After coming from
The dark back into the light
Showing posts with label time. Show all posts
Showing posts with label time. Show all posts
26 November 2018
22 August 2018
haiku 22 Aug 2018
Speech is powerful
Enough to shape existence
One word at a time
[ americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan ]
Enough to shape existence
One word at a time
[ americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan ]
08 August 2018
01 January 2018
haiku 1 Jan 2018
Structures buried deep
Rebuilt from heaps of ruin...
Such progress takes time
[ americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan ]
Rebuilt from heaps of ruin...
Such progress takes time
[ americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan ]
01 February 2016
on surfing's anarchism
At its root, anarchism is the absence of rulers, not rules. If everyone were to abide by the agreed-upon codes of conduct, everyone would be able to live in happiness, liberty, and peace. This is especially relevant out in the churning swells; surfing is essentially an anarchistic activity. There are no police, no time keepers, and no crossing guards, wherefore it is necessary for everyone trying to catch waves to act honorably and with due consideration for all the other people risking their fragile health and spending their precious time trying to float across the face of a piling heap of water.
Some people are better surfers than others, and therefore believe they are for some reason entitled to a greater share of waves. This is a spurious notion. Since they can better read the waves and keep themselves in the correct position for riding them, they tend to charge on every arriving peak, regardless of how many waves they've already ridden and how long every other salty soul has been waiting. Plus, they tend to drag themselves past the other people inching toward the peak and put themselves at the front (this is called snaking) instead of displaying a modicum of self-respect and putting themselves at the back, there to wait their turn. Without honor, without patience, without generosity, the act of surfing degenerates into an ego-boosting pissing contest that frequently ends in vocal or physical violence, externalized aggression, and general sadness (for everyone but the snake). Outside of an official competition, there is no justification for stealing others' sea-time by jumping to the front of a line of surfers, every time. Just as today's consumption-oriented capitalistic system encourages the individual to grab as much shit as he can without regard for and often at the expense of the rights and desires of the people around him, consumption-oriented surfing – that is, paddling out just to shred as many waves as possible in the shortest amount of time without giving a floating fuck about the others guys out there too – taints the majesty of the shared experience called surfing, reducing it to something akin to masturbating in public.
There are few conditions as pitiable as greed, few traits as undesirable as blind self service. Without a healthy respect for community and the notion that we're all in this together and none of us is getting out of here alive, a person tends to get wrapped up in what is going on inside his head-space, believe what his ego is telling him, and lose his connection to the less tangible things in life – honor, giving, sharing, and joy. The sea is always a dangerous place, rain or shine, and a person knocked unconscious has but a few score seconds to live. Here, in Bali, there are not many lifeguards; a surfer must rely on the other people bobbing in the brine to save his ass if things turn south. Hence, it helps to make and keep as many friends as possible out there, to display poise and self restraint, and to conduct oneself in a manner respectful of everyone else's time and right to exist. For many people, happiness means the absence of suffering; if everyone were to follow a few simple surfing rules (wait your turn, keep hold of your board, don't snake, don't paddle into a breaking face if others are trying to jump on it), the beautiful justice of anarchy could truly work, at least out at sea, everyone going home having happily ridden a few. In one model of the Universe, the person who gives the most receives the most; give way, give thanks, and receive the ultimate gift – love.
© americanifesto / 場黑麥
18 January 2013
on protocols
A person who follows daily routines chooses a certain set of protocols to regulate her life. Protocols can bring about either positive or negative change, but rarely both. To clarify, the author provides two scenarios. First, a man skips breakfast, drives to work in a motorized vehicle, sits at a desk all day without regular movement breaks, eats a large lunch, drives home, eats a large dinner, and then watches television until he checks the time and forces himself to go to sleep. Second, a woman arises before dawn, does an hour of yoga, eats a moderately-sized breakfast, bicycles to work, gets up once every couple of hours simply to walk around, eats a moderately-sized lunch, bicycles home, eats at least one fruit and one vegetable with her dinner, spends an hour being creative (writing, drawing, molding with clay, etc.), reads for an hour or two from four different books on unrelated subjects, watches half of a feature film, and collapses into her bed a few hours after sunset.
