Outsiders Looking In, Sarkocrats, Russian Arks, and my Ark

         I can't help wondering sometimes where I would be now if I actually had done the asylum thing in the right order, doing as I intended, and applying in France in 2003 (as I said before, when I believed it was possible to be granted or I never would have went) before going back to school. I might possibly would have been (more) French by now, (at least I would be able to speak French now) though not a citizen, nor necessarily wanting to become one (though no one anywhere in the world could argue with the value of a Euro-"Green" Card) and Tahiti might eventually have had to become for me a poor substitute for Maui.

        If that were the case, I would be more troubled now, no doubt, by Sarkozy's remarks recently, ("I am appealing to all French people to help France secure a majority ... You have only two weeks remaining to make a choice, two weeks for putting final touches to the revolution you won on April 22 and May 6. You have only two weeks to make a decision on whether, or not, to renew your confidence in me,") sounding as autocratic as ever. By French standard's I would be a right-winger as he (as most Americans would be right-of-center by European political spectrums), and probably would agree with a lot of his policies as being right for France, as I think many of Putin's policies are right for Russia, but it is their personalities though, the power grabbing, even when done in the right direction or for good reasons, they are and should be worrisome.

         Being in France might actually have made writing Humanity as Seen from an Outside Comparative Species Perspective possible (at least my version of it if that title has already been used) because pretty much immediately at the start of first thinking about it, I figured it would have been written (by me) in France in 2009. Not that I am bound by that pattern, bits and pieces of imagined or ideal futures remembered, but just as I would only have written The Power and the Mana on Haleakala, once I get it into my head of connecting what I write to a certain place and time (and sometimes external events) in the future, I either stick to it or don't bother.

         Anyone who has ever taken art seriously would know that if you can't make what you envision the way you imagine it should be, or at least close enough to how it is in your head, you wouldn't want to bother starting. And that makes sense as an artist. If your “vision” cannot be realized, it would not be your creation.

         But life is in the compromises of working with what you have. Sometimes everything not going according to plan is actually better than what you set out to do, but if you are a true artist, or a pig-head, you still would be pissed off. My walls (in my painting phase) were splattered with paint because when I would get frustrated at having made a mistake which could not be touched up, a good release was to throw the brush as hard as I could at the walls.

         The frustration came not from having made a mistake, nor from a lack of being perfect, but simply because I did not have enough money if I messed one painting up to retry it all over again, and even if I did get the money later, I would not wish to repeat it and would prefer to move on to something else, no matter how good the concept was. Life for me is a series of one-offs. Do-overs, the concept of it, it is better to put out of your head unless it is something critically important.

         And sometimes I would take a second look at my “mistakes” and see something salvageable in them, and when I cared to admit it, something better than I set out to do originally. I know the best route is interacting with what you don't expect, can't imagine initially, and combining with it to create new uncharted roads you had not originally intended on taking, but reach the same destinations in new and often better ways. That is growth, life as performance art, jazz, improvisational skits, embracing the unknown not to conquer it but to learn from it.

         The world is changing constantly. What it means to be a member of any political party, ideology, citizen, is constantly in flux because the environment that it is in is changing. I like many Americans consider myself neither left nor right, Republican nor Democrat, but have ideas and opinions which don't fit into a bottle, and where the parties themselves seem to be heading annoys not only people like me, not liking such labels, but away from their “bases”: toward blatant authoritarianism (unitary executives and brown shirts) on the right, and Democratic Leadership Council, "we do chicken (and Resource Wars) right" on the left. Letting themselves be defined by the Conservatives' arguments and language was not enough for the Democrats or “Liberals,” they have become so larva-like, they need new synonyms to be added to the political language for the term "weak."

         Tens of millions on both sides, left and right, Republicans and Democrats, have rightly felt abandoned and disenfranchised. And if you think only 2 parties is enough to represent the will and potentially all ideologies of over 300 million people, you might think that is a bad thing. Or it could be the beginning of not only expecting more, but finally demanding more. If you don't demand anything of your government, your government, even a good one, will always tell you f... off.

