Our 50 year Groundhog Day

February 2, 2020 by admin Leave a Comment

Is today GroundHog Day? We have been in a GroundHog day like the movie for the last 50 years as we fail in every election to break out of the 50/50 gridlock of Red versus Blue, the War of Colors. Everyone promises to break out, but no one can. The colors fall back into place in a 50/50 polarity of stalemate.

The anger and frustration with this Groundhog Day grows with each decade because the world is moving on, and we are stuck in the tape-loop of our cultural war of incompatible values. What’s wrong?

Is 2020 the election when we can break free of the karma of our Groundhog Day when time stopped? The Progressives are in a full charge now to break the trench warfare of the War of Colors. A new generation has joined the fight to break the clock of Groundhog Day.

All clock run down when you stop winding them. Is

WHAT TIME IS IT?

The Constitution is a clock.

I have my father’s pocket watch and I have to wind and set if often. It does not keep perfect time. What is perfect time? The founders believed through and through that mankind was endowed with Reason, and that it would overcome the passions of politics. And so they framed a system like a clock that if wound and set correctly would keep time with Reason and the laws of nature.

This Impeachment and trial are the founders’ way of resetting the clock to true Reason. Did we succeed or not. The consensus on the right is that only by the election can you reset the clock. On the Left that goes against the Founders’ design.

If you don’t reset the clock when it is out of sync with Reason, you are not following the Founder’s manual on how to make your nation keep perfect time with the universe. And if you have no timing, nothing you do will work; we all know that. Timing is everything.

We are kind of screwed up now because we have two Master clockmakers. The one our Constitutional clock is designed to keep time with is the Laws of nature and Reason. The Religious clock (which is also important) believes it has to be set to God’s time. So we have two different times. To which time do we set the watch?

The Left sets to one clock, the Right sets to the other. But there is only One correct time, not two. No wonder we are going in circles chasing perfect timing.

Socialism or Capitalism: the male or female or both

January 27, 2020 by admin Leave a Comment

I gave a talk on the two Darwins. The first Darwin is the most popular, the survival of the fittest. But the second Darwin, his second theory was that evolution of life itself is through empathy, through a relationship with the whole. So in the foreground, we have competition (capitalism) but in the background, there is empathy or the interconnectedness of the whole. These two drives are incompatible to the mind that invests in competition and survival of the individual organism.

But every individual organism is part of a whole, and if it is not in a relationship with the whole, the individual becomes cancer.

Jerry rightly sees the validity of Capitalism as necessary for competition and free enterprise, the freedom of the individual, but if there is not a primary investment in the social or the whole that supports the individual, the drive of the individual will destroy the health of the whole.

People say Jesus was a socialist. That means in this context the Jesus is the awareness of the whole is a primary knowing and awareness of the need for individual excellence and power is secondary knowing.

The Tao also says that we should lead with the Female and follow with the male. This means that we should lead with the whole (the whole is female) and then act as the individual. The Tao is a balance between female and male, the whole and the individual. This is the Dharma which is alignment with Life itself, the two theories of Darwin, not just the first.

Socialism/capitalism metaphorically speaking is a fight between male and female viewpoints and energy. The Patriarchal mythos is giving way, not to a Matriarchal mythos but a sharing of the throne between king and queen. Each has his/her own strengths, and each should be employed when conditions dictate it, a dynamic power relationship that has cosmic dimensions.

Lets get personal. Those moments when you feel “in the zone”, where all your lights are green and the world is helping you, where you feel you can do no wrong, that is when you are in alignment with the Mother, with the invisible whole. But the moment you think, WOW, how great I am, you fall out of alignment. The moment you try to possess Her, you fall back into the hell of isolation and exile. Your covenant with God as the whole is broken.

But in the Christian Judaic tradition God is the Father, not the Mother, and this gets our mythology screwed up. The Mother gets put in the basement of the. unconscious where she rises as a witch or Hillary.

The immature male is an adolescent who is rebelling against the mother, to be free from the womb so he can be a unique individual. This is a necessary passage, however, it is not the end of the passage, but the bridge. The male must return to the mother, to the whole of society to make the flowers bloom. The unicorn in the Garden. The symbols of this cosmic dance are everywhere if you read them. Socialism is the garden, Capitalism is the unicorn. It is capitalism that makes socialism (society) bloom.

