Archive for category Society

Perception Of Time

Our perception of time fluctuates dependent on our state of consciousness. I think it is far more subtle than being relaxed or stressed etc. Sometimes when I am relaxed time seems to go very fast (like on holidays) and sometimes circumstances can be quite similar, buy a different mindset creeps in and time moves slowly.

When I was stressed or bored time used to seem to go quite slowly as well sometimes, but If I am active and engaged time can go by in an instant. Learning subtle brain techniques to change our perception of time has been a goal of mine over the past 10 years.

Various meditative, magickal and psychological (all the same thing really) techniques have shown subtle things I can do to make time go slower and faster.

Taking stock of the moment, and actually recognising each moment as it passes makes time go slowly.
Being very motivated in tasks, and giving them 100% makes time go very fast. Also if you are caught in a narrative, be it watching a movie, being involved in sport or even something at work, having a narrative structure to what you are doing makes time go very fast.

Having a depressed state, mood or low energy makes time go very slowly. If you can learn to break this state then time goes quickly AND you get a lot done during the time.

That is the key idea I think. How we percieve time and how much we can get done in that time. Not that there is anything to do, buy that is entirely another post. If you are energeticly active, time goes fast and you get a lot time.

Time is really linked to subtle psychological states, and these change our perception of it

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Free flights for a year

I just got an email from jetstar offering free flight for a year.

Here is the link http://email.jetstar.com/pub/cc?_ri_=X0Gzc2X%3DS%3ApglLjHJlT%3ATTRU%3AUSYYRYR%3ACBBUYDB%3ASTARWY%3AUUCYUUTBA%3AG%3AaVXtpKX%3DCBCTBWS&_ei_=wgtpgLzeLjkphg%3Dolli%3A%2F%2FLuHptQrLlklHjQJhu%2FimI%2FkM%2Fzghjuepgs%3FXjpX%25U9zcREFJTzc%25TYU91%25TYU6interact2%25TYU62203%25TYU63155050%25TYU68773597%25TYU6126045%25TYU6338533276%25TYU6E%25TYU6Hzezcflzc%25TYU91%25TYU6interact2%25TYU62203%25TYU63155050%25TYU68773597%25TYU6126000%25TYU6338533276%25TYU6Fn%25TYU6H%25TAXLpX%25U9

That’s what I call URL tagging!

Free flight for a year would be pretty amazing. I am not as concerned on the carbon footprint for flying, as I think that the era of jet flight mag peak with oil very soon. You will be lucky if you can fly to the airport, let alone have enough fuel around to fly the plane

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What is the human condition?

The human condition is an existentialist term for the experience of being a human in the world.

It us kind of a weird, undefined term that one hears a lot but never really pins down the exact meaning of. To me it speaks of the sum totality of the experience of all of us on this planet, and how it is all tied together. The human condition is the way we percieve the world, and our experience of living in it.

It almost seems like a problem that needs to be solved, as we try to work out the primary purpse of
how and why we are here, and what are we supposed to be doing individually and collectivly while we are alive.

This core question has been a keystone to religion and mysticism, as well as nationalism and even imperialism.
So ask youself. Why are you here, and what are you meant to be doing.

How do all the identities that you hold on to interact and influence the ideas?

What was your original purpose before culture implanted it’s own Memes into you?

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Twitter and the clones

Twitter is the psyche of the monoculture- the trending topics and public walls all get people thinking down the same lines. They don’t just call them followers for nothing.

Everyone wants the world to conform to their image, but are endlessly bored when this occurs. The ego wants to stand out and be special, but the minute it does it starts to want everyperson and thing to be like it as well.

The process is good for producing cult followers, disciples, employees and citizens, but ultimately not good for the psyche of the creator. It leads to ultimate dissatisfaction and boredom.

You win the battle but lose the war, because as the smoke clears you see an army of clones, armed with your own memes advancing towards your position

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Rails left in the wilderness

I find it facinating how often governments leave old train tracks in place when the lines are discontinued. They must think that they will resurrect them one day. Perhaps when peak oil strikes these rusty old derelects of a less economically rational world will once again provide the link between far flung communities.

Here where I live we actually have a real life steam train that goes about 30 kms inbetween the local communities, and is a popular tourist attraction. It was derelect for many years, I think between the 1930’s to the 60’s becuase of landslides and also it was not used for its original purpose of moving trees, cattle and crops down to the train lain that goes into Melbourne. So in this instance the old track had move purpose, from moving goods to moving tourists. Perhaps after a collapse, other parts of civilization will be repurposed in this way.

