The Power & Value of Feedback!

Since I began blogging I've been dipping into other blogs and leaving the occasional comment. Yup, I believe in the Golden Rule. All bloggers love comments. It shows people are reading your output and responding to it. It's also a sneaky way to lure random visitors to your own blog.

One night, I stumbled upon a comment I'd left ages ago on someone's blog... and I was struck by the fact that I had almost completely forgotten what I said. Most times the comments are written on the spur of the moment, scanned for typos, and then published. And that's that. Anyway, I felt prompted to trace a few comments I had scattered here and there along the way, like some digital age Johnny Appleseed, and archive them. Re-reading them after weeks or even months had passed, I found many worth sharing (even if I say so myself!) Why not compile some of the more interesting ones into a blogpost? Why not indeed!

A friend ruminating on Death and Taxes in his blogpost:

This was my comment:

Unsubscribing from the 3D illusion of Decay, Debt and Death.

There are moments when I can happily contemplate living forever... and times when I would be quite happy to die immediately! In either case, the trick is to nullify the grimness and gravity of the grave - to laugh in the face of the unknown - we really don't have much choice. The alternative is to wallow in melancholy and moroseness and to see Life itself as a curse rather than a blessing. As a kid I occasionally allowed my thoughts to stray towards the inevitability of someday witnessing my parents' deaths - and I'd shudder at the horrible notion of never seeing Mum or Dad again.

Ironically, after watching my mother endure five years of dialysis and being subject to other medical ignominies (with a meter running all the while which eventually enriched the medical profession by at least a quarter million ringgit - that's right, folks, not only do you pay death duties, you also get heavily taxed as you're dying!) I found myself encouraging her to let go, to allow the currents to take her from the pain and suffering of her bodily existence... I found myself promising her that she would be safe and well protected on the other side of the veil... and, thinking about it, I have served as Angel of Death for quite a number of people over the years!

Often, all one requires is a little reassurance that all of it has been just a colorful drama, a fabulous movie indeed, but the REAL LIFE awaits outside the theatre. Indeed, it's like a show within a show within a show (or a trial within a trial :-)... What's evident is that when the Book Religions displaced Ancient Wisdom, they deprived humanity of any in-depth understanding of all the different dimensions in which Consciousness dwells - the only recent cultures that paid any attention at all to the scientific study of Death being the Egyptian and Tibetan; so it is to them that we must turn for some guidance to the realms that reside just beyond the EXIT.

I THINK I HAVE SPECIAL POWERS!

You live in a hologram designed to harvest your vital energy to fuel a machine of destruction and enslavement. However, every atom that exists is a fractal of the entire universe and is supercharged with infinite potential and cosmic intelligence. The part of you that is immortal and indestructible (your Godself or Atman) is constantly attempting to wake you up from the robotic trance most humans are born into. Heed these signs. They are clues that will ultimately lead you out of the labyrinth and into true freedom. Good luck on your vision quest!


"I hope something comes out of 2012 or we'll have to wait till 2112."

You know, most of us are passive consumers of reality - shit happens and we bitch about it! Then one day a light bulb flashes on above our heads and we experience a eureka moment - like Pythagoras who exclaimed: "Astonishing! EVERYTHING IS INTELLIGENT!!!" What that presumably meant was that he suddenly became conscious of the primordial consciousness permeating the quantum space-time within sub-atomic dimensions - more poetically expressed by the mystical knowing that the Divine Dwells Within Our Innermost Core. In effect, we are creators with a small 'C' who will eventually graduate to being Creators with a big 'C'- and then there will be nobody to blame when shit happens because it's only our own shit!

FICTIONAL CHARACTERS

The first fictional being that pops unbidden to mind who has exerted the greatest influence on me, I must confess, is Edgar Rice Burroughs's Tarzan/Lord Greystoke. Indeed, I often think I've modeled my own life after the Lord of the Jungle who, amazingly, is also Lord of the Manor! A close second might be Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes - but, much as I enjoy the occasional bit of sleuthing, I found Holmes's misogynist Old Boy ways (hanging out the whole time with his sidekick Watson) rather off-putting. Same goes for Henry Higgins. Seems to me that our "education system" has done a thoroughly fine job of dumbing down children born in the late 1970s (that's right, when Dr M was education minister!) But, alas, the same can be said about Britain - I meet some dazzlingly ignorant young people from there!

