Human Nature

It is very possible that many people who commit horrible atrocities actually cannot be rehabilitated. Never the less, coming to a logical understanding of the causes of their disfunction can still help us to minimize the further creation of such people. "Human nature" is widely misunderstood but luckily, the behavioral sciences are making huge leaps in this area in recent years. 

The basic understanding is coming out of the scientific community, that the human is highly adaptable and that behavior is almost completely created by the environment, in our case, the social environment or society. If we live in an abusive society which values competition, people having power over others (or as Terence would say, a "dominator culture), a society where compassion and cooperation are not useful for 'success', then I think it is no wonder that many humans show violent, sociopathic behavior. 

Very little of behavior is programmed by the actual genes. The genes merely give options for traits that can be expressed. It is eventually the social environment that decides which traits do become expressed. 

This is further clear when realizing that almost all severely violent offenders are people who they themselves experienced abuse and severe trauma or neglect in their own lives. 

I really feel as if this issue of "human nature", or the misunderstandings of it is one of the key issues that has the power to radically improve our world if looked into.
NAC



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-brqskIoBw



Here is what I'd call an INFODUMP on the topic.

They fought for your freedoms....?

A few thoughts on the military in the context of "Our troops fighting for your freedom is the reason why activists, liberals and peace-lovers even have the privilege to complain about the military in the first place."




Don't believe anyone who tells you that they fought for your freedoms by fighting in the military. They are lying, although they probably believe the lie. They actually fought for the rich ($), for the corporations ($), for the profit of weapons dealers ($), global construction contractors($), Oil tycoons ($), the debt-profiteers like the IMF ($), They fought for the interests of central banking cartels ($), on and on. This is what they fought for, make no mistake. This is true even back to George Washington and forever after, it is nothing new. 

Any "freedoms" you enjoy in the USA were fought for by the people, and they usually had to fight hard against the US government and rich elites in order to get those freedoms. Worker's rights had to be fought for by workers. Several of the early US presidents are documented as deploying troops to gun down striking workers in the thousands at the whim of factory owners ($). Gunned down for demanding wages enough to eat with, shorter than 16 hour work days and safe working conditions. 

Black people's rights were fought for mostly by black citizens, not 'given' by Lincoln, like they tell you in first grade. Women's right were fought for by women, not by soldiers. Child labor, freedom of speech, the list goes on and on. 

The people have always had to fight against the interests of the rich and the government, the interests of power. At first they are called dissenters, terrorists, etc.... Then when they begin to finally win, the government passes a law of 'permission' and takes all the credit. Patriotism is a scam. It is incorrect to ever state that POWER can ever be "corrupt" because it is inherently INVALID directly from its root. -NAC

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"Stockholm syndrome = flag worship.

"Stockholm syndrome, or capture-bonding, is a psychological phenomenon in which hostages express empathy and sympathy and have positive feelings toward their captors, sometimes to the point of defending and identifying with the captors" -APM

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Here is the beauty of patriotism, war, nationalism and the men and women who defend "our freedoms". You be the judge if the flag is worthy of respect...

By the way, this isn't liberal propaganda. This is found on a right wing consevative news site. This is the kind of rhetoric that many gung-ho patriots use to defend their pride in "The best goddammned country in the goddammned world". 

-NAC

Mckenna Lectures and quotes

In 2011 and 2012 I listened to about 100 hours of lectures by Terence Mckenna.

Now I have decided to go through them again, like reading a book the second time, the idea is to get more out of it that was missed in the first go 'round.

I'd also like to save a few notes and things, even though this has been done extensively elsewhere, these will be things that matter personally to me.
----------------

Psychedellic Salon Podcast, episode 31, towards the end of the episode (48:00), while he is answering the last question asked by the audience. Terence goes on a rant about the forward escape into the future. He then give wonderful descriptions of the inhumanity of corporate capitalism and other dinosaur institutions, etc...

---------------

Psychedellic Salon Podcast, episode 146.
About 1:03:00-

"The real issue is what kinds of mental worlds will people inhabit. What kinds of hope shall be permitted? What kinds of value systems shall be allowed? And the value systems that aggrandize the possession of things, the tearing up of the earth, competition, classism, racism, sexism, have led us to the brink of catastrophe. Now, I think we have to abandon western cultural values and return to the deeper wisdom of the body, in connection with the plants. That's the seamless web which leads us back into the heart of nature. And if we can do this, then this very narrow neck of cultural crisis can be navigated. Very little of the past can be saved. The architectonics, the machines, the systems of monetary exchange and propaganda, the silly religions, the assinine aesthetic canons... very little of that can be saved. But what can be saved is the sense of love and caring and mutuality that we all put into and take from the human enterprise."