In my experience, the first scenario plays itself out too often in America, today. So many of us drive everywhere we go, eat more than we would need to satisfy our hunger, and spend our time staring mindlessly at flickering, fancy boxes. The protocols followed by the first person are likely to lead to diseases associated with overeating and lack of exercise; after a few decades, the creative parts of his mind will rebel against his refusal so do anything more productive with his life than simply working to eat, drive, and watch TV. He will suffer from a debilitating mid-life crisis, during which he will scramble to lead a healthier and happier life. His attempts, however, will become fouled up in the old protocols; he will falter, fail, and retreat into his bad old habits. In contrast, the person in the second scenario leads a life she knows will satisfy her inner need for enduring personal meaningfulness while keeping her digestive system healthy and her muscles sharp and twitching. Her protocols celebrate the majesty of the human spirit and glorify the fathomless might of both mind and body. By having studied for decades, she is bursting with knowledge but clever enough not to force it upon others; by having disciplined herself in terms of consumption, she needs little food, less gasoline, and almost no commercialized content to keep herself happy.
It may seem difficult to live a life similar to the person in the second example, but, with a few small adjustment to one's daily protocols, anything but the most absurd is possible. (Unassisted human flight, for example, is out). Via the epigenetic superstructure, both we and the environments we inhabit affect which of our genes are read and to what degree they are expressed. By changing the parameters of our daily lives and gradually adopting healthier routines, we can fortify the foundations of the deep and abiding Happiness that yearns to hover at the center of our every act, our every decision, our every breath. To examine one's daily protocols is to take the first step in making sure they are worthwhile, wholesome, and good. A saying from the business world comes to mind: They who are not evolving are dying. Plant the seeds of tomorrow's joy by turning off your television, today. Mahalo.
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
In my experience, the first scenario plays itself out too often in America, today. So many of us drive everywhere we go, eat more than we would need to satisfy our hunger, and spend our time staring mindlessly at flickering, fancy boxes. The protocols followed by the first person are likely to lead to diseases associated with overeating and lack of exercise; after a few decades, the creative parts of his mind will rebel against his refusal so do anything more productive with his life than simply working to eat, drive, and watch TV. He will suffer from a debilitating mid-life crisis, during which he will scramble to lead a healthier and happier life. His attempts, however, will become fouled up in the old protocols; he will falter, fail, and retreat into his bad old habits. In contrast, the person in the second scenario leads a life she knows will satisfy her inner need for enduring personal meaningfulness while keeping her digestive system healthy and her muscles sharp and twitching. Her protocols celebrate the majesty of the human spirit and glorify the fathomless might of both mind and body. By having studied for decades, she is bursting with knowledge but clever enough not to force it upon others; by having disciplined herself in terms of consumption, she needs little food, less gasoline, and almost no commercialized content to keep herself happy.
It may seem difficult to live a life similar to the person in the second example, but, with a few small adjustment to one's daily protocols, anything but the most absurd is possible. (Unassisted human flight, for example, is out). Via the epigenetic superstructure, both we and the environments we inhabit affect which of our genes are read and to what degree they are expressed. By changing the parameters of our daily lives and gradually adopting healthier routines, we can fortify the foundations of the deep and abiding Happiness that yearns to hover at the center of our every act, our every decision, our every breath. To examine one's daily protocols is to take the first step in making sure they are worthwhile, wholesome, and good. A saying from the business world comes to mind: They who are not evolving are dying. Plant the seeds of tomorrow's joy by turning off your television, today. Mahalo.
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
26 November 2012
what I'm missing
Over Thanksgiving, I took time to watch some TV, something I rarely do. I did this in part because I was invited to by my host, who wanted to kill some time before our feast of turkey and gravy and butternut squash, and in part to see what life is like for the tens of millions of average Americans who make it their habit. As part of my efforts to make myself a better and wiser person, I have been reading books on a wide range of topics and generally avoiding wasteful and IQ-diminishing activities such as the mindless consumption of packaged content, so I was excited to run with the crowd for a moment and check out what TV had to offer. My host and I watched a show about tattoo artists competing to see who could perform best under pressure, best on camera, best before a panel of judges. Thankfully, the show had been taped, so we could fast-forward over the commercials; thankfully, dinner was served before any of us had to suffer through too much of it.