Postscript: After 50 years of serious probing and research I have been forced to the inevitable conclusion that a character I profoundly admired (from the New Testament, no less) and who exerted extraordinary influence on my own character development - is not only fictitious but an intentionally manufactured icon inserted into the collective psyche by pioneers of mass mind control. That's right, folks, I'm referring to the world's most successful fictional character, Yeshu Ben Joseph aka Jesus the Christ :-)


BARISAN NAZIONAL ESCALATOR

Political systems on this planet are essentially a facade for old-style warlordism - wherein the baboon with the longest fangs and loudest roar (and who controls a large army of samseng,* uniformed or otherwise) invariably ends up being Boss Baboon. In effect, Might-Is-Always-Right (as the UK/US-Israeli Gang have clearly demonstrated in recent days). Same applies to the Baboon Nazional party who have had such a long run ruining the country it's very hard for them to contemplate giving up their power to anybody now or anytime. The ones largely responsible for propping them up are the comfortable, well-educated middle-classes whose obsession with financial success turns them into potential Ananda Krishnans, Vincent Tans, and Patrick Lims (got enough money can buy the garmen wat?). BN's prime appeal is to the lowest common denominator of primeval self-interest. Donkair de udder flers, aku cukup makan sudahlah!**

FREE BURMA!

The phenomenal world is like a magic lantern show of moving images that ceaselessly change and distract from the ONLY authentic task at hand: clearing our neural and emotional circuitry so that we can individually emerge from our cocoons of illusory powerlessness and victimhood. As each of us achieves Buddhahood and other degrees of spiritual maturity, the historical nightmare on this beautiful planet will abruptly end.

Bloggers (and most humans for that matter) are like gossips. Always a new sensation to obliterate yesterday’s scandal. Another day, another disaster… and for businessmen, it’s always business-as-usual… until the first heart attack or stroke!


POLICE BEAT UP GORENG PISANG SELLER AT BERSIH RALLY

The Battle at Wounded Knee, Malaysian style. Goreng pisang seller. How totally appropriate! It just wasn’t this guy’s day. But they say “Bapak borek, anak rintik” (Like Father, Like Son) - and who’s the “Bapak” of the Polis Di Raja Malaysia? Isn’t it the Home Minister? Is he at Home??? If you get mauled by a vicious dog, you find out who the owner is and file a suit.

Your ANALysis reveals a loose sphincter, Mat Salleh

It may once have been fashionable, indeed de rigueur in journalistic circles, to sound worldly-wise and cynical, Mat Salleh, but your business-as-usual mindset has become part of the problem, not part of the solution. Are you too old to have ideals? Must you reduce everything in life to the Bottom Line by viewing the world through that primly puckered aperture in your nether regions? Do you truly believe you can get away with pretending to be "objective" in an observer-created universe? What comes across in your opinion piece is that you subscribe to a belief in politics-as-usual, failing to see the significance of such a massive turnout for the 10 November march. And, in this instance, what's genuinely important isn't the expected Umno infighting - or the rulers' sophisticated mummery - it's the fact that so many Malaysians from across the racial and social spectrum overcame their own fear and inertia to show the BN that they will no longer be intimidated by the police nor will they be placated by pious platitudes and empty promises of clean and efficient government. Without the police roadblocks and the turning away of dozens of buses at the outskirts of KL, the crowd on Saturday may well have exceeded 100,000 - and that's a REAL phenomenon when you consider the climate of fear Malaysians have lived under for 20 years. I'm so glad I was there to witness so many Malaysians break free of the shackles of their own fear. And FEAR is the only power any oppressive government can wield over people - the power to terrorize and paralyze them via the mass media. You are doing us all a gross injustice by belittling this simple act of bravery consciously undertaken by at least 50,000 Malaysians.


GLOSSARY
*samseng = hooligan, thug
**Donkair de udder flers, aku cukup makan sudahlah! = Après moi le déluge!

E8, XML, PHP, SEO, RDF and My Friend Wheel

70 million blogs were tabulated in July 2005 and I hear that 120,000 baby blogs are born into the blogosphere each day.

It seems the explosive growth of the weblog phenomenon worldwide - especially amongst the younger set of internet users - may be due to two factors: (1) the newer blog templates accommodate multimedia encodings which allow bloggers to post not just rich text but also audiostreaming and embedded videos; (2) blogs are interactive and encourage instant feedback by way of comments.