1:04:32-

"You know, there's a Grateful Dead song that says:

'You can't go back
and you can't stand still,
if the thunder don't gethcha
 then the lighning will'

and we now hold through the possession of these psycedelics, catalysts for the human imagination of sufficient power that if we use them, we can deconstruct the lethal vehicle that is carrying us toward apocalypse. We can deconstruct that vehicle and redesign it into a kind of starship that would carry us and our children out into the broad starry galaxy we know to be awaiting us. But, it's a cultural test. Nature is pitiless. Intelligence is a grand experiment upon which a great deal has been risked. But if it proves inadequate, nature will cover it over with the same kind of cool impunity which covered over the dinosaurs and the trilobites and the crossopterygian fishes and all those other folks who came before. So what we must do, I think, is see our future in the imagination, catalyze the imagination, form symbiotic relationships with the plants, affirm archaic values and spread the good news that what is out of control, what is infact dying is a world that had become too topheavy with it's own hubris... too bent by its own false value systems, and too dehumanized to care about what happened to its own children. So, I say good riddance to it. Bring on the archaic revival and lets create a new world."

QnA begins at 1:07:00

Go back to transcribe statement about "THEY ARENT HANDING OUT RIGHTS IN THIS SOCIETY...."


--------------------

Money out of thin air peer reviewed paper

Here is an article for later reading.

"This study establishes for the first time empirically that banks individually create money out of nothing. The money supply is created as ‘fairy dust’ produced by the banks individually, "out of thin air"."

Can banks individually create money out of nothing? — The theories and the empirical evidence ^☆

article, abstract and read online here:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1057521914001070



PDF here:

http://ac.els-cdn.com/S1057521914001070/1-s2.0-S1057521914001070-main.pdf?_tid=afb9e234-b0ac-11e4-8576-00000aab0f26&acdnat=1423521826_f4796f19196d36de2cc80cb0da3548f3

Pia's passport

The Dispossessed

So, I recently finished the book "The Dispossessed" by Ursula K. LeGuin.

It is now one of my favorite books that I have read so far.

I was also pleased to find the PDF version of the book for free
on theanarchistlibrary.org

Here is a short synopsis from NPR's top 100 Sci-fi books list:

"Unwilling to accept that his anarchist world must be separated from
 the rest of the civilized universe, Shevek, a brilliant physicist, risks his 
life by traveling to the utopian mother planet of Urras."



Here is a quote from the book that I related to personally:

"There is nothing you can do that profit does not enter into, and fear of loss, 

and a wish for power. You cannot say good morning without knowing which of 

you is 'superior' to the other, or trying to prove it. You cannot act like a brother 

to other people, you must manipulate them, or command them, or obey them, 

or trick them. You cannot touch another person, yet they will not leave you alone."

-Ursula Le Guin, 'The Dispossessed'-

And here is something that I was inspired to write myself a few days ago....

"There was a way of controlling the masses of civilization which required 

neither guns nor brain implants. It was a perfect and air-tight procedure. 

It extracted the maximum value from those on the bottom of society and 

sent it directly up to those on the top.

The process was simple. Anytime anyone would question the state 

of 'how things are', their peers, rather than armed troops, would step 

in and quickly humiliate them.

If you suggested that your job did not actually create anything of value 

or that machines might be used to do the work you were quickly called lazy.
If you suggested that there was enough food and shelter for everyone, 

a person just like you stepped in and called you a socialist.
If you questioned wether the wars were inhumane, you were called a 

wimp or unpatriotic.
If you questioned the need for the money system, a polite friend took 

you aside to straighten you out, calling you a utopianist, delusional, 

ignorant of economic science.

If you questioned the motives and honesty of the politicians or the 

media, you were called a conspiracy theorist.
If you questioned the pollution and plastic waste, you were called a 

tree-hugger, with a disgusted laugh.

In this way there was created a kind of social phalanx which could not 

be broken because there was no one to fight. Each slave held the whip 

on his neighbor. Not even the elite rich needed to be aware of the plan. 

They had hidden themselves away behind walled gardens where they 

couldn't see any problem. They could be heard saying "Of corse the 

system works, it works just fine for us." And it did. The structure was perfect. 

The architecture was airtight, top to bottom."
-Neil Collins, from my life.

New Year's Day Dream
Today, January 1st, New Years Day, 2015, I took a nap and then woke up from a vivid and intricate dream. 
The Dream: 
As a gift I got a graphic novel. It was a magic book. The book was blank, like a sketchbook. As I began painting on a page, the book would tell the story by guiding me in what to paint. That would go on for a few pages then it also came with an audiobook. I could listen for awhile then switch back to the painting.Through painting and listening, the story unfolded. At first the story showed an apocalyptic future and explaining how the future had gotten that way. Then the story changed into being about how a Resource Based Economy would come about instead; with many catastrophes, adventures, and idiotic scenarios along the way. I found myself crying as I watched the blundering decisions of the human species. In the end, I saw a series of paintings, in which the donkey and the elephant were doing a variety of absurd activities, surrounded by a scribbled charred mess of a landscape. They played games, they fought, they debated, they held each other at gun point, they competed for paper money - while the earth became a rubble heap; a corpse.