You Can Touch Tape

Watergate plus 30 is a nice review of the Watergate affair which changed the course of American history. Only thing though, it failed to mention the name of the one person who started it all and who can be said, if you glimpse the logic of Jan Cox, a logic based on an extraordinary perspective, --who can be said to be the only one in the whole Watergate affair whose contribution was not just dreams. Yes, those dreams that define our world, were the whole Watergate review film, and the name of the person without whom the whole affair would still be raveled, that person's name was not even mentioned. I refer to the guard that discovered tape over the locks of a door in a hotel. Frank Wills. Not a murmur of his name in this documentary about Watergate, though you can touch tape. Not so constitutional crises.

Needs and motives on the mystic path

Freedom, a need for freedom, is a major key to grasping the import of the life of Jan Cox.  This focus of being free quickly shifts from the comic book idea of gravity tricks. An awareness of the universal power of genetics is always an aspect for someone interested in freedom, for the freedom the mystic seeks begins with an understanding of reality.  Few persevere in this quest for freedom partly because they are surrounded by the massive denials of the actual silhouette of the goal.  Most people grow into a state where the question makes no sense to them---what is freedom?

Yet---there is evidence that this drive for the freedom appropriate and possible for the human kind,  transcends species. What creature suddenly confined does not look for an escape path? 

Someone like Jan Cox would find zoo visiting a painful experience.  What man can grasp the true dimensions a wild creature needs to live comfortably. Certainly no zoo on the planet really provides a satisfying habitat, and this is because the sense of boundlessness is part of the needs of many if not most creatures on our planet. 

Aquariums too see many creatures die simply because there are bounds, and the failure of such places is a failure of imagination. Even situations such as fish farms with small fish, are sad---often these businesses do not keep the water clean, and instead feed the fish antibiotics, rather than keeping the water purer.

For the mystic philosopher, solving the problem of (internal) dirty water is a good picture of the cognitive route which provides the path to the maximum possible freedom.

That old mind/mind split

The wringing of hands about whether computers will "take over" mankind caused Jan some mirth when he discussed this aspect of modern dreaming. I was reminded of this when I saw this recent headline:

 

"Is there nothing a smartphone can't help you do better? Downloadable applications, or "apps", are becoming indispensible complements to their owners' biological brains – indeed, some argue that they are turning us into cyborgs."

 

While I do not know if Jan Cox would have put it this way, what struck me reading this ad was, Yeah, man's mechanical mind, the binary part which is so useful dealing with the external world, and so misplaced when expected to deal with the internal and anything complicated, that mechanical mind, is not at risk for becoming computer controlled, it already IS a computer.

 

Not sure whether this will get folks to focus on the possibility that mechanical verbal mentation is not the total of man's mental capacities...

 

Like kudzu

The way kudzu covers growing things so you can discern the outline but no detail, is like words and the world. And if the words -- I mean kudzu continues, then what is underneath loses form utterly.

What if there is secret knowledge

That the poets accidentally mention,

That the scientists tangentially address

and

That the mystic philosopher cannot speak of.

Why Alpha Wolves Wag Their Tails

I am of course not talking about wolf wolves, they don't keep their rivals around, I am talking about world statesman (mainly statesmen.). And the tails I am talking about you can see mainly in their eyes and smiles. Because those pictures of world leaders gathering for summits, posing for group pictures clearly show----how pleased those people are to be in their own company. Yes, the only place alpha wolves can be truly appreciated is in the company of other, wolves.  No need to pretend to be religious (as Jan Cox pointed out about the social elite, religion is not what motivates them.) or worried about the poor. Finally they can draw a breath and relax. Those documents they sign were settled before the politicians even arrived-- but still the meetings have to happen, because briefly there is there ---no need for phony explanations about the rich menus at banquets to benefit the starving. Or stories mentioning the need to spend time with their families, in those cases involving the other reasons wolves wag their tails. Among their own wolves can relax.  And we can't do without the meetings either. Though the number who can understand why we can't do without alpha wolves  is smaller than the number of wolves themselves.

The Uses of Words, part 1

How common is it that words, qua words, are used to forward the necessary D flow?  I am not sure, but the use of words -- simply as linguistic objects -- to accomplish what our ordinary mentation would call destructive purposes is an interesting phenomenon.  What I have in mind is behind Lenin's quote that (this is a rough quote) listening to music was bad because it made him want to smile when what he needed to do was bash someone's head in.  Okay, what I mean by words qua words is that in this example I assume Lenin was following the ideas of some communistic philosopher, and it was the ideas themselves that led Lenin to think it okay to hurt someone else because he was following a revolutionary goal. I call this using words qua words because Lenin, our sample thinker, is not trying to verify the words against reality, he is simply allowing the words of a theory to guide his actions.  Like the words were planks in a stream and the thinker is walking from plank to plank, that is, following the ideas, rather than listening to the reality of his own inner and outer surroundings. Now no doubt our sample thinker here would argue that these are not just any words he was following, but the correct formula based on a study of history, and thus his actions were justified. Yeah, yeah.  (I cannot resist pointing out that the Russian communists killed far more people than the czarist police ever did, however that is not the point of our using this incident.) To me the interesting point is that he was allowing the words to determine his actions. His heart told Lenin to do one thing, but Lenin measured his feelings against an idea, and he followed the idea. Note I am treating Lenin's comment as having some honesty to it, and I am treating Lenin as merely an example. The point is not that he was following bad ideas, no the point is he was following ideas, that is, words, at all.

 I am not going to point out here that a follower of the maps of Jan Cox, could respond that any words will miss the mark.  Rather let me vary Jan's map by saying that a philosopher of talent would be constantly testing that web of words, constantly tugging on it (mentally is the picture here), because the present is the only arena there is, the only source of reality, and words are just a minor part of this reality. Words are always subject to testing, revision, because they are only fresh and useful, ever, for a very short time. Useful, that is to accomplish that which we can using the energies of C flow.