Since taking the first steps toward self-sufficiency by running most of my household from a bank of 4 deep-cycle marine batteries fed by 6 solar panels, I have restricted my personal viewing time to but a few hours a week – I hook up the 750 watt inverter to watch only one movie at a time, whereupon I detach it from the battery, thus shutting everything down. I do not veg regularly on the couch flipping through channels; I follow neither show nor series, episode nor finale, nor do I bring up watching TV in conversation or stick around if someone else does. In short, at the mere mention of television, I become a butt-hurt curmudgeon. And so I was shocked at how stressful watching the boob-tube has become, how stupid I felt afterward, and how many more commercials there seemed to be now than when I watched it regularly just a few years ago. It is as if producers, studios, and networks had baited the viewing public into watching compelling and interesting shows and then switched formats to reflect their ultimate goal, that being to trick the American people into thinking they were having fun when they were in actuality being force-fed one advertisement after the next in bewilderingly frequent intervals, minds rotting while waist-lines expanded, ambition draining away while creativity was crushed under the jack-boot of rerun content.
Before this thankfully brief exposure, I had begun to wonder if I was missing something important, if I had erred in canceling my cable TV service, if I were somehow worse off for swimming against the crowd by not succumbing to TV's mind-numbing allure. Today, however, my curiosity is stilled, my wonder has abated, and I am confident in one thing: I am better off for having avoided television these past few years. As a person who has glimpsed the eternal silence of the Great Vast Crushing Nothingness and lived to tell the tale, I have a decent understanding of the preciousness of human existence; therefore, my decision to try to better myself as a person, as a scholar, as a linguist, and as a writer rather than waste my short life glued to a self-illuminated, talking rectangle appears to be bearing fruit, if only slowly. By no amount of talking, warning, cajoling, begging, demanding, nagging, or urging will I ever convince anyone else whom I care about to join me in ceasing to watch TV, in preserving a shred of self-respect and personal dignity, or in saving the self by switching off the tube; all forms of salvation – even ones that are so simply accomplished – come from the realization that there are always better ways than the current path, that nothing worth its while is easy, and that the hardest things are the most rewarding. So, please, cancel your cable subscriptions, dust off a book, and start living well again. Mahalo.
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
Since taking the first steps toward self-sufficiency by running most of my household from a bank of 4 deep-cycle marine batteries fed by 6 solar panels, I have restricted my personal viewing time to but a few hours a week – I hook up the 750 watt inverter to watch only one movie at a time, whereupon I detach it from the battery, thus shutting everything down. I do not veg regularly on the couch flipping through channels; I follow neither show nor series, episode nor finale, nor do I bring up watching TV in conversation or stick around if someone else does. In short, at the mere mention of television, I become a butt-hurt curmudgeon. And so I was shocked at how stressful watching the boob-tube has become, how stupid I felt afterward, and how many more commercials there seemed to be now than when I watched it regularly just a few years ago. It is as if producers, studios, and networks had baited the viewing public into watching compelling and interesting shows and then switched formats to reflect their ultimate goal, that being to trick the American people into thinking they were having fun when they were in actuality being force-fed one advertisement after the next in bewilderingly frequent intervals, minds rotting while waist-lines expanded, ambition draining away while creativity was crushed under the jack-boot of rerun content.