         Expatriates are in strange categories. They are more free to criticize their own intolerable to internal dissent governments from a distance, providing that their new host country allows it, and their “origin” state cannot “reach out and touch someone” as the old ad used to say, more aptly perhaps “smack down” WWF style than being touched, but sometimes have to walk on thin ice about talking about the politics of their new homes.

        They are the outsiders looking in, even when they live within. Their perspectives may be valuable, but their opinions are certainly not always valued, no matter their objective worth. They are that of the other, outsiders, sometimes even after you have been living there a long long time. No moral I mean to make there, just an interesting perspective to have when embodied in your circumstances, when someone is put in such a position. I was not, but can understand it.

         Polsci.com was born of some cross currents of this. It was to be political, it was to push things as far as I thought wise to take them at the time, things I would not have dared to write from within the US, but that would take shape according to circumstances. And it was shaped by my home, how I remembered it, how I thought it should be or is when it is doing things as it should. The first “Hawaiian Lyric of the Month” pretty much summed up my whole attitude toward everything at that point. ("I am staying, though I am leaving, I'm just hanging on. I found a reason for staying, I found the beauty is saying, this is my, my home." Jerry Santos, Olomana, "Home")

        I still was. What that meant had to be redefined continuously, constantly, and sometimes exponentially. That is actually what life is when you don't think you know what life is. It is then that you know it more than those who think they do. You know its potential, they know its actual. The actual must give way to the potential. The actual is fleeting. The potential is forever.

         Polsci.com, in addition to the above, and as mentioned in RCP2, was to be my ark. I had lost my name as a domain, decided to take most of what I had written before, combine it with the new things still unformed and forming, notably 2D 3D 4D 5D Thinking Made Simple and its Notes, with of course as the name suggests, things about politics. I had no illusions that the road I was embarking on was of any particular long duration, so every "issue" was to always be a capstone, if not a headstone. Finishing it off for now, and as always maybe for always, in Hawaii was far further along than I had intended when I began it, but it was sweet.

         When I first thought about writing this post, it was when I saw the movie Russian Ark a few months ago, because it was then I realized that the term “ark” best described it. I wanted to combine something similar to what I wrote above with a review of that movie, which was an astonishingly good film, if boring. I missed my chance to see the Hermitage, and probably will never get to go there, but wanted to for a long time, so seeing it in the movie was something I looked forward to as well.

         Though I did see Moscow, which was as I said before familiar to me, and another large part of why I went, to understand that better, all I saw of St. Petersburg was its lights in the distance. It was not really looking back much to see, but it was new, different, and novel. The first Russian cars I saw were junks scattered along the railroad tracks at night. “Wow,” I thought wide-eyed in amazement and straining to see them from my sleeper car, “that's a Lada! Ooh.” Strange and weird as that sounds/is/was, but it is nice to see things through new eyes, and from a safe distance, and preferably in opaque lighting, when for the first time. Once known, or thought to be known, and in light of day, they can seem to be just as rusty junk.

         But finally, to the movie review. It is hard to to do without mentioning the ending, which would spoil it if anyone were to read this (odd enough as that would be), and then to see the movie for the first time after that, (even more improbable) but still I would hate to spoil it for anyone. As I mentioned above, it is a pretty boring movie, even for someone as interested in the museum as I, though anyone can marvel at the technological achievement of it. But it is strange in a good way, and builds to an ending that is brilliantly conceived and well-executed.

        So even if it were not for the novelty of the movie (being shot with hundreds or thousands of actors in a single take), and despite its subject matter being essentially paintings and Russian history, it is ultimately a movie about life from an outsiders perspective, and so well done to almost be poetic. At least in the dim light of a movie theater, that is how it can come across, and show you life from a new perspective. In a harsh light of day, yes, it is a boring movie about paintings and history. So if you do see it, see it at night, when you have time, an open mind, and an unhurried quiet atmosphere around you to appreciate the mystery that is life, strange and new, when seen from a distance through an opaque window.

Not down and out yet, and the perils of mile high blogging

Exactly one day after writing what was to be my last political post ever, have I had decided to shelf my quitting because Chalmers Johnsons Evil Empire article needs to be addressed. It turned up practically everywhere I read and actually said many things which needed to be said, but failed to address some key problems. All in all, it was generally comprehensive and mentioned things I now feel I can readdress (redress?) (<- that looks like red dress :-)

The reason for quitting, mentioning some of the crap I had been put through, most of which should never have happened, capped off recently by being turned down (not that I am upset by that, but was weird given my record) by the only school I can study at (I can still go there but not in the program I wanted, but not the point) I felt more than entitled me to not have to care anymore.

