THAT Twentieth Century

How interesting that it was the century of pastiche, of patchwork classics, like Eliot's quoting Chaucer, and Copeland, folk tunes, how marvelous that it was the century of a paltry positivism (that "low dishonest decade"), of a recalcitrance to self reflection, how intriguing that it was the century when capitalism gave birth to communism, and is now finding it cannot live without it's opposite to define itself,  how enthralling that it was that twentieth century -- when thinkers pulled mysticism from the ashes of religion and turned an empirical ear to a universal harmony.
Note I do not call this scenario ironic. It was one of the philosophers in the last phrase, Jan Cox, who pointed out there was no such thing as irony.  Irony, he said, was a sign you did not know what was going on.  Not that acknowledging this means I do.

Mis---what?

The current news coverage of missing millions, in bonuses to executives, has the earmarks of classic misdirection.  As someone else said, it is missing trillions that should worry us.  But all that is a setup. Misdirection is a mainstay of the magician's craft. Decades ago, Jan Cox showed us magic tricks one evening--some of us never did figure out how he made coins appear out of nowhere.
At that time, decades ago, I had no idea of the extent to which life itself loves misdirection. To use current events again, the attention paid to a certain Ponzi schemster, has sucked up so much air time.  And this functions to distract us from the uncomfortable sight of real economists, guys who made it out of grade, oh I mean grad, school, talking about how they did not anticipate the current fiscal crisis.  Uncomfortable making because it is close to the ignorance we all want to avoid acknowledging on a personal level.  How long can we stamp our feet at those expert economists without wondering how far this ignorance extends... could it extend to my awareness of my ....
And yet, another level, if you keep pushing, could words themselves be a kind of misdirection?
What if everything we KNOW is a setup.

That's No Lady...

The following excerpt from a widely distributed story on scientology caught my attention:

"A Scientology spokesman has confirmed that Scientologists believe that mankind's problems stem from brainwashed alien soul remnants created millions of years ago by genocidal alien overlord Xenu. The admission follows years of attempts to dismiss the story, first leaked by defectors, as anti-church propaganda."

Of course at worst scientology is merely a religion, the significant thing is not what their beliefs are, but that they have beliefs.  That puts them squarely in the middle of the rational, binary, mechanical mind, and at that level "there is nothing that cannot be proved," and "the opposite is always true".  Those who have tried to grasp the thoughts of Jan Cox will recognize in my last sentence HIS thoughts on-----not religion necessarily, but his thoughts on "thoughts."  The statements are his attempt to wrench the mechanical mind of those who sense there is something beyond the ordinary play of opinion, in another direction.  I had first phrased that sentence with this wording...Those who have studied..., and then I realized, you really can't "study" the words of someone who actually has seen reality, you can only try to stay in the midst of his influences and hope some meteor hits you. 

But we are straying here from the point I had in mind. Not that we aren't going to get to how, to use an example of Jan's, "Yale" does not exist, but like, the topic of ordinary feminine intelligence, this is something I have hesitated to bring up.  But all in due time.  And back to Hubbard.  Gosh, his religion started like all religions, and if you gotta have a religion, his is nicely 20th century.  Still the excerpt I quoted also shows how hard it is to really 'start fresh' in your thoughts. Apparently we still have good and bad guys. If you want to get beyond that, who else is there beside Gurdjieff and Jan Cox.