There is a real feel to these abandonnded tracks. The idea that so much work went into the construction of the track, and then so many years later the powers that be stop them and let them rust tells us a lot about modern society. We prop structures up while they work for us, and as soon as they stop working for us in an acceptable manner we get rid of them… sometimes. Well we should anyway. But the modern world does not, It goes on with outmoded ways of being, degrading the planet and its citizens further and further until the system will tell us to stop. Maybe we should walk the old tracks, consider why they have been closed down and then look around us.
What other structures, be they personal, business, governmental have served their purpose, and now can be left and not included on our current economies of upkeep.

Everything that we are attached to has an upkeep amount, be it attention, money, oil, physical labour, time spent. As soon as the upkeep amount goes over the incoming funds, the system is in trouble. Once the reserves of when the system was in surplass have run out then the system is over. This idea is fractal, it works for all levels of being, from relationships to suns and galaxies. All systems are an economy, and nothin can run on nothing

Who can see the face in the picture below.. it has been staring at me for the whole time i have been writing this

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Change Derailed From The Inside

In nearly every situation that modern life puts in front of us, there is always a way for people to gain some form of power. It may be to become a boss, a team captain, the alpha male between friends. People seem to always work in hierarchies, especially where there is money involved. For some this power struggle and dominance play is ingrained, and others will always shy away and stay at the level they are on, and not seek to become a leader in any way.

The power hungry run with any kind of token authority that is vested in them via the social situation that they are in. It doesn’t matter if it is a company, a sports team or a community group, it is the power game that becomes primary, and the actual goal of the organization becomes secondary. As Doug Lain pointed out in his recent fantastic appearance on Warty Theorems, the people inside most organisations that are set up to create some kind of social change are generally power starved individuals who use the organisation as a way of grabbing onto some kind of individual power. Even if that power is only internal to that organisation. The organisation then starts to run out of steam to make any external changes, as the internal power struggle comes to dominate the psyche of those that are participating.

holding the snake

A good example of this is Survivor. The TV show is just about this and pretty much nothing else. The fact that they have to eat rice and try to stay healthy in the wild is of secondary consequence. It is the tribal power game, the oldest game in human history that is the real showpiece. And this old story continues on to our newest of societal inventions. In social media, users will covet whatever cache power that can be found in the network. People want more followers, more visits to their profile pages. There is no financial goal (most of the time) for this, or even any kind of ‘real world’ benefit in doing this. It is just so ingrained in our heads that it feels like a natural thing to do, no matter what the actual payoff is.

From looking at the above we can safely say that these power structures are an inherent feature of organised human behavior. I feel that we can both embrace this fact and participate, or we can shun any kind of mass movements of people and go the solo route. I think that the idea of running away from these situations needs to be addressed, and that we should look at ways that we can work with these natural tendencies to get things done. Too many people do not try to make any kind of change in society that may need the organisation of a number of people, or even join community situations where the participation itself would be beneficial to their mental and physical health, due to the factor that for someone with half a clue, these power games are tedious at best.

So how can we harness this natural tendency in people to seek power? I don’t have the answer, and only use this as an example of one of the fundamental things that would need to change for the current power structures

Groups do need leaders; however they do not need leaders that are looking out for themselves. They need leaders that are looking after the needs of those that are the constituents of the group. The trouble is, the only reason these people really get to be leaders is because they are excellent at looking out for themselves.

You can see how free market capitalism really gets the edge here, as it relies on people chasing their own self interest to get the goals of greater society achieved (via careful management of those that are really in power i.e. governments)

Maybe the best way to bring these kinds of games to a close, and get organisastions working in a more equitable and single focused direction would be to bring this behavior to the light. Have it in the charter, in the newsletter, on the website. Basically a statement saying we know that this goes on, we don’t want it here. Leaders are elected at x time via straight democratic process. Anyone seen to be taking their own interest over that of the group will be reprimanded in a pre determined way.

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There Is A Special Kind Of Nerd

Wow here I am back here and writing another post. Who would have thought after another long abscence that I would think to post something back here. But here I am, full of suprises.

For those of you that stop by and have a look, I give you this insightful jpg.

It makes a very valid point. Technology only goes so far at doing so much. Beyond that its time for people to wake up and realise that there is more to the world then pixels and chips and AI driven wish machines.

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Heretics and Information Integrity

In the past thousands of years (as soon as some kind of orthodox religion sets in and gets a recognized priesthood), as soon as people develop within themselves spiritually, and continue to remain inside a traditional organisation, they are labeled a heretic and most people do not want to hear their views.