And, of course, advances in software programming have made functions like RSS (Really Simple Syndication) a routine part of the browsing experience. When I began blogging in December 2006 I surfed smack into a wall of acronyms incomprehensible to anybody who isn't a professional nerd: esoteric terms like RDF (Resource Description Framework), XML (Extensible Markup Language), SEO (Search Engine Optimization), PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor - NOT Pothead Pixie and don't ask me why it isn't called HPP!). For someone who hasn't begun Podcasting and who doesn't even own an iPod, all of this was somewhat daunting. Slowly, I began to understand the value of getting my blog listed on Technorati and having an account with del.icio.us.

Two-dimensional E8 image courtesy of Peter McMullen and John Stembridge

However, what's truly amazing about these new developments in the web-dweller's world is the exponentially increasing interconnectivity that is beginning to resemble the latest mathematical model of the fabric of reality, proposed by a 39-year-old Californian physicist named Garrett Lisi who also happens to be a surfer - not just of virtual reality but also of some very wet waves. This stunning mathematical model has been dubbed E8 and I don't pretend to understand it one bit, except perhaps on the intuitive level - and I must admit to being drawn to it mainly because it's so aesthetically gratifying! Here's a beautiful video showing how Lisi's "Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything" looks when the E8 is rotated through eight dimensions:




Yesterday I spent a few minutes on Facebook generating a Friend Wheel, which graphically represents how each friend is connected to another and ultimately to me. The sheer beauty of the Friend Wheel makes me happy to be connected to at least 300 people on Facebook alone. There are hosts of other friends and acquaintances who are unlikely to squander their time on Facebook, but if I add them to the mix, my Friend Wheel will ultimately resemble the E8! Mind-boggling, ain't it? Rainbow Fractals forever!

George Harrison ~ While My Guitar Gently Weeps

A classic number from George Harrison's Concert for Bangladesh 1971 (with Eric Clapton on lead guitar and Ringo Starr on drums). The gems you find on YouTube!

WHILE MY GUITAR GENTLY WEEPS
(words & music by George Harrison)

I look at you all see the love there that's sleeping
While my guitar gently weeps
I look at the floor and I see it need sweeping
Still my guitar gently weeps

I don't know why nobody told you
how to unfold your love
I don't know how someone controlled you
they bought and sold you

I look at the world and I notice it's turning
While my guitar gently weeps
With every mistake we must surely be learning
Still my guitar gently weeps

I don't know how you were diverted
no one alerted you
I don't know how you were inverted
you were perverted too

I look at you all see the love there that's sleeping
While my guitar gently weeps
I look at you all
Still my guitar gently weeps


From the Wikipedia entry on George Harrison:

George Harrison, MBE (25 February 1943 – 29 November 2001) was an influential English rock guitarist, singer, songwriter, author and sitarist best known as the lead guitarist of The Beatles. Following the band's demise, Harrison had a successful career as a solo artist and later as part of the Traveling Wilburys super group where he was known as both Nelson Wilbury and Spike Wilbury.* He was also a film producer, with his production company Handmade Films, involving people as diverse as Madonna and the members of Monty Python. From an initial exposure whilst a member of the Beatles, he maintained a high public profile regarding his religious and spiritual life.

Here's something else that's pretty incredible: Jake Shimabukuro plays "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" on a ukulele!

*In 1969 Harrison wrote a song called Badge with Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce, and Pete Brown which subsequently appeared on a Cream album. He was credited as L'Angelo Misterioso, probably to avoid contractual complications.

Project 337 in Salt Lake City, Utah

This is a community art project that opened in May 2007 at 337 South 400 East, Salt Lake City, Utah. An old building slated for demolition was converted into an ephemeral art gallery consisting of 42 rooms. From an initial collective of artists numbering 94 the total ultimately grew to 144 - and they spanned the entire spectrum from street punk graffitists to veterans in their seventies. The results were staggeringly stimulating, as you can see from the photos at 337project.org.


What a glorious way to nourish and celebrate the artistic soul of a huge impersonal city. This is the sort of thing that can happen only in a city with a funky, enlightened mayor. Bravo, Rocky - more power to you!

Mayor Rocky Anderson enthusiastically endorses Project 337.

An American Mayor Makes A Courageous Stand

We in Malaysia have much to learn from Mayor Rocky Anderson of Salt Lake City, Utah, about moral courage and reclaiming our country from criminal misrule...

