in candle shadow (raos)

In closing moments of late Winter light
Clouds sinking afire into horizon's shore
Visions shielded by day from instinct's sight
Creep into focus, relink to nature's core

 

 

 

People losing track of reality can be better focused through getting in touch with basic physical movement, moving back into a better mind/body integration.

 

In my opinion the default setting is bisexual; but we tend not to notice over all the media hype and individual brainwashing about gender issues.

 

To seriously deal with the real problems we don't need money, but something much more valuable and rare. We need people who commit their resources of time, energy, intelligence, and the ability to lead through example and pull together rather than cracking along every point of disagreement.

 

I am starting to give in to the paranoia that the 1% is working to weed out the 99%

 

Not religion, which is a binding force not an expanding one, what we need is a real faith based not in gods, but in us.

 

When people kneejerk into a hostile defending of their rights, they seem to forget that rights imply responsibilities.  If we are speaking of "god-given" natural rights, we forget that this is a fantasy.  In the state of nature we have the right to do what we will until it kills us.  In the state of social institutions we have the rights decided by the polity.  In either case we have the responsibility to exercise those rights or not based on the realities of the situation, or we are not rights holding persons but whiney self-entitled fools.

 

 

We complain the kids don't learn the reading and 'rithmetic and they complain that the lessons aren't relevant, don't attach to the valences of their minds. So, why aren't we teaching the school skills in conjunction with the life skills? How about learning to fill out a tax form (reading, writing and arithmetic), pay a set of monthly bills, make blueprints for a house, create a political party and election ads, etc., and do it all in a teamwork modality?

 

In this digital age we ought to be able to give kids the option of opting out of classes and homeschooling themselves.

 

We seem to have a distorted view about childhood and its place in life.

 

I am inspired by anger engorging my blood-brain barrier by symphonies of guilt and shame and hope by simple positionings glimpsed from roving eyes by lightening, darkening, liminal desires, by brave warriors who cope with more than could be required and the songs my silent ear demands I hear

 

Art is its own experience, just as any experience in life. Because of the way our consciousness self-structures, we store our memories in metaphor as well as sensory perception. Thus, perhaps art is the more pure experience.

 

 

 

The so-called capitalists get it all wrong.  They imagine they have some uber right to profit on their products, when the free market doesn't offer that at all.  The market says you must sell your wares to make profits -- and selling is not just trade, but enticing it.

 

In this age of self-publishing, online information free market, exploding innovation, critical thinking becomes a key tool.

 

A central problem with the "conservative" media and "conservative" politicians is that their nattering idiocies keep real conservative ideas and solutions from being heard.

 

If the Republicans can't get a decent candidate together, maybe Johnson could have a shot as a Libertarian.

 

The thing is we turn these terms into nonsense by allowing their meaning to become whatever the popular slur would imply. Rather than talk Liberal or Conservative, Capitalist or Socialist, or even Republican or Democrat, perhaps it would be more useful to just talk issue by issue and explore all of the actually wider range of views.
 

 

The issue is not so much Koch or Soros, but the influence of big money in obfuscating the candidates' actual abilities or positions.

 

While the controversy rages over drilling and oil pipelines, alternatives quietly progress.

 

The message that bullying is not ok needs to be made clear

 

 Whether or not the police "deserved" taunting could be countered with whether or not the protesters deserved the kinds of ill-treatment they got. Violence, however, takes away the moral high ground that is the essence of peaceful protest. What we do have to remember, though, is that a movement cannot possibly control every person who claims to act under their banner. If the police, the public servants involved in escalating conflict would stop reactively acting out violently and negotiate out of the moral strength of peace, better results for all could be created.

 

For years I sent letters to the IRS advocating that they include an area on the tax forms in which people could opt out of allowing their tax dollars to support any particular program (and perhaps also an area in which they could say: "I want to support _____"). I figured it would pretty much all even out over the entire population; and it would be a good way to gage exactly what the people do and don't want their government doing.

 

 

 

It's just a phase, this material trance.  We awake into a world ready made and monkey-see our way into a social construct we call "me".  We do this both individually and all together.  We go through the metamorphoses of growth and experience, trying to piece it together into useful sense.  In that effort, we try out different roles, different styles, different socio-political theories and practices.  It is a systemic spiral we travel, incrementally changing until we reach a critical mass, a crisis of belief and boundary redefining.  The world we think we know, have created in our own minds, shifts.  Before we get to that crisis, we explore and overextend, we wallow to ridiculous degree to fully engorge, to fully play out the possibilities and consequences of the reigning paradigm.  We have learned, have seen, that tools, technology can give us the illusion of grabbing more than our hands can hold, of smiting our enemies and increasing our security.  We have learned, have seen, that grabbing and hoarding the material luxuries and symbols of power can give small, scared, weak people an illusion of power and command, and the kind of security that implies.  However, we are learning, some are seeing, that the material trappings are not the feelings themselves, are not truly worthwhile as goals or means.  It is a phase we learn through, then, if we have been paying appropriate attention, move from to try out other theories, other practices, as those possibilities become more obvious.  Of course, there is always the chance that what hasn't truly made us stronger will kill us.

 

 

 

 

Go back to first principles: What do we mean by "God"?