But if you are held captive by the logic of the male, the logic of the individual that sees all choice as either this or that, either capitalism or socialism, that logic cuts us off from the Garden. That is the logic of the Apple.

I dare say that this cosmic conflict for either supremacy or balance and harmony goes on in our own psyche. The Ego or separate sense of self is male, the body/mind or Being is female. The Ego is consciousness and being is sensed, felt but not seen. We know it is there embracing us, but we cannot perceive it because preception only sees forms, the parts of the whole. The foreground is male, the background is female, but it is the female that gives meaning to the male or foreground.

The whole cosmos is the relationship between male and female energy, one active, one passive; one the individual, one the whole that contains all individuals. The wheel and the spokes.

In the context of this idea, the fear of socialism is the fear of the Mother who is coming to tell her boys to put down the toy guns and pet theories and come home to dinner and do their lessons.

The male/female energies or drives work out in many ways. In physics, it is centripetal/centrifugal forces. One goes outward, the other goes inward. Socialism is centripetal, driving outward to include the whole, inclusive intention, the intention of the mother to include all her children. Capitalism is centripetal or moving towards the One or the center. Both forces are in balance in the univers or else everything would fly away or shrink like Alice to a disappearing dot.

The tension between the male/female is dynamic, and when contained, it is creative energy. A marriage is like a battery that contains the polarity of male/female energies to produce children or new worlds. The tension between the contained polarity when contained in metaphor generates creative energy.

Myth and metaphor contain the polarity for creative, useful energy, insight, Idea, invention, and the birth of a new world, new systems, and societies.

America is such a metaphor, the metaphor of freedom, a system that contains the opposite forces of male and female, capitalism and socialism. to produce a creative society that is always striving to stay in alignment with the whole of life, or, again, the Mother Goddess.

So you see, we are larger than we think. Our current politics is mythic, cosmic and existential. Do we abort America or are we going to be born again?

The War of the two Darwins

January 25, 2020 by admin Leave a Comment

This is a War of the Two Darwins. Let’s look. The GOP fights the Left to be the center of the Yard, to hold the yard, and keep the Left out on the periphery. But this is not the way our system works for it works not with one party being the One without a second but with. both parties dancing to lead, each needing the other like Fred and Ginger. A dynamic unity not a static one of fixed centers and power.

This is a War of the Two Darwins. The first Darwin was about the survival of the species, the winner taking all. The second Darwin was about the survival of life, and life survives by always driving towards the unity of the lion and the zebra as relationship. The first Darwin is about the lion eating the zebra. I won! The second Darwin is about the balance of the whole. If the lion didn’t eat the Zebra the Zebra would multiply and destroy the nation.

First Darwin is about things and their survival. Second Darwin is about the relationship and the whole that is made up of dynamic relationships like Russian Nesting Dolls.

This is also about the Old Testament and New Testament (metaphorically). Old Testament is eye for an eye, survial of the fittest, the chosen. New Testament is about loving your enemy, or relationship of the combatants to the greater whole. The first is exclusive, the second is inclusive. Both are valid, but they have to dance together, not one excluding the other. Both Darwins are in the same study.

But instead of looking at the two Darwins as equals juxtaposed next to each other fair and balanced, and you cannot look that way because they cancel each other out as they are contradictory principles.

The lion must eat the Zebra, but on a higher level, the Lion lays down with the Zebra. This is like Russian Nesting Dolls, my favorite metaphor. The first Darwin is contained in the second Darwin, so the Second Darwin is of the higher-order as it is concerned with the survival of life itself and not just specific animals.

For this reason, Trump and Trumpism, which is Old Testament and First Darin cannot maintain its dominance over the New Testament and Second Darwin. Life is greater than its parts. The wheel is greater than its spokes, but it needs the spokes to run.

Now I remember the Tao which says to lead with the female and follow with the male, which is the opposite of our American mythology.

When you lead with the female you lead with listening, and then you act. When you lead with the male, you act and then listen. The female represents the whole, the whole womb/cosmos so to speak, and the male represents, the individuals in the whole, the heroes of action, but they are always within the field of the Mother, who comes to restore balance. (Avatar)

My theory of Everything by Ed Conley

January 23, 2020 by admin Leave a Comment

As I look for my “theory that explains everything” I see that there are two ways of knowing the causes of a problem: the mechanistic way and the organic way. The mechanistic way is the moral way of on/off thinking. It sees the first cause of disorder caused by the immoral individual. When the carburetor is bad you replace it. Case closed.

