Revolting revolts

Ever read a history book? Ever felt reassured by those explanations of say, the Russian revolution---the privations and inadequate leadership in the war with Germany....da da. da da. pushed the people to the brink of revolt?

The best explanations are but beads on a string, moments lined up in an order, and then pronounced, "an explanation." Can we step back a minute?

In 1381 (now there is a historic sounding date) peasants revolted in England. We read that later: "Polish...peasants killed over 1000 noblemen and destroyed 474 manors in 1846." And this is just the iceberg of the tip. There are always oppressed classes, there is always stupid leadership. Always. So an explanation would minimally, have to say why, in the midst of oppressed classes, the revolt took place when it did. 

When the president of the United States says, (words to this effect,) what is the matter with those bankers? don't they understand I am the only thing standing between them and the pitchforks?, we hear the words of a man who believes in intelligence, who believes in historical explanations. There may be alternative understandings for those with a peculiar intent. 

Gurdjieff refers to the conditions leading to political revolt as needing a certain wave of mystical experiences in the population. Jan Cox referred  to history being dreams. (I daresay he meant historical 'explanations'.)

My point is not that there is no understanding these phenomena. But that an interesting explanation would need to have a sense of the complexity of human reality, a complexity lacking in the intellectual classes. 

Such a complexity cannot be pursued linearly. A progress that countenances real complexity is pursued at the level of both cosmology and psychology, to use the words of Jan Cox. That is, one studies one's inner world and the outer world both, in an ongoing fashion. The question of method is not something one would discuss in a public forum, however. 

Garrison Keillors selection of poem for his Writer's Almanac on July 31, 2011

You don't believe

by William Blake

You don't believe — I won't attempt to make ye.
You are asleep — I won't attempt to wake ye.
Sleep on, sleep on, while in your pleasant dreams
Of reason you may drink of life's clear streams
Reason and Newton, they are quite two things,
For so the swallow and the sparrow sings.
Reason says 'Miracle', Newton says 'Doubt'.
Aye, that's the way to make all Nature out:
Doubt, doubt, and don't believe without experiment.
That is the very thing that Jesus meant
When he said: 'Only believe." Believe and try,
Try, try, and never mind the reason why.

What a clever blog post you wrote

Funny how giving a compliment to someone, can be merely an assertion of one's dominance over the compliment recipient. The giver of praise is assuming their own ability to evaluate the other person and generalize about a particular situation. The compliment giver gets the last word. Those who studied with Jan Cox, the 20th century philosopher, may recall the importance he gave to not being submissive. In one sense, it was the thrust of his writing. 

Reality and Theater

Once you study the question it is apparent that there are no cats in the canon of great plays.  And this leads one to speculate that this situation relates to the fact cats are famously untrainable.  They would therefore merely add a chaotic element to a theatrical situation. How much of a stretch is it to imagine that cats are reality, and the theater stage, human consciousness? If this is a useful metaphor, then one understands why mystics, such as Jan Cox, look elsewhere than man's verbal facility for any so-called secrets. 

The small Print

Management is not responsible for thoughts left in parked skulls

Giant questions

It seems like most mythologies have a story about their origins that involve giants. The Greeks, the Norse, the Irish. That is, there are stories of a conflict between us and  --- people that are much larger than oneself or one's neighbors. Giants who have their own goals which may not be those of our own. The fact the archaeological record does not contain evidence of these giants, emphasizes the puzzling aspect and uniformity of these stories. As Jan Cox, who revolutionized the practice of mysticism in the last century, often said, "what gives?"

Without assuming I have anything like an answer, here are some thoughts that came to mind on this topic. What if, the use of the term 'giants, ' is a way of confronting the fact that we, us ordinary humans, are, ourselves, best described, as 'puny.'  A way, like looking at something in a reflection, of dealing with something that would be too crippling if directly confronted. And if my thoughts have any value, this line of reasoning suggests this use of mirrors to deal with dilemmas, is really basic in the human psyche. 

One result of men thinking their survival depends on outwitting 'giants,' is that men are here grasping fundamentals of reality,  whether their foes are giant, or they themselves, small and ineffective physically. To me it is obvious, men are, looking out at a starry sky, small in terms of what they can survey.  It sometimes seems that this reality emphasizing perspective has been lost by many today, who see MEN as giants, that is people who are "on the verge of figuring out all of nature's secrets." One can wonder, surely, how realistic this shift is.

Approaching the question of the nature of freedom

Even though it is independence day in the USA I am probably the only blogger talking about independence from the mechanical mind. But at least my example is rooted in the fight for freedom among abolitionists and black people in the next to last century, freedom from blatantt external oppression, a fight which generally must succeed prior to an inquiry into the real limiting factors to freedom. 

John Brown, and his raid on Harper's Ferry in 1859  --- demonstrates a peculiar but universal quality of mechanical thought---the sense one has of the clarity of one's verbal conclusions. 

John Brown saw so clearly how much suffering slavery caused, he saw it clearly---so he planned a whole revolt based on the assumption that the downtrodden would rise to his call for revolution. The slaves were miserable and Brown's whole plan was that the slave population of Virginia would rise up once they heard his verbal rallying cry. It was so clear in his mind. You gather your followers so far, you get control of the arms and ammunition in the neighborhood, and then the black people in Virginia will rush to your banner. 

Some people see John Brown today as a martyr, some as insane, but my point here is that he is the exemplar of ordinary thought. His air tight conclusions were so vivid and so irrefutable, that he is remembered even now for a hopeless sally against a bastion of the slave owning south. The point is the faith he placed in his calculations. 

What he is not is a fool. Today the natural scientists display the same reliance on ordinary binary thought when they divide those without science degrees into the "scientifically literate" and the creationists. To most scientists today to speak of varieties of religious experience, is to speak of the subjective and pointless.

They and John Brown are both good examples of that aspect of ordinary thought which can be partially characterized as a clarity of convictions.