Escape to Here Now

  To begin with, the ideas or notions connected with the concepts of civilization can be pretty tricky to unravel, and can also be the cause or justification for some pretty " heated " debate.  One very helpful tool in the process of unraveling all these ideas is of course our history which does include the rise and decline of many civilizations,  certainly the civilization of the Roman world would be a good example of that. I have often asserted in connection with the fall of civilization, that it is a dynamic  of a particular behavior, often known as greed which can be described as the absence of generosity. There are perhaps other ways of looking at this but in particular I think it might involve the degrees to which both wealth and riches become isolated to certain localities , that is, the flow of wealth or riches, becomes more limited in scope, as a result of which fewer people , in general, have the opportunity of getting their needs met. This might include so...

  So beginning with wealth , it is most likely useful to distinguish between riches and wealth by describing riches as an accumulation of material goods, while wealth does not preclude riches it may include the accumulation of other things, such as knowledge, or behaviors, or other things that may improve an individuals or group state of being. And so freedom would have to include such things as would allow an individual or group access to those things that meet their needs, such as nutrition , medicine, housing and some degree of safety. So, it should be fairly clear that there are connections between wealth and freedom.  For example knowledge of nutrition and medicine which is certainly implied by the concept of wealth would clearly help with getting needs met for individuals or groups. So this brings us to " liberty and justice for all ", how intriguing is that concept, which may even lead to distinctions between our common notions concerning liberty and freedom.  

  Okay, starting out, some people capitalize Democracy and sometimes it's just democracy. Obviously, Democracy Now! has a capitalization, but generally I'm not sure of the difference.   Anyway, is democracy fragile? And what would that mean if it was?  In some ways, I could say that fragility in this context is better than a more brittle kind of thing.  Fragile could mean that it is more flexible.   However, if you spend some time considering the situation over long periods of time, democracy has to be a kind of a general human condition, and by that I mean humans conversing or consulting with each other in order to solve bigger problems that are not solvable by a single individual.  Clearly, in our individual lives we are confronted by these kinds of situations all the time, as we face situations where we can not find sufficient resources individually to solve the problem.  A simple example might be moving a couch or a refrigerator.  Ye...

  So, to start out I am only focusing on one event from a century that contained quite  significant and remarkable events.   But of course some of us did live in the 1900's , but some of us now, have not. So for them, then, the 1900's are pretty , how you might think of as " imaginary ", in some what the same way as the ancient world, or medieval times, might appear to us.  Real to us, in that we, almost all, supply the reality to it, mostly based on personal conversations we might be having.    Also, I should note that when I "was younger than today", I had significant confusion about , 19,20, & 21,  and the 20th, 21st, and then 22nd, which is confusing in some of the same ways, that baseball can be confusing. So, I am only going to pick one, that stands out in my mind, that occurred. in the late 1920's which was the predication and discovery of the positrons.  I should note that most of the " robots ", depicted by Asimov, in a great dea...

  This is a bit vague, but as my recollections go, Richard Feynman suggested that making a calculations requires no energy.  Now, I may be misconstruing this somewhat as I am not sure about the place or the time in which he made these remarks, although I do believe it was sometime in the 1980's, and although I have thought about this somewhat, it certainly is a remarkable idea, at least for me, since I spent most of the 1980's working in what was then D.P. , and it certainly did seem  that the calculations I was making , using computer hardware, at that time, was using a good deal of energy.  So how he came up with this idea, and the details of it are unclear to me, it certainly does seem to be a somewhat remarkable thought.   So, I might be able to draw some conclusion from this, but at this time, I am completely unable to do that.

Okay ,  I am both reluctant and compelled to write what follows, and so there you have it. First, I will not attempt to define self-esteem, as most people have some experience with that, and so probably just best that you bring your own , individual ideas to the table about what follows. And so my argument is very simple.  If Mr. Trump had been - okay - with the 2020 election, then that would have shown a high or higher level of self-esteem, because he would have been okay just being Mr. Trump.   It's like the coin toss at the beginning of a game.  I doubt that it happens very often for a team to walk away from a coin toss, because they do not like the results of the toss.  The game is way more important than the coin toss. And so, if he had just walked away, then, it would have been clear to everyone, that Mr. Trump was just okay with being Mr. Trump.  As our recent history has shown us, he was just unable, - for some reasons -, to do that, reasons th...

Probably , anything I might think of would probably be included in the following:  https://www.learnreligions.com/what-is-mu-in-zen-449929 Okay, this is at a great risk of being redundant, however, I am going to risk being redundant. At, any rate, Mu, kaon , which I believe, is practiced more often in Rinzai, Zen, but however, you interpret that, it has certainly had a very " powerful " effect at least in the practice of Zen.  You want to ask yourself the question of why that might be.  That would certainly be an extremely difficult question, but one that might be worth exploring. Okay, so one important aspect is that Mu, also represents a mantra, which by itself then makes it a practice of it's own , probably beneficial on it's own beyond it's use in the enhancement of Zen practice. Also, and I am just guessing, may be more accessible to Western " folks ".