Before this thankfully brief exposure, I had begun to wonder if I was missing something important, if I had erred in canceling my cable TV service, if I were somehow worse off for swimming against the crowd by not succumbing to TV's mind-numbing allure. Today, however, my curiosity is stilled, my wonder has abated, and I am confident in one thing: I am better off for having avoided television these past few years. As a person who has glimpsed the eternal silence of the Great Vast Crushing Nothingness and lived to tell the tale, I have a decent understanding of the preciousness of human existence; therefore, my decision to try to better myself as a person, as a scholar, as a linguist, and as a writer rather than waste my short life glued to a self-illuminated, talking rectangle appears to be bearing fruit, if only slowly. By no amount of talking, warning, cajoling, begging, demanding, nagging, or urging will I ever convince anyone else whom I care about to join me in ceasing to watch TV, in preserving a shred of self-respect and personal dignity, or in saving the self by switching off the tube; all forms of salvation – even ones that are so simply accomplished – come from the realization that there are always better ways than the current path, that nothing worth its while is easy, and that the hardest things are the most rewarding. So, please, cancel your cable subscriptions, dust off a book, and start living well again. Mahalo.
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
17 August 2012
perspective - it matters
Time, age, tiredness, joy, sadness, loss, gain – these hard-to-define concepts are aspects of the human condition, not iron-clad rules of law but rather matters of perspective that change with one's outlook on life. What is to one person a grave insult is to another as a joyous and welcome gift. A few days ago, a family friend was telling me about growing up Jewish in a Christian town, and how the other kids would throw pennies at her and call her a penny-pinching kike, and other bad names, and how she would pick up those pennies and use them to buy herself cartons of milk and boxes of cookies, which cost about five cents a-piece. And then there is my longtime partner-in-crime, Mr. P, a friend from my childhood in Germany, who makes over a hundred-and-fifty-thousand dollars a year, who lives in the new W residences near the World Trade Center site in New York City, and who is so upset with his former boss in Thailand for that man firing him and forcing him to leave that country that his heart has become swamped with hatred, keeping him from seeing his life as blessed, the kind of life that people kill for.
I spoke with Mr. P a fortnight ago, trying to help him see things from a different perspective so that he might come to enjoy his time Stateside and not be so miserable and mopey all the time, but changes in perspective are achieved only by each person individually and are not easily forced, or coerced. So subtle is perspective, and at once so powerful, that entire industries exist to shape and to mold the views of persons who consume media (which accounts for any person who has ever watched TV or listened to the radio). Even as far back as the 1930s, American advertising was so effective and so quick to control and to shape the perspectives of millions of far-flung and unrelated citizens that the National Socialists in Germany, the Nazis, adopted Yankee-pioneered advertising and propaganda techniques and used them to brainwash tens of millions of good, honest Teutons into acquiescing to the invasion of sovereign foreign nations and the eradication of train-loads of men, women, and children. The power of the American advertising machine persists – so great is it that an imbecile such as the political puppet Sarah Palin can be packaged and sold in such cunning fashion that otherwise intelligent individuals come to see her as a desirable candidate for the second-highest office in the land.
You may be asking yourself right about now, “Well then, oh-so-clever LyeSmythe, how can I avoid being brainwashed, and how can I craft for myself a pure and honest view of the world?” Persons who change their perspectives begin by turning off and throwing out their television sets, they refuse to watch junk-TV (think reality- and talk-shows), they get news from sources located in different countries around the world, and they read news in languages other than English. In this manner, self-respecting people avoid the snare of America's propaganda juggernaut, giving their minds enough unique views of news-worthy events that their opinions are not shaped or dominated by just one brand of crazy.
Beyond the political sphere, however, one's perspective of something on the order to time itself – time-keeping via clock or watch, being on or off schedule, on time or off it, early or late – is shaped by society and by the consensual, Western hallucination that time is a rigid temporal plane extending in a straight line from the past into the future. Which is all well and good until one runs into the article entitled the Rebirth of a Sioux Nation in the August 2012 edition of National Geographic in which the author talks about the way the people of the Oglala Sioux view time – as a cyclical maelstrom in which past and present, life and death, and the spirit and waking worlds are shadows of one another, not strictly separate realms. Seeing the world from a point of view so foreign to the cookie-cutter, pre-packaged perception drilled endlessly into the heads of average Americans is a nice way to blow one's mind on a rainy Tuesday afternoon; such adventures into the curious minds of wise and ancient peoples are good ways to keep one's perspectives loose, and flexible. Therefore, on the next occasion that someone complains that you were not on time, you, dear reader, can claim to be changing your views on the nature of the universe, and that the clocks were wrong, not you. Give the gift of cognitive insecurity – change your mind frequently, adopt new points of view as often as you are able, and keep that dome-piece of a swivel. Mahalo.
