Naomi Klein on the Colbert Report

Naomi Klein on the Colbert Report

Naomi Klein wants us to be prepared for leaders to take advantage of us in moments of crises.

Hakim Bey: Evil Eye

Evil Eye
By Hakim Bey

Excellent! Some excerpts:
The Evil Eye -- mal occhio -- truly exists, & modern western culture has so deeply repressed all knowledge of it that its effects overwhelm us -- & are mistaken for something else entirely. Thus it is free to operate unchecked, convulsing society in a paroxysm of Invidia. Invidious Envy -- the active manifestation of passive resentment -- projected outward thru the gaze (i.e. thru the whole language of gestures & physiognomy, to which most moderns are deaf, or rather which they are not aware of hearing).

It's especially when we're unconscious of such magic that it works best -- moreover, it's known that the possessor of the Eye is nearly always unconscious -- not a true black magician, but almost a victim -- yes, but a victim who escapes malignity by passing it on, as if by reflex.

In more traditional worlds (worlds of the "symbolic order" as Benjamin puts it, as opposed to worlds of "history"), I've noticed that people remain much more attuned to the languages of gesture; where there's no TV & "nothing ever happens", people watch people, people read people. Passersby in the street pick up your mood, & according to their temperament they clash with it or harmonize with it or manipulate it. I never knew this till I lived in Asia. Here in America, people react to you most often on the basis of the idea you project -- thru clothes, position (job), spoken language. In the East one is more often surprised to find the interlocutor reacting to an inner state; perhaps one was not even aware of this state, or perhaps the effect seems like "telepathy". Most often, it is an effect of body language.

I've heard it said that the Mediterranean & Mideast worlds evolved a complex phenomenology of the mal occhio because they are more given to envy than we Notherners. But the Evil Eye is a universal concept, missing not in any space (such as the chill & rational North) but only in time -- to be exact, in historical time, the time of cold Reason. Reason's protection against magic is to disbelieve it, to believe it out of Reason's universe of discourse. "Asia's defense against magic is more magic -- in this case, the blue stone (common from Lebanon to India, maybe even farther East) or else, in the Mediterranean (our own "Asia"), the downpointed bull-sign of the fingers, or the phallic amulet.

But Reason & Magic are both superstitions ("left-over beliefs"). I suggest that the mal occhio "works"; but my analysis is neither rational nor irrational. Who can explain the complex web of signs, symbols, forces & influences that flow & weave between such enigmatic monads as ourselves? We can't explain how we communicate, much less what. If the "symbolic order" was replaced by "history", & if History itself is somehow now in the process of "disappearing", perhaps we may at last breathe free of the fogs of magic & the smogs of reason. Perhaps we can simply admit that "mysteries" such as the Eye -- or even "telepathy" -- somehow appear in our world, or seem to appear, which means simply that they appear to appear, & thus that they appear.
...
The Nuer belief that all accident, illness & death are caused by witchcraft. Most Nuer witches are unaware of themselves as witches. They suffer from envy. According to our tribal beliefs, all accidents are accidental - no one is to "blame". We suffer from envy, but we are "innocent". Frankly I can't believe either the Nuer witch-finders or the pundits of our own mechanistic worldview. Both belief-systems are "disappearing" anyway - why should I buy passage on their sinking ships? Things are so much more complex than either worldview can imagine that, in effect, things are much more simple than either of them would have us believe.

I mean: the effect of two human beings on each other occur on so many levels that flat concepts like witchcraft or accident can't begin to do it justice. And yet, matters are not nearly as tangled & dark as the theory of witchcraft would have us believe, nor so brutal, so industrial, as the theory of the mechanistic universe. The body knows much without knowing, the imagination sees much that it does not need to understand. The body & the imagination overstand - they are above mere understanding & its clumsy abstractions.
...
The opposite of the gaze of love is not the gaze of hate, but that of envy, passive, unliving in itself, vampirically attracted to the life in others. A barren woman sees a pretty newborn baby -- she praises it to the skies, but her words mean the opposite of what they say; unknown even to her, her gaze pierces direct to the infant's breath. Are we so certain that the language of gesture is weak, an evolutionary appendix soon to be bred out of the species? -- do we not suspect that it is strong, powerful enough to attract love, or to make sick, even to kill?

Everywhere in our world this deadly gaze is directed at us, as in Bentham's Panopticon. We are described to ourselves as victims, as patients, as passive focal points of misery -- we are shown ourselves deprived of this or that commodity or "right" or quality which we most desire. The ones who tell us this -- are they not the rich, the powerful, the politicians, the corporations? What could we still possess to awaken in them such invidia, & the endless assaults of their mal occhio?? Could it be that unknown to us or to them) we are alive & they are dead? The TV screen can be an ultimate Evil Eye -- because it is already dead, & the dead (as Homer showed us) are the most envious of all beings. Everything mediated is dead, even this writing -- & the dead yearn for life. I've tried to protect this text against being an Evil Eye, as well as against the Evil Eye itself, by including in it the names of the appropriate charms. But prose alone will never do the trick. There must occur enchantment, a singing that changes (our perception of) reality. Or better, the blue breath of the serene sky, or the hot moment of the thrusting cock.