ADDRESS BY MAYOR ROSS C. “ROCKY” ANDERSON
October 27, 2007
Salt Lake City, Utah


Today, as we come together once again in this great city, we raise our voices in unison to say to President Bush, to Vice President Cheney, to other members of the Bush Administration (past and present), to a majority of Congress, including Utah’s entire congressional delegation, and to much of the mainstream media: “You have failed us miserably and we won’t take it any more.”

“While we had every reason to expect far more of you, you have been pompous, greedy, cruel, and incompetent as you have led this great nation to a moral, military, and national security abyss.”

“You have breached trust with the American people in the most egregious ways. You have utterly failed in the performance of your jobs. You have undermined our Constitution, permitted the violation of the most fundamental treaty obligations, and betrayed the rule of law.”

“You have engaged in, or permitted, heinous human rights abuses of the sort never before countenanced in our nation’s history as a matter of official policy. You have sent American men and women to kill and be killed on the basis of lies, on the basis of shifting justifications, without competent leadership, and without even a coherent plan for this monumental blunder.”

“We are here to tell you: We won’t take it any more!”

“You have acted in direct contravention of values that we, as Americans who love our country, hold dear. You have deceived us in the most cynical, outrageous ways. You have undermined, or allowed the undermining of, our constitutional system of checks and balances among the three presumed co-equal branches of government. You have helped lead our nation to the brink of fascism, of a dictatorship contemptuous of our nation’s treaty obligations, federal statutory law, our Constitution, and the rule of law.”

“Because of you, and because of your jingoistic false ‘patriotism,’ our world is far more dangerous, our nation is far more despised, and the threat of terrorism is far greater than ever before.

It has been absolutely astounding how you have committed the most horrendous acts, causing such needless tragedy in the lives of millions of people, yet you wear your so-called religion on your sleeves, asserting your God-is-on-my-side nonsense – when what you have done flies in the face of any religious or humanitarian tradition. Your hypocrisy is mind-boggling – and disgraceful. What part of “Thou shalt not kill” do you not understand? What part of the “Golden rule” do you not understand? What part of “be honest,” “be responsible,” and “be accountable” don’t you understand? What part of “Blessed are the peacekeepers” do you not understand?

Because of you, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed, many thousands of people have suffered horrendous lifetime injuries, and millions have been run off from their homes. For the sake of our nation, for the sake of our children, and for the sake of our brothers and sisters around the world, we are morally compelled to say, as loudly as we can, ‘We won’t take it any more!’”

“As United States agents kidnap, disappear, and torture human beings around the world, you justify, you deceive, and you cover up. We find what you have done to men, women and children, and to the good name and reputation of the United States, so appalling, so unconscionable, and so outrageous as to compel us to call upon you to step aside and allow other men and women who are competent, true to our nation’s values, and with high moral principles to stand in your places – for the good of our nation, for the good of our children, and for the good of our world.”

In the case of the President and Vice President, this means impeachment and removal from office, without any further delay from a complacent, complicit Congress, the Democratic majority of which cares more about political gain in 2008 than it does about the vindication of our Constitution, the rule of law, and democratic accountability.

It means the election of people as President and Vice President who, unlike most of the presidential candidates from both major parties, have not aided and abetted in the perpetration of the illegal, tragic, devastating invasion and occupation of Iraq. And it means the election of people as President and Vice President who will commit to return our nation to the moral and strategic imperative of refraining from torturing human beings.

In the case of the majority of Congress, it means electing people who are diligent enough to learn the facts, including reading available National Intelligence Estimates, before voting to go to war. It means electing to Congress men and women who will jealously guard Congress’s sole prerogative to declare war. It means electing to Congress men and women who will not submit like vapid lap dogs to presidential requests for blank checks to engage in so-called preemptive wars, for legislation permitting warrantless wiretapping of communications involving US citizens, and for dangerous, irresponsible, saber-rattling legislation like the recent Kyl-Lieberman amendment.

We must avoid the trap of focusing the blame solely upon President Bush and Vice-President Cheney. This is not just about a few people who have wronged our country – and the world. They were enabled by members of both parties in Congress, they were enabled by the pathetic mainstream news media, and, ultimately, they have been enabled by the American people – 40% of whom are so ill-informed they still think Iraq was behind the 9/11 attacks – a people who know and care more about baseball statistics and which drunken starlets are wearing underwear than they know and care about the atrocities being committed every single day in our name by a government for which we need to take responsibility.

