000 signature goal by the 21st of February. And why wouldn't a USPS employee take the two minutes it takes to sign this thing? Their job, and the survival of the USPS, depends on it.

We Petition The Obama Administration To: Save The Post Office

Two posts today. Yesterday I had the intention to post this PETITION:

We Petition The Obama Administration To:

Save the Post Office

The Postal Service is not a federal agency. It does not cost taxpayers a dollar. It loses money only because Congress mandates that it do so.

What it is is a miracle of high technology and human touch. It delivers to more than 151 million addresses every day but Sunday. It's what binds us together as a nation.

If Congress does not take action soon, the Post Office will have only enough money to pay its bills through October. After that, it will go bankrupt.

Before it’s too late, we urge Congress to free the Post Office from its congressionally mandated obligations and allow it to raise additional revenue so that it can become self-sustaining once again.

Read DO WE REALLY WANT TO LIVE WITHOUT THE POST OFFICE? from Esquire's February issue: http://tinyurl.com/ap8vsen.

#savethepostoffice

It's been 24 hours since I signed. I was signature number 4176. I just now checked it and there is 4237 signatures. That's only 61 signatures in 24 hours. We need 96,000 signatures before February 21st. Please sign it and share it. My goal isn't so much to save my own job but to let the President know we value the Post Office and are paying attention. In other words, I like to know active citizenship is happening.

A Reader Responds...And I Respond Back

Recently I had a response to my blog post titled: Where is Marx When You Need Him. I'm going to attempt to respond to it using a method that I learned in Daniel Quinn's If They Give You Lined Paper Write Sideways. In that book he asks his readers to look for the unquestioned hidden assumptions in their own and other's thinking. I admit I don't do very well at this, but this will be good practice.

Responder: "There is something wrong with your argument, that high paying jobs should be saved even though they aren't warranted. And how could Karl Marx make things better?"

Me: Karl Marx can't make things better because he is dead. But I think we look at the world with the ideas that we hold in our heads. And I think it was Marx who came up with the idea that people don't have to labor for a wage that the owners of production have set up for him without a fight. In other words, a laborer doesn't have to be a wage slave that blows like a feather in the free market winds.

Responder: "Karl Marx would probably save your job and others like it but to the detriment of all. This is why the Soviet Union collapsed, because unnecessary jobs were constantly saved. Thus the whole communist economic system became unproductive and lazy, eventually atrophying and collapsing."

Me: Ah yes, you're letting me know that my job and others like it are unnecessary, and that people working jobs like mine are lazy, and we will be why the United States economic system collapses. The old I'm a burden on the taxpayer argument. But my job isn't supported with taxpayer dollars. It's payed for by pedaling stamps.

Responder: "The ending of unproductive jobs may not be the fairest thing to do. But it is one of those things that has help keep America dynamic and vital."

Me: In other words I should work for half of what I make and be a good patriot. No, I'll choose to be a prickly, pissed off citizen.

A Big Hole In the Ground

Yesterday, I listened to 5 hours of citizen testimony against what will probably be the largest open-pit iron-ore mine in the world today. It was some of the best radio I've heard in a long time. The hundreds of citizens that stood up and had the courage to speak with heartfelt conviction against this travesty deserve to be honored in some way. Also, after listening, it's clear to me that the citizens of Wisconsin must do everything within their power to make sure this mine does not see the light of day. If you've made it this far take a look at the Sierra Club's write up on the potential damage this mine would do to the Lake Superior watershed to see where I'm coming from. It's enough to make a guy want to....

Saturday's Daniel Quinn Quote

Quoting Daniel Quinn out of the New Renaissance:

"If there are still people living here in 200 years, they'll know that humanity doesn't belong to an order of being that is separate from the rest of the living community. They'll know this as surely as we know that the earth revolves around the sun. I can make this prediction with confidence, because if people go on thinking we belong to a separate order of being, then there will be no people living here in 200 years."