Balance This !

This item does not come from the news nor some profound book nor epiphany most recent, but from reflection on life's moist & urgent dilemmas. In scope I may touch on: individuality, religion, the golden rule, politics, & any other thought worth including only by the strength of my urge to write about them.

Life is short therefore we must make it the most enjoyable for all within our paths & spheres of influence whom we meet along the road & free trip around the Sun. This is an individual imperative; not a function of the state. Politics should consider it, like a first principle, but not try to arrange society into a mass hedonistic pulse of self-gratifying free-for-all!

LEC uses the declaration of a possibility for example: I AM THE POSSIBILITY THAT EACH & EVERYONE OF US LOVE ONE ANOTHER IN A WORLD THAT WORKS POWERFULLY FOR ALL OF US - as an identity statement, like a carrot on the end of a stick leading to a future, desirable. Rather than a goal it is more like a vector producing a change in direction. What if all that I hold to be my life or even what I strive for is just that kind of thingy; already without the declaration. Is that the nature of Karma? of the course of life? There may be no goal at all!

Suppose the Great Cosmic Lightning Bug farted a whisper in your ear that for all existence your mission is to accomplish the possibility stated above in BLUE, what would you do with it?

Where does possibility come from? Is it real? Where does it live? Probability is usually defined over the the space of possibility limited within a measurable context.

possible

c.1300, from L. possibilis "that can be done," from posse "be able" (see potent).

Comments

Mark de LA says

With the LEC thingy one states his identity as a possibility & then lives into it. The existence system for the possibility lives in making promises to & requests of others & then keeping one's word - powerful, simple, but not easy! Although the link on existence system is for coaching, simply put you make your word live so that you are congruent in your actions. If it takes making a post-it note written backwards so that it shows up in the mirror in the morning on your forehead to remind you to zip up your fly, then make one!

Mark de LA says

seth 2010-12-13 05:30:06 14589

source: M above
Life is short therefore we must make it the most enjoyable for all within our paths & spheres of influence whom we meet along the road & free trip around the Sun. This is an individual imperative; not a function of the state. Politics should consider it, like a first principle, but not try to arrange society into a mass hedonistic pulse of self-gratifying free-for-all!

Well said! I actually like the way you said it better than LEC who i need to wait till i get a bed reader to parse. Such a first principle is not really the domain of politics, it is for us to choose ourselves. There are lots of problems people will have with your "most enjoyable" phrase ... but it is a good start and me thinks we all need to interpret what that means for ourselves. Collisions with other's interpretations of the prime principle can also cause much strife ... even wars and such; and that is where we need a tolerance principal too ... a sense and respect for otherness.

Thanks for writing this.

That's why the Golden Rule & the heart chakra need spreading & developing respectively.

Mark de LA says

One thing that moves in the right direction: Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Happiness (i.e. the first principle) is to evolve faster to the threefoldness of transforming competition in the ecomomic domain to cooperation unfettered or directed by governments. There are quite of few things going on now in that direction see LILIPOH ISSUE 61 VOL. 15, Fall 2010 (may have to subscribe)

I will digest what I think are the good ideas after that

Seth says

M 2010-12-13 07:36:05 14589

Well "making promises to & requests of others & then keeping one's word" is way too specific to be a prime directive prescription for me. That's why i liked your coding instead. Now making promises and keeping my word is certainty a great way to be but that but it requires far greater coodination between intention and actuality than i seem to be able to muster. Not only that but it also requires me to live for my family and/or my community, and/or my country, and/or my species, and/or life itself ... which doesn't really seem to work for me ... that sucks my energy and frustrates me when i don't make it. What i think works better for me is to live for myself ... for my experience ... and for how i affect you all and the rest of the world and the future. I am not a oak tree which grows for the benefit of its soil, i am just the best damm oak three that i can be.

Then too, requiring promises from your community tends to impose yourself on them ... and that is not something that i like to get into.

Mark de LA says

Unless you live an identity in the World the World cuts a whisper of a fart & there you go. The promises are both to yourself & others. The first principle becomes a slogan like hope & change unless it gets into the World some way. Just making a jingle out of the first principle isn't likely to have much effect either. I am reminded of the Hunger Project which at one time attempted to get universal agreement on ending world hunger by the year ~ 1997 (see the source document) tried to get people to sign a docment that they agreed with the idea. Not everyone would even do that. The first principle was an internal realization that cooperation rather than polarity & war is a better idea in some areas. Currently polarity reigns. There are domains where competition, striving for excellence & doing one's best are appropriate. There are domains where cooperation might be better - but from the ground up.