場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit
I spoke with Mr. P a fortnight ago, trying to help him see things from a different perspective so that he might come to enjoy his time Stateside and not be so miserable and mopey all the time, but changes in perspective are achieved only by each person individually and are not easily forced, or coerced. So subtle is perspective, and at once so powerful, that entire industries exist to shape and to mold the views of persons who consume media (which accounts for any person who has ever watched TV or listened to the radio). Even as far back as the 1930s, American advertising was so effective and so quick to control and to shape the perspectives of millions of far-flung and unrelated citizens that the National Socialists in Germany, the Nazis, adopted Yankee-pioneered advertising and propaganda techniques and used them to brainwash tens of millions of good, honest Teutons into acquiescing to the invasion of sovereign foreign nations and the eradication of train-loads of men, women, and children. The power of the American advertising machine persists – so great is it that an imbecile such as the political puppet Sarah Palin can be packaged and sold in such cunning fashion that otherwise intelligent individuals come to see her as a desirable candidate for the second-highest office in the land.
You may be asking yourself right about now, “Well then, oh-so-clever LyeSmythe, how can I avoid being brainwashed, and how can I craft for myself a pure and honest view of the world?” Persons who change their perspectives begin by turning off and throwing out their television sets, they refuse to watch junk-TV (think reality- and talk-shows), they get news from sources located in different countries around the world, and they read news in languages other than English. In this manner, self-respecting people avoid the snare of America's propaganda juggernaut, giving their minds enough unique views of news-worthy events that their opinions are not shaped or dominated by just one brand of crazy.
Beyond the political sphere, however, one's perspective of something on the order to time itself – time-keeping via clock or watch, being on or off schedule, on time or off it, early or late – is shaped by society and by the consensual, Western hallucination that time is a rigid temporal plane extending in a straight line from the past into the future. Which is all well and good until one runs into the article entitled the Rebirth of a Sioux Nation in the August 2012 edition of National Geographic in which the author talks about the way the people of the Oglala Sioux view time – as a cyclical maelstrom in which past and present, life and death, and the spirit and waking worlds are shadows of one another, not strictly separate realms. Seeing the world from a point of view so foreign to the cookie-cutter, pre-packaged perception drilled endlessly into the heads of average Americans is a nice way to blow one's mind on a rainy Tuesday afternoon; such adventures into the curious minds of wise and ancient peoples are good ways to keep one's perspectives loose, and flexible. Therefore, on the next occasion that someone complains that you were not on time, you, dear reader, can claim to be changing your views on the nature of the universe, and that the clocks were wrong, not you. Give the gift of cognitive insecurity – change your mind frequently, adopt new points of view as often as you are able, and keep that dome-piece of a swivel. Mahalo.
場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit
25 June 2012
on free time
Today, devices exist in homes across the world that work so that humans do not have to. Among these are dish-washers, vacuum-cleaners, lawnmowers, well-water pumps, washing-machines for clothes, and televisions. Rather than having to wash one's dishes by hand, to sweep furiously at one's carpet, to cut one's grass using muscle power, to maintain water-pressure by hand, to clean one's clothes, or to entertain oneself, these machines – which run either on gasoline burning in their innards or on electricity (that is generated by the burning of coal before it is piped via an enormous network of skeletal electrical towers across vast distances to emerge finally from wall-mounted sockets) – do nearly all of the work that people used to do for themselves. In order to buy these devices, to pay to have them repaired, maintained, and upgraded, and to pay for the gasoline and for the electricity required to make them run, their owners must work – depending on their level of skill, influence, luck, and education – at one or more jobs, labor for which they receive financial compensation.