As loyal Americans, without regard to political partisanship - as veterans, as teachers, as religious leaders, as working men and women, as students, as professionals, as businesspeople, as public servants, as retirees, as people of all ages, races, ethnic origins, sexual orientations, and faiths - we are here to say to the Bush administration, to the majority of Congress, and to the mainstream media: “You have violated your solemn responsibilities. You have undermined our democracy, spat upon our Constitution, and engaged in outrageous, despicable acts. You have brought our nation to a point of immorality, inhumanity, and illegality of immense, tragic, unprecedented proportions.”

“But we will live up to our responsibilities as citizens, as brothers and sisters of those who have suffered as a result of the imperial bullying of the United States government, and as moral actors who must take a stand: And we will, and must, mean it when we say ‘We won’t take it any more.’”

If we want principled, courageous elected officials, we need to be principled, courageous, and tenacious ourselves. History has demonstrated that our elected officials are not the leaders – the leadership has to come from us. If we don’t insist, if we don’t persist, then we are not living up to our responsibilities as citizens in a democracy – and our responsibilities as moral human beings. If we remain silent, we signal to Congress and the Bush administration – and to candidates running for office – and to the world – that we support the status quo. Silence is complicity. Only by standing up for what’s right and never letting down can we say we are doing our part.

Our government, on the basis of a campaign we now know was entirely fraudulent, attacked and militarily occupied a nation that posed no danger to the United States. Our government, acting in our name, has caused immense, unjustified death and destruction. It all started five years ago, yet where have we, the American people, been? At this point, we are responsible. We get together once in a while at demonstrations and complain about Bush and Cheney, about Congress, and about the pathetic news media. We point fingers and yell a lot. Then most people politely go away until another demonstration a few months later.

How many people can honestly say they have spent as much time learning about and opposing the outrages of the Bush administration as they have spent watching sports or mindless television programs during the past five years? Escapist, time-sapping sports and insipid entertainment have indeed become the opiate of the masses. Why is this country so sound asleep? Why do we abide what is happening to our nation, to our Constitution, to the cause of peace and international law and order? Why are we not doing all in our power to put an end to this madness?

We should be in the streets regularly and students should be raising hell on our campuses. We should be making it clear in every way possible that apologies or convoluted, disingenuous explanations just don’t cut it when presidential candidates and so many others voted to authorize George Bush and his neo-con buddies to send American men and women to attack and occupy Iraq.

Let’s awaken, and wake up the country by committing here and now to do all each of us can to take our nation back. Let them hear us across the country, as we ask others to join us: “We won’t take it any more!”

I implore you: Draw a line. Figure out exactly where your own moral breaking point is. How much will you put up with before you say “No more” and mean it? I have drawn my line as a matter of simple personal morality: I cannot, and will not, support any candidate who has voted to fund the atrocities in Iraq. I cannot, and will not, support any candidate who will not commit to remove all US troops, as soon as possible, from Iraq. I cannot, and will not, support any candidate who has supported legislation that takes us one step closer to attacking Iran. I cannot, and will not, support any candidate who has not fought to stop the kidnapping, disappearances, and torture being carried on in our name.

If we expect our nation’s elected officials to take us seriously, let us send a powerful message they cannot misunderstand. Let them know we really do have our moral breaking point. Let them know we have drawn a bright line. Let them know they cannot take our support for granted – that, regardless of their party and regardless of other political considerations, they will not have our support if they cannot provide, and have not provided, principled leadership.

The people of this nation may have been far too quiet for five years, but let us pledge that we won’t let it go on one more day – that we will do all we can to put an end to the illegalities, the moral degradation, and the disintegration of our nation’s reputation in the world.

Let us be unified in drawing the line – in declaring that we do have a moral breaking point. Let us insist, together, in supporting our troops and in gratitude for the freedoms for which our veterans gave so much, that we bring our troops home from Iraq, that we return our government to a constitutional democracy, and that we commit to honoring the fundamental principles of human rights.

In defense of our country, in defense of our Constitution, in defense of our shared values as Americans – and as moral human beings – we declare today that we will fight in every way possible to stop the insanity, stop the continued military occupation of Iraq, and stop the moral depravity reflected by the kidnapping, disappearing, and torture of people around the world.

MAYOR ROCKY ANDERSON'S COMPELLING CASE FOR THE IMPEACHMENT OF BUSH & CHENEY:

Part 1


Part 2


Part 3


Part 4


Part 5