When it comes to life, the machine logic won’t work because there is no first cause in life. There is no first cause of a snowstorm. Conditions rise that create the storm, all rising at once.

So when it comes to life, you need to look at the condition of the whole body and not just picking out one part as the culprit. When that part is removed, the condition remains the same.

In the modern scientific materialism since the 17th century, the world was seen as a mechanism that can be fixed like a clock. This viewpoint being dominant as brought about Global Warming and the proliferation of new problems meant to fix old ones.

This mechanistic/moral thinking cannot solve problems like abortion, terrorism and mass shooting, or any other of the current social problems we are trying to fix.

On/off thinking is our dominant way of thinking, but there are other ways. Moralistic thinking is on/off thinking with values. On/off thinking is dualism. No matter what arises, you chop it into two opposites parts and they fight about how to put it back together buy more division. There is no end to the butchering with this way of thinking when applied to life.

On/off thinking or its stepchild Moralistic Thinking is creating our American carnage where no matter what rises on the media it is cleaved into good versus evil, Right versus Left, so there is no solution, just the growing anger, and frustration the comes from a mechanic trying to fix an organism with a hammer.

I’m suddenly reminded of my favorite commercial: You can’t lift the hammer, can. you son?

The son is a programmer who is going to change the world by designing new programs. The father wants him to use a hammer, and the son cannot lift it. This is a metaphor for the Right versus Left way of thinking, both of which are valid when used in the right context.

When it comes to bad guys in society that is a pattern, taking a hammer to them will not get rid of the pattern or the program that creates them. You have to understand the program or system in order to change the conditions that create patterns of problems.

Life works in patterns. Nothing stands alone out of relationship with some kind of whole, context, background or pattern. Life is Russian Nesting Dolls or greater and greater wholes.

When something doesn’t fit, you have to intuit the larger doll in which your doll fits. Analysis or on/off thinking cannot discover the larger doll in which your problem is nested.

A case for Porn

January 20, 2020 by admin Leave a Comment

The evolution of porn is interesting. It used to be a secret sin: dirty pictures under the table, dirty movies in the slum of the city, then porn videos in the back room of the video store. Porn videos were stories with a plot. You had to fast forward for the money shot. Then internet porn made the story porn obsolete. Everything is the money shot.

But one theme remains: porn is a sexual ballet. The male pole is the means upon which the female dances in orgasm. The male is just a pumping machine while the female is emotional expression and enjoyment of the body’s abandonment.

Porn is Shiva/Shakti in Hindu Tantric religion. In a society where the body’s pleasures or flesh is sin, porn is a liberating force. No matter how liberal we think we are, there is a deep puritan stain running through our collective psyche. Porn is like the call of the wild, the call of freedom from guilt, and shame of the body.

Without Adam’s fig leaf and shame, there would be no need for porn.

Let’s face it. In our society with its puritanical roots—the 50s is never far behind—sex is our religion. Sex sells everything. Sex is liberation from the known. Sex is the call of the wild. Sex is freedom from convention. Sex is getting in touch with the body. Sex is being free from thought control. Sex is an adventure into the unknown. Sex is being itself, the creative force of life itself. In Hindu cosmology, the Cosmos is an orgasm of death and union. Sex is death; sex is life.

Porn is always looking for virgin territory, to go where no one else has gone. Once the new virgin territory is known, it becomes boring and a new virgin must be explored, with great risk at first, but then others follow.

Like everything else in our society, the forbidden land of tomorrow is where we must go. To be the first in a new land is our imperative. The female is the land, the male is the explorer. The arousal of erotic energy is the goal. Anything can become erotic when there is a tease, the ambiguity of yes/no. When something is withheld but at the same time an invitation, there is eroticism. The game is to slowly advance until the final release where the One is restored in the Two that has been held apart.

So I’m writing about Porn as Metaphor. What makes it addictive? What are the deeper mythic currents it activates? What is the universal in the particular?

If addicted to Porn, one must make what you are addicted to transparent to the universal. Addiction comes from being unconscious of the universal in the particulars we are addicted to. We are addicting because we want to see the universal, the good, if you will, in ourselves, but it through the addiction we get in touch with that as mediator.

Making the unconscious conscious is bypassing the mediator, and one’s necessary addiction to it.