I love when I get to say that, and this time probably it was warranted, but I also did a good job at explaining why I really think it is not my place to 'interfere' with what is about to happen, very strange things in Washington, at a time when the world's fate and democracy at home hang by a hair.

I figured since the only way forward for me in my chosen path, schooling, was blocked at the only University I could reasonably attend (the asylum thing probably rules out going to school out of the country at the moment and this is the only state I would live in), and a public school at that, was a good reason to STFU for awhile. But what Chalmers article raised should neither fall flat nor be unchallenged critically. It is a good step forward.

What I called the press's No Maas moment has not blossomed fully yet but has been surprisingly budding. What I said needed to be 'real time' challenging of the lies has actually occurred. ABC News referred to false claims (again) about a 'rebel' leaders death in Iraq as 'propaganda' and it was. I put 'rebel' in quotes because an overwhelming number of Iraqis want us out of the country, a majority of their Parliament has asked us to begin to withdraw, and it is getting ridiculous that our government still has any pretense that we are their for the Iraq people and not for their oil, or that the attacks against us are a 'minority' or 'criminals' and not what the public at large could do if they only had the ammunition, and not without good reason. Our troops know this is how the public there feels toward their presence, have overwhelmingly said so, and now have been silenced about it on the Internet. Also a leaked poll showing growing animosity of our troops toward innocent Iraqi citizens because of their unwelcomeness there is more damage being done to us, to our soldiers, and our reputation, what is left of it anyway.

And on the real time challenging of lies, talking points, et all, Chris Matthews even had enough yesterday. "There's no German that's fired on an American since 1945. That's not a fair comparison…That is not an acceptable argument! These comparisons to previous eras…it's lazy thinking, Congressman. It's the kind of propaganda that does not help this country understand the situation. You stepped into a dishonest comparison. Some people come on this show over and over again saying things that-JUST-aren't-true." All true and valid except admitting it was he and all the other press who let politicians think they could, and have, gotten away with such distortions and never been called on it, and had no reason to believe he or any other 'journalists' would. But it is progress.

So my polite statement of how the worlds problems are no longer my problems because I have something to seize upon to show I have nowhere academically to turn, no real way forward in my chosen direction other than being made to bide my time and wait, will have to wait a little while. I will 'interfere' a little more though hopefully it will go unnoticed but Chalmers raised some good points, which I will speak about soon.

The Power and the Mana at Truthrevival.org I wanted to mention the backstory about and so will now. It took months to write that because of the logistics involved. I literally started writing it the moment the quote mentioned occurred, which was weird since I did not know the person at the time. The best I could say about her since I did not know her was to refer to her as 'someone I respected' and later, that actually came true. I saw her go out of her way to help others at possible cost to herself repeatedly, not least of all me, for no selfish reason whatsoever. That is the best way, and sometimes the only way others can get my respect, which is why many may have my goodwill and empathy, but never my respect.

The logistics and timing of it depended on several factors. I wanted to write it on the same mountain where it began, Haleakala, which raised problems. One, is I needed a full day to travel up the mountain. Two, unless I used a paper notebook, I needed a notebook computer with a good enough battery to last for several hours to write it all at once. Third, I needed good brakes on my bike, my only transportation at the moment. With my cars, when I had cars, putting them in neutral, they would still speed up to about 70 mph just by rolling.

It took about 6 months for all those 3 factors to line up all at the same time. Even with fairly decent brakes, I still ended up going about 40 mph or more with the brakes almost fully on! On the way down I paraphrased one of my favorite lines from my notes pages to sum up the idea of braking. "The goal ought not to be to stop, for that is impossible. Therefore the goal ought to be to slow down enough so that, if need should arise to stop, death is not a certainty."

Really it did not have to be written on the mountain, but that was where I wanted to write it, and I loved the view from Rice Park, many thousands of feet above the coast. I new that spot and had not been there in years. It took hours to walk and bike up there and minutes to get back down, but high recommended. It will fry your brakes quickly though.