Envy is an abstraction because it wants to "take away from." The Evil Eye is its weapon in the psychic/physical world. Against it, then, must stand not another abstraction (such as morality) but the solidest of fleshy realities, the over-abundant power of birth, of fucking, of azure breezes. The amulet we fashion against an entire society of the Evil Eye can be no more & no less than our own life, adamantine as stone & horn, soft as sky.

Read the full version of "Evil Eye" by Hakim Bey

Armand Van Helden - Into your eyes (They Live spoof music vid)

Armand Van Helden - Into your eyes (They Live spoof music vid)

Comments

When commenting on this blog, you can choose the "open id" option, which just requires you to type a (nick)name. You do not require an account of any kind. What I mean by "open-minded comments and BS Filter is on": is to be conscious with language (more so than generally on the internet). For (contrived ;p) instance in starting a dialogue "In my opinion this seems like that" instead of "this is that and that's how the f it is", to prevent BS - Belief System Bullshit and the emotional (illogical) defense thereof. Peace! (Ps: I posted some more on my info-dump stumbleupon blog lately, as I'm less critical of what I post there.)

Don Miguel Ruiz: Every Mind is a Universe

Don Miguel Ruiz: Every Mind is a Universe

Science Non-Fiction for the Star Wars Fan

Science Non-Fiction for the Star Wars Fan

Starring Dean Radin. From www.kobb.us

Everything is Illuminated

Well, not everything :p

The Conspiracy Theorist Reality Tunnel when seeing this title said: "Bragging sons of bitches!" We might interpret this as the pseudo-Illuminated ones - the iHollywood branch - laughing straight in our faces, letting us know they run shit. Though the title is from a book and the words are incomplete (to make a sentence which will indeed 'illuminate' everything, see later), the Skeptic RT relaxes the CT RT though both are intrigued and get along fine! (as no RT believes its assumptions)

What is this supposed to be in the title screen? (I turned it on its side)
A Harlequin fetus? Extradimensional Reptilian? Grasshopper? Any ideas?

Everything is Illuminated (trailer feat. Devotchka's How it Ends) is a li'l movie with Elijah Wood and the great Eugene Hutz from Gogol Bordello (Wonderlust King) who plays a Ukranian with his own brand of English. (Unfortunately he's also in another movie... Madonna's directorial debut - ROFL! Try saying that with a straight face!)

I really liked this one, though some subliminals and symbolism really stick out warranting a post like this.

It's based on a book by Jonathan Safran Foer, whose second (and only other) novel is about 9/11, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. From the Wiki:

This is one of the first American works of fiction to incorporate the attacks of September 11, 2001, (the first one was the 9/11 commission report!) as a pivotal theme in its plot. The use of reality (lol?!) is a very crucial aspect that affects all elements of the novel.
Another important theme stressed in the novel, which seems to correlate with the theme of the attacks, is the key that Oskar finds in an envelope in a vase that he accidentally knocked over (how the hell is synchronicity in nearly every work of fiction and remains so unknown?!).
The key causes him to embark on a hunt for a solution to a great mystery (I'm guessing it's not What Really Happened on 9/11 lol)—a kind of detective story that involves an answering machine containing tape recordings of calls made on the morning of the "worst day," which was hidden in a closet. The key symbolizes Oskar's search for why and what exactly happened to his father.

The CT RT notices flexibly that Foer's first book got a lot of (controlled?) press, guaranteeing the sale of a lot of books. From the wiki:

Foer is one of the more controversial novelists of the past decade, not for the content of his writing, but rather for the extremely polarized responses he elicits from readers. The Times proclaimed that the book was "a work of genius," that Foer had "staked his claim for literary greatness," and that "after it, things will never be the same."
Harry Siegel 's Extremely Cloying & Incredibly False (wait to read this article till you finish this post please) is a review on the other side of the spectrum about the author... Which I can kind of understand, cause the crazy mofo included this:
"Much has been made of the flipbook with which Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close ends, a series of pictures of a silhouette falling from the towers, rearranged so that as one turns or flips the pages, the figure ascends instead of falling..." Harry Siegel

Foer defends himself with a quote in the article (wait! :p You'll spoil the ending of this post) but doesn't fully redeem himself in my humble temporary flexible opinion.

Back to Everything is Illuminated: The movie's theme is about Anti-Semite BS and the Nazis, which was another Illuminati-operation (an iOperation), so Everything is Illuminazi'd?

The movie is quite light hearted and funny despite the sometimes serious subject matter. I won't spoil all of it, just share some observations, and a little this and that.

The movie starts largely in Odessa, Ukraine. During a drive to the train station where a Ukranian dude and his grandpa will pick up Elijah