Mark de LA says

Werner Erhard: ... Fundamental laws and principles, however, cannot be deduced. One knows them by creating them from nothing, out of one's Self. One does not arrive at fundamental laws and principles as a function of what is already known. Such laws and principles do not merely explain; they illuminate. They do not merely add to what we know; they create a new space in which knowing can occur. The test of whether we are dealing with fundamental laws and principles, or with mere reasons and explanations, is whether there is a shift from controversy, frustration, and gesturing, to mastery, motion, and completion.

Not new programs of solution, no matter how saleable or clever; not different or better opinions, no matter how arguable; not points of view, no matter how agreeable. This discussion is not about another good idea. It is about revealing the fundamental principles of the end of hunger and starvation on our planet

... text worth repeating from the WHP link above. These words could be applied to the economy or any other challenge today, 33 years later. The shift is within us.

Mark de LA says

seth 2010-12-15 08:46:10 14589

M 2010-12-13 10:48:14 14589

Unless you live an identity in the World the World cuts a whisper of a fart & there you go.

I have no idea what you mean by saying that. What do you mean?

Did your sense of humor fail? Analyzing a simple humorous comment takes all the fun out of it - for me anyway. If you never show up in the World you die & then that's it! All your brilliant ideas, feelings & yet to express art dies with you (or maybe it's just a piece of the divine afflatus not needing your self); not to be confused with flatus or flatulence which also has the same derivation:

flatus

1660s, from L. flatus "a blowing," from flare "to blow" (see blow (v.1)).flatulent

1590s, from M.Fr. flatulent, from Mod.L. flatulentus, from L. flatus "a blowing, a breaking wind," pp. of flare "to blow, puff," which is cognate with O.E. blawan (see blow (v.1)).afflatus

"miraculous communication of supernatural knowledge," 1660s, from L. afflatus "a breathing upon, blast," from pp. of afflare "to blow upon," from ad- "to" (see ad-) + flare "to blow" (see blow (v.1)).

Mark de LA says

I think we remember feelings & emotions differently than thoughts. With thoughts we can access them directly - the more vivid & alive they are the quicker the access. With feelings we remember having had them but like the musical arts they have to live again with a live performance (or in a recording of same of some kind) in order to experience them. If anything we probably remember our thoughts about them which is not them in themselves.

Mark de LA says

seth 2010-12-16 12:27:16 14589

M 2010-12-15 09:27:09 14589

seth 2010-12-15 08:46:10 14589

M 2010-12-13 10:48:14 14589

Unless you live an identity in the World the World cuts a whisper of a fart & there you go.

I have no idea what you mean by saying that. What do you mean?

Did your sense of humor fail?

nope ... i always live on the edge of that cosmic joke, as do we all. Sometimes i think that all of our religions and spiritual worlds are just our attempt to distract us from laughing at our predicament ... or is that barfing ... or is it farting?

But what made me stumble on your version of the joke was your term "live an identity in the World" ... haven't heard that term before; and i thought you might have been implying something special about identity and living by using it. Were you?

Read the Hunger Project paper & you may get some more ideas about it. He agrees, I think, with you about self as context & some other things. If not, let me know after a well worth a full read moment creeps into your

. Clue: it's not necessarily about the hunger project.

C says

This entire blog is pea soup. Maybe we should rename it.

Mark de LA says

seth 2010-12-17 11:37:16 14589

source: M above
Read the Hunger Project paper & you may get some more ideas about it.

Well i'v read about half of this ... apparently my window for reading is almost as small as my devise's screen

... behaviors change slowly. So far i do get the part about our assumptions beliefs and mind sets getting in the way of grokking the real situation. But my current thinking has already absorbed and moved past the whole disbelief in scarcity, which although true, feels dated to me.

In a way it's too bad that, to make his point ... ,with i havent quite gotten to yet, ... he seemed to think he had to start by stating some fallacies which just offended me. To me the sentence "This unparalleled failure for humanity enables us to see that the world's unworkability is located in the very condition in which we live our lives." is false no matter what "this" refers to. From where i stand there is no "unparalleled failure" and there is no "world's unworkability". In fact the world works amazingly well.

But i will finish this, prolly by tomorrow, and see if i can grok it's connection to Balance This !.

If you look at his figures from 1970's on people starving to death & how many as we post, you will get the "unparalleled failure" part of it. Bringing things up to date - the economy is approaching that threshold & terrorism in the context of religion is going in that direction rapidly. North Korea is sabre rattling a nuclear war with China & Rssia backing her up. If that is all such a great measure of success then I want to move. Get to the "pea soup" arguments - they are very apropos of this immediate post.

Balance This !

Tags

Comments

See Also