The best failure I can be- Beyond words there are shapes hinting at what can't be said outright

        ... But I still think, though that is obviously better, using language at all in our thinking limits our thinking only to ideas we have been exposed to previously. We need to go beyond the past embodied in language. ... And within that are the great lessons of Eastern thought, Taoism, Buddhism, and Zen: the need to recognize the limitations of languages, and by extension, of cultures, as contextual, limited in scope to those they were originally developed within or for, but needing constant expansion and having that past, that foundation, being put in new contexts through new experiences and greater histories which they cannot contain without constricting them.

from Wordplay here or here

        "Why limit yourself to 3 dimensional shapes for clues," the researcher replied with a wink and a smile. "To the 1 dimensional person, the pattern of the square was simply in the only 2 shapes he knew, lines and dots. With memory and intellect, he could have envisioned a square from it but also could have seen it as anything else. Though the pattern of the square was there to be found, it was more apparent to a Flatlander than it would seem to a 1 dimensional person. "What is it with these repeating patterns of lines and dots?" he might think, and think nothing more of it. A different 1 dimensional person might pick up on it right away. ... because we are trained to think in those terms or see it in that light. If it were something purposely trying to get us thinking in terms unfamiliar to us to begin to be able to explain it and expand our perceptions, it would have that effect on us. Others might pay it no mind at all. Others still yet might see it as a sign from God to do this or that."
        "Through time," he went on, "anything can seem to mean anything to anyone. Higher dimensions need not be divined from geometric shapes for someone to see a pattern that makes them think other dimensions exist. They might see it in a rise and fall of species over time, or the beginning and ending of Universes, or in the stages of life they have lived through. When time itself can be thought to be the medium by which 1D people can envision 2Dness, or 2D people can imagine or deduce 3Dness, anything and everything we experience is as valid as any square or triangle, cube, tetrahedron or Tesseract, for opening our minds to dimensions beyond what we perceive."
        "As scientists we see the logic in understanding or communicating knowledge of our dimensions through shapes down to other lower dimensions when possibly only other scientists would make the connection. Life itself might be the means to convey such information. Life itself is not only to be lived, but begs to be understood. It may be an answer in the form of a question, a question with no definite answers, or nothing needed to be understood at all, just lived. If it does have a point of view to be conveyed, it is best apparent or easiest to understand if it is within all we experience, not hidden in complex numbers or geometric shapes. As a scientist, I might choose to start communicating with a Flatlander or one of lower dimensions by use of number or shapes over time but many other 3D beings might take a different approach entirely."
        "Yes, I think", he concluded, "that life itself is the best thing to use to open up 2D beings to the possibilities of the more confusing to them but simple to us, realities of life in our world. If it was in every aspect of their and our lives, everyone would have an equal chance of realizing, if not by one method, then another. Yet it is not for me to enlighten 2D beings on 3D realities. I as always am content to solve the puzzle immediately before me. As always that is to understand everything or my part in everything."

from 2D 3D 4D Thinking Made Simple (the original ending, now just 1.8)

        (I am) Going a little bit further with shapes in lieu of words before throwing in the towel today at Truthrevival.org. To match my clear dodecahedron, I now should soon be getting a clear cube and clear tetrahedron. Of the so-called 5 Platonic solids, to me there is only 3 really, again matching the 3, 4, 5. The Octahedron and Icosahedron are interesting but only triangular reverses of cubes and dodecahedrons with points (vertexes) in place of sides (faces) and vice-versa. Reversing a Tetrahedron results in another tetrahedron. The MerKaBa shape is a good example of showing this concept of inversing one Tetrahedron to create another identical one in the same way Cubes and Dodecahedrons result in Octahedrons and Icosahedrons. Plus those two are triangular and not of true different sides, so I and some ancient Greeks would regard them as lesser shapes than the Tetrahedron, Cube, and Dodecahedron.

