Computer security and science fantasy

It just occurred to me that the reason there is no reliable rootkit protection for computers, is for the same reason Jan Cox said that maps cannot know their creator. This despite the widespread fantasy among the scientific world that computers are approaching a point that they will be as smart as their creators, that is, people. Won't happen, and that is because of the nature of our planet.

Holidays and Real Groups

Holidays are the very embodiment of habit and so to help his students see freshly Jan Cox mainly ignored the normal holidays --- he would say when he was finished talking, is anybody going to be around the 25th, and if enough were, we would meet and get to listen to him talk on Christmas day.

Enough folks meant a certain critical mass that was necessary or else he was wasting his time talking. He knew his own worth and would not speak if there were too few people present, but I do not recall that happening on a normal meeting night. Maybe once, in decades of talking. Sometimes we met 5 nights a week.

And a party on Saturday night. Beer was the drink of choice for most. It meant of course being less conscious, and he reminded us of this sometimes. The beer drinking is an example of the reality of 'no rules.' The enjoinment was to struggle constantly to be aware, to extend that moment when you are able to remember both your internal and the external environment. Yet the bonds of community which encouraged the struggle were helped by partying together. Even if the drinking meant lowering your potential to be aware. And he knew the reality that folks were perfect. Hmm -- can't seem to phrase that so it is not ordinary cant. So skip that last point, perhaps I will come back to it.

The group of people Jan gathered around himself were he said sometimes, the equivalent together of an awakened man. The group was not, could not, be an ordinary social group, that would be mechanical and the opposite of our aims. One way he insured that the group was not ordinary was the composition --- staying in the group meant being around people who were not your type. This does not happen in an ordinary social group---those are formed with some communality among the types of people composing the group. I like to think of the Friends sitcom to explain this better: In real life an anthropologist and a afternoon tv actor would not be best buddies. This would only happen in tv land, and in a real work group. Remember the women on that show-- actually they could have really been friends, despite the differences which fed the comedic purpose. That says something about women though. It does not invalidate my point.

And the mechanicalness of holidays does not diminish the warm feelings I have for people who have already been reading my words.

Who is this Jan Cox?

Dear Anonymous, you have raised excellent questions. First--who is Jan Cox. A contemporary writer, dead now for two years. During his life he gathered students interested in following him on a path of mysticism. Those students, of whom I am one, are tasked with making sure his words reach as wide an audience as possible. Of course while he was alive this was a major goal of his, he referred to it as shooting blinding into the woods in the hopes of hitting something. This description points to the difficulty of attracting folks since the interest in this area of human experience, while genetically based, is unpredictable, often undecipherable, to an external observer. It is hard to know who will be interested and so the publicizer is "shooting blind." Finding a real teacher is an incredible lucky life event, and this is NOT what his students are offering now. We do have though an enormous amount of his writing and videotapes, and they are what remains of a unique life, the writings and the effect he had on the people around him.

Okay -- he has a web site we maintain==
www.jancox.com, where an huge quantity of material is available. This though is only a small part of his written and taped words and those are currently being prepared for archival storage and public distribution. And also there is an email list mainly populated by his students, plus those who encountered his writing after his death. I will gladly send anyone the link to this list, privately, since it is set up as a private yahoo group, but all are welcome there.

You also asked why "American" mysticism, when this aspect of human experience transcends transitory geographical bounds. My intent here is to focus attention on Jan's position in a continuum of mystics. Specifically in recent history (twentieth century) there has just been Georges Gurdjieff and Jan Cox. Between them they brought mysticism out of the church and into the scientific era. These contentions of mine will be discussed more fully soon. So I myself picture Gurdjieff as bringing eastern mysticism to Europe, and Jan picking up the mantle and positioning mysticism in the modern American dominated world.

Though since there were no other teachers alive of his stature, he welcomed everyone with the proper sincerity, or what he perceived as potential. In fact, he was incapable of resisting someone who sincerely asked for help on "The Path."

Anonymous -- thank you for the questions.