Advertisers market the aforementioned devices as things that will increase the amount of free time available to consumers and as things that are supposed to make life better. In reality, however, these devices do not make life easier for the majority of people who grow accustomed to their use; these devices rob the people of the good, hearty workouts associated with cutting grass using the body's own power, with washing clothes using the body's own power, with washing dishes using the body's own power, and with hauling water using the body's own power; these devices rob the people of the need to maintain the art of storytelling, and of the need to maintain the art of making art. But, aha! I have just had a thought, namely that because these machines exist, and because they reduce the amount of time that people would otherwise have to set aside to take care of their household and garden chores or to come up with clever ways to keep themselves entertained, because of these supposed time-savers, people are able to work longer hours and to work at more than one job in order to maintain their supposedly time-saving devices and to keep buying new ones as the old ones wear out. Therefore, these devices and the oft-repeated lie that they “save time” not only create but also perpetuate the type of wage-slave, consumption-oriented capitalism that, as I type, is being waged against the American people.
I have nothing really against free time, only the way that free time is used. Americans and persons living in industrialized nations similar to ours use their free time to sit around eating highly processed and chemical-laden foodstuffs, watching television, playing video games, and generally getting fatter and unhealthier by the day; if, however these free-time-rich people were to work in community gardens, paint pictures, tell each other stories, go on hikes, or exercise their bodies and minds and make themselves into better and more interesting people instead of poking at touch-screen-equipped tablet computers while turning up the volume on the TV in order to drown out the sound pollution generated by the dishwasher and the washing-machine running at the same time, if these people were to be active and creative and all chip in to make this nation and this planet a greener and quieter place for all then we might slowly redeem ourselves in the opinions and estimations of a candid world. As it stands however, with our federal government owned and operated by the very persons who gain the most – financially – from our brand of wage-slave style capitalism, there is a greater incentive to keep the people fat, stupid, and sold on the idea that there are devices for sale that will make their lives easier or better rather than to encourage them to be self-sufficient, self-reliant, and self-respecting. How much farther down this stinking rabbit-hole of convenience-driven consumerism can we possibly allow ourselves to fall? America delenda est.
agitate – challenge – debunk – restore
場黑麥 mentiri manufactorem fecit
Advertisers market the aforementioned devices as things that will increase the amount of free time available to consumers and as things that are supposed to make life better. In reality, however, these devices do not make life easier for the majority of people who grow accustomed to their use; these devices rob the people of the good, hearty workouts associated with cutting grass using the body's own power, with washing clothes using the body's own power, with washing dishes using the body's own power, and with hauling water using the body's own power; these devices rob the people of the need to maintain the art of storytelling, and of the need to maintain the art of making art. But, aha! I have just had a thought, namely that because these machines exist, and because they reduce the amount of time that people would otherwise have to set aside to take care of their household and garden chores or to come up with clever ways to keep themselves entertained, because of these supposed time-savers, people are able to work longer hours and to work at more than one job in order to maintain their supposedly time-saving devices and to keep buying new ones as the old ones wear out. Therefore, these devices and the oft-repeated lie that they “save time” not only create but also perpetuate the type of wage-slave, consumption-oriented capitalism that, as I type, is being waged against the American people.
I have nothing really against free time, only the way that free time is used. Americans and persons living in industrialized nations similar to ours use their free time to sit around eating highly processed and chemical-laden foodstuffs, watching television, playing video games, and generally getting fatter and unhealthier by the day; if, however these free-time-rich people were to work in community gardens, paint pictures, tell each other stories, go on hikes, or exercise their bodies and minds and make themselves into better and more interesting people instead of poking at touch-screen-equipped tablet computers while turning up the volume on the TV in order to drown out the sound pollution generated by the dishwasher and the washing-machine running at the same time, if these people were to be active and creative and all chip in to make this nation and this planet a greener and quieter place for all then we might slowly redeem ourselves in the opinions and estimations of a candid world. As it stands however, with our federal government owned and operated by the very persons who gain the most – financially – from our brand of wage-slave style capitalism, there is a greater incentive to keep the people fat, stupid, and sold on the idea that there are devices for sale that will make their lives easier or better rather than to encourage them to be self-sufficient, self-reliant, and self-respecting. How much farther down this stinking rabbit-hole of convenience-driven consumerism can we possibly allow ourselves to fall? America delenda est.
agitate – challenge – debunk – restore
場黑麥 mentiri manufactorem fecit
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)