        Much as I saw languages as keys to getting into culture's heads, what concepts they choose to think about or discuss out of all possible to any one in any culture at any time, regardless of opinions about them as regards to their 'morality' or 'rightness' to be thought about or discussed, that limitation down to concrete consciousness-jumping 'communication' or 'thought action' or 'proactive contemplation', :-), which defines a culture at a given time, not by what they think of, but understanding the greater palette, what they purposely choose not to think of, what they willfully omit from their thinking processes, I saw shapes as a more universal contemplation mechanism. They exist much as everything else physical in this world, according to their own logic and rules, not that we don't not see them by our religious, philosophical, and academic biases, the lenses through which we try to impose our own thought 'orders' onto things, to project our attitudes upon nature and universal physical orders.

        And I also know how 'science' does this as well. Our thoughts frame how we think about things. Though many scientists claim to be secular, non-religious, I see, through my own biases no doubt, the Big Bang as yet another creationist myth, a search for a beginning because that is the frame of reference most have to line up their thoughts by like getting ducks all in a row, or all charges pointing north or south in a magnet, a beginning and end, neat and above all else, simple.

        As I stated in the first post about the Dodecahedron, I am aware through contemplating a hyperspheric shaped Universe without beginning or end, all relative to other points in space, that some cosmic topologists have suggested that the Universe is more dodecahedral than hyperspheric. I did not read the article enough to know why exactly that shape, and as I mentioned below, that there was probably something in their data that they interpreted that that explanation was preferable to fit the facts as they knew them at the time.

        This fits in quite oddly with the fact that of the Ancient Greeks associations of the five platonic solids, fire, air, water, etc., it was the dodecahedron which represented the heavens or the Universe beyond earth. The first 'explanation' of this 'co-incidence' is that those who proposed such a recent 'theory' were aware of this and basically, as with all theories, however sound on data, begins with imagination. Essentially the key kernel is realization, or what I can also be called, thinking of something, or lesser put, making -hit up.

        Or one could take the philosophical approach (the word itself coming from the Sophists who basically sat around the Acropolis (came close to getting there and sitting there at one point myself) and basically just mused about the nature of things, essentially making -shit up to talk about and think about) and say that if the Universe is indeed shaped like a Dodecahedron, that intuitive reasoning alone could have led the Ancient Greeks to 'discover' this relationship. Ooh, ah, magical new age mumbo jumbo. Go grab yourself a crystal and sit in the Lotus position and unlock the secrets of the Universe through feeling its vibrations! (Sorry, no disrespect for those who do. That like everything else, that is a valid thing to do, plus it is cheap, better than drugs, and certainly more moral than what most people are doing at the moment.)

        Regardless of cart or horse first, our reasoning gets in the way sooner or later and we frame things according to our frame of reference. The thing about shapes, like numbers, have an order outside of our localized in space and time forms of references. Yes our cultures take these relationships and build up philosophies, religious and otherwise, about these relationships, (tarot cards, numerology, celestial calendars, sacred shapes, etc.) but because they seem to hint at orders beyond our ability to explain them, they will fascinate any being with a mind, a body, and sight or perception to recognize them and make -hit up about why they, those shapes, are there, and by extension why they, those beings, are there.

        I know with a post-perusal viewpoint my own journey through shapes. I know now which 2D things I drew were 'flattened down' 3 and 4 dimensional shapes, which I drew intuitively without knowing why. More in the conscious-of realm, why I thought to make Cube and Tetrahedral-based games, to better understand the internal relationships of sides to faces and internal to external inversion which reaches it logical conclusion when contemplating curved spaces or Universes. My only regret is that I never thought of, in time, actually making a Dodecahedral playing surface to complete the 3, 4, 5 set, though in defense, it would have been hard to draw on a 2d screen without constant spinning it around required to play it.

        I understand now how contemplating Tesseracts led me to have to write 2D 3D 4D 5D Thinking Made Simple because there was no such book for me to read, so I had to write if first pretty much for the sole purpose that I could read it after finishing it. I understand by my own limited means, how objects 'unbend' curved space, and how that made up word relates to another made up word, 'gravity'. This is all simple now and mostly beneath me to contemplate but I have been left with nothing else to do, while awaiting my 'betters' decisions on how best to screw up the world through their lack of courage at confronting events which they pretend not to see about to force themselves through institutions they pretend not to know have failed them and everyone else in the most extreme ways possible.