  Not that sure about how " humble " right now, but anyway, following up on the last post about difficulties.   I think that if we consider the number of difficulties , issues, or conflicts, now facing us on this relatively smallish planet, we just have to face the sort of " fact ", which is really more of an opinion,  that in order to get some kind of a " handle " or leverage on the situation, we probably need to behave in a bit more collaborative of " co-operative " fashion.  Perhaps, I am wrong, but sure does seem that way. So what might be involved in such co-operative or collaborative behavior?  Well, the most obvious thing I can think of is higher levels of " mutual " respect.  What that means is we have to respect each other.  Now, that does seem like a pretty easy thing for us to do, but for some reason, in general we have great  difficulties with it.  Maybe, what we need is " tetrads ", which was the last thing Albert...

  Well, I guess that the answer to the question, might very well be yes, but it is useful and worthwhile to consider that we have lived through difficult times, quite a bit.  Mostly, we survive it, but certainly, even if we look at a relatively short time frame we have to note that humanity has suffered greatly.  And, of course, we can go back hundreds or thousands of years and find many more such periods of time, particularly  well documented in Christian gospels as well as times documented before that in Jewish texts, and the religious texts of other religions.  It seems to be that the main " victim " in these difficulties in primarily humanity as a whole. Then what may we conclude about a situation like today, or other days from the past? Number one is, of course, the amazing resilience of humans, to transcend the difficulties they find themselves in  It is an amazing history.  As we are in this season of renewal, we might reflect that of all the we...

  Well, I really don't think I am well placed to write this, but for one reason or another I feel some compulsion, because, Mr. Trump has ascended to the status of social symbol.  I won't get into the nature of the symbol, although I imagine,   I could if I spent more time and and thought on the subject.  However, beyond the symbol is a real human being.  And I suspect that, if he has one single character flaw, it would be that he lacks basic confidence in himself.   In other words, he feels that he is incomplete in some essential way, and as a result he feels afraid, and in particular what he is most afraid of is, other people. As a result, he tends to create a very controlled environment around himself, which allows him to also somewhat control fear.   For example he makes statements like, " only I can fix it ", which would be great if he worked in a mechanics shop, but he doesn't do that.  If  " only he can fix it ", then he...

  Well, as the story goes, we know Julius Caesar was en-route to do some warring against the Parthian Empire, when lo and behold he ran un-expectedly into a large number of very sharp objects, in the headquarters of Roman authority, not yet Imperial authority. Could have been an accident ? https://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~rwest/wikispeedia/wpcd/wp/p/Persian_Empire.htm Oddly enough , at the time of the events that we celebrate as Easter, the now Imperial Roman authority was trying to " shore up " its defenses against what they surely perceived as a threat from Parthia. Now, we also know that the area around Palestine or Israel was fairly porous on account of, most likely, Zoroastrian priests visiting the manger in Bethlehem  , following a star. For what ever reason, the people of then Israel, were not too happy about this situation, as the end result was Rome, basically leveled the country. And so it is a bit ironic that a young Jewish man , would inevitably conquer (in a broad meani...

  Easter is of course a celebration, frequently involving eggs , but rabbits are also big, as there is in fact a " big "  Easter bunny, and I suspect that if you said " rabbits ", first thing when you woke up this morning, you very well might find good luck for the rest of the month. Be that as it may, it's a bit hard to pry Jesus Christ out of this celebration, which is connected to this whole notion of rebirth, or renewal, or resurrections,  however these notions might fit in your mind.  But there are all the unpleasant facts which we have related for some time now, about that death, which we also interpret as " sacrifice ". Perhaps, we are facing a time now, where we must look forward to renewal and regeneration in many aspects of our individual and collective life.

  This is a tough question really, ' cause you almost have to start out with --- what does anything mean --- ? But , not going there.  Just a bunch of digressions, and to start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph-Louis_Lagrange a man who hit lots of balls --- out of the park ---, and apparently a young student named Napoleon, started to hit balls into other objects and even other people, after which, he was able to rule almost all of " central Europe ". Which leads me to somewhat of a conjecture, which can most likely be demonstrated with what are called, using LaGrange techniques, kind of the bread and butter of physics.  So my conjecture is that if we have life --- now --- in it's myriads of form --- then we have always had it in some form, or at least the potential for it, that potential, which is in fact === a form of  " energy " must have certain properties. In conclusion, no conclusion.  But in some ways, it does seem a bit frightening.