Those in power actively suppress and persecute them, and those in the group who do not also realise the new truth quickly will shun them.

Its like those in charge know that just being exposed to an idea that has dissonance with the consensus world view changes the receiver of the message.

I think at some level it is not the “truth” of the claims by the heretic that those in the established power do not want others to hear, it is more that they want to hold up the “Information Integrity” (there’s a new term for you) of the established tradition.

Introducing evolutionary noise into their closed system will transform it, destroy it. It will break down the power hierarchies (that’s one of the best things that free flowing information does) and open people up to new world views.

The internet has been great for this, and for showing people that there are many other free thinkers out there. And sure, a lot of it may be rubbish, and your own internal filters get better and better and sorting that out as you progress. Better have the choice to use your internal filtering system than having information sanitised and drip fed to you.

This whole idea of internal filters is something that I have talked about elsewhere in the past. It’s this whole yin / yang concept.  It’s about having a dynamic balance between a closed and open mind. By looking for the interesting, genuine and wondrous while still remaining skeptical, balanced and grounded. There are no clear answers for this, its all about knowing what the correct action is in the present moment (that one of my own definitions for enlightenment by the way.)

And another thing while I perch on the virtual soapbox a second longer, what is the point of having ’spiritual movements’, if they don’t allow people to spiritually grow? Spiritual growth isn’t learning to do the practice better, the rituals more precisely, to recite the dogma straight from the text the clearest.

It’s about having insight, and using these to grow, share, create and live.

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The Edge Of Culture Is A Bit Friendlier

Culture as a whole may not be your friend, but the edge of culture is an area that you should be very friendly with. For every marketing driven fad and gimmicky flash in the pan, there are also beginnings of movements that could shake the established ways of society to the core. New styles of writing, music, dance, art, as well as world views and social theories all present the world to us in a different way that we haven’t seen before. To bring it back to a theme that I talk about a bit on this site, what they do is create noise  that disrupts the signal that mainstream culture and established forms pump out to the population, and make people re-evaluate what they like, and how they see the world.

These new form then become part of the overall evolving cultural framework, merging with other forms, morphing, changing and spawning new forms and movements

Emerging cultural trends are the only place that there is any chance for something vital to occur. They either become new movements, or merge into existing forms and change them, resetting their direction. All of this happens in very strange ways, with movements becoming vectors for ideas, inserting viral memes into subcultures and the over culture as a whole. Look at what late 60’s rock music did for the hippy lifestyle. Because people dug the tunes, a whole lot of other ideas piggybacked into their lives as well like peace, love, environmentalism, drug use, eastern philosophy, new age ideas, fashion trends and lifestyle choices.

Of course, eventually every cultural trend will eventually be co-opted by the marketing driven corporate machine and ground down through a predictable, vampiristic cycle of abuse and over exposure. The key is to go back and look at the original spirit of the movement, and look at what made the originators come up with the style.

Also, I don’t want to contradict myself, but I do see a lot of sense in people using traditional forms to express themselves and their ideas. Traditional views of things like magick, shamanism, meditation have worked well and served people for thousands of years. If you really look at these things that appear on the surface as timelines, what you see is the  most staid and steady cultures are still not too stagnated and full of dogmatism (at least in some areas and by some practitioners). They still allow themselves to be vital, for the nuances of the form to flourish, for fresh insights to allow the practice to evolve and mature. As soon as everyone knows all the tricks, the fun soon goes out of the game.

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The information field of sports

It is amazing the more you use something like the random Wikipedia tool, you really begin realise just how much information that sports takes up on the internet, and in the minds of the general population. There are hundreds of different major sports, each with different codes, leagues, teams, players, coaches. And this information changes on a yearly basis. There are new statistics recorded every week, new dramas around events both on and off the field.

Keeping this much information out there for people to carry around in their heads on a weekly basis, or to immerse themselves in is a great way from them to distract themselves from the rest of their lives. I saw that the prime minister of this country was on the television yesterday at the half time of the football, saying that in “In these tough economic times football is one of the things that brings the community and a nation together.”

While I don’t mind the occasional game, and do follow a team, I do see that at one level sports is nothing more than coliseum games put on to keep the peasants from realising just how dire their circumstances are and revolting in the streets.

Next time you are hunting for information out there, just take notice of how often sports results, news or stats appear while you try and find the information you are after, or are randomly surfing about

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