        In a word, shapes can unlock perspectives inherent within any who have existed or will. They will look at them, and what they will see you can see. What they can know or learn from they, or even just imagine and make -hit up about, you can equally as well. An ancient Greek could possible use them to get inside the head of a modern physicist just as modern physicists through words got into their heads and used their concepts to make atomic weapons from. Time is irrelevant to contemplation, and thinking does defy causality in some ways I have tried to explain, notably in Deconstructing the Universe's Shattering Time, and in some ways best not left attempted to be explained. Despite going off for awhile, I am by and large limited by identity and intended effects of what 'order' I would try to impose on the world, as we all are when we admit it, whether by the religion or culture you were raised it, or by your own unique (and as always, not as unique as you think) viewpoints.

        So before I quit, again, I will end with a relevant quote from Toward Tomorrow to move on to cap my latest 'defeat' as best I can, and hope others will not be so limited by culture as I have been by my own. I tried to improve it, but the 'rules' always required me to defer to those who would lead others lost in the woods until they starved to death, if that was, and remains, their choice.

        ... When we consider great men or women of the past we take into account the worlds they were born into, the level of knowledge common to their times and existences. The less knowledge they had to work with, the less developed science, mathematics, or philosophy they had with which to build up their own ideas or inventions, the more remarkable their achievements can seem. For a child to draw a triangle or square and ponder its significance today seems inconsequential but for the first human who did so, no matter what their age, how remarkable indeed! With that began geometry, which begat trigonometry, which made space travel possible, not only possible but even a logical conclusion to one prehistoric human scribbling shapes in the sand millennia ago. ... Given the length even of what is now thought to be the age of the universe, certainly every great discovery such as the secrets inherent in geometric shapes, or of the atom, or of space/time, or of transdimensionalism, surely all of these have been discovered countless times before and will be rediscovered countless times again after humanity has gone.
        And if time and the universe are infinite in ways we cannot yet begin to fathom, giving birth to itself or new universes in yet another endless cycle of life, if it then could be that nothing can be done, said, sung, drawn, theorized, or lived which had not been done before, it still is no more or less incredible. Thoughts, ideas, dreams, experiences, aptitudes, ambitions, ignorances, and discoveries constantly rearranging themselves trying to come up with something new, something exciting, something different, always failing and yet never really failing completely.
        However many universes are born, or galaxies, or solar systems and planets, however many new species are born and mature enough to contemplate it all, it always is as new and as fresh and as wondrous as each new being born and seeing it all with amazement and joy for the first time, again.

Atoms, consciousness, and military control

From the Notes Part 6, posted almost in real time.

         I have stressed many times the need for people to think in terms of 4 or more dimensions. To me, this is self-evident. Those with sight (eyesight) tend to think in terms of "things" and of this "thing world" (Universe) and "thing beings." Geometry and how "things" are constructed is key to (understanding what lies behind) this type of thinking.

         But the experienced world goes far beyond 3 physical dimensions. Atoms are a quintessential 4 or more dimensional “object.” Only through 4 or more dimensions can electrons “movements” through “non-space” between orbits be adequately explained other than the standard non-explanation, which may as well just call it magical. Also, the interaction between time and movement (electrons) requires multi-dimensional thinking without getting into observer/observed paradoxes.

         Yet consciousness trumps them all requiring many more dimensions to try to explain what it is and how it functions, defying time, even at times causation.

         It seems unlikely that humanity will ever be able to explain all of the implications of this and better understand what Universe we inhabit and how it functions while all of science is ultimately subordinated and subservient to the military for “strategic” advantages, especially in trying to understand the mind, for such studies and insights are always joined hand in hand with how to control it.

         Our aggressive nature and incapacity to pursue a global means to eliminate such mechanisms for controlling thought and progress, seemingly dooms us from finding definite answers about ourselves, our minds, and our worlds, and keeps those professing the most ignorant, ideologically-based close-minded approaches firmly in power, seemingly indefinitely.

         It is no accident ideologues seek to control and harness the military, for it alone has the means to suppress proving them wrong by eliminating research, suppressing facts, and vanishing or breaking or silencing proponents of alternative types of thinking or means of lessening the ever-growing “restraint” of the thinking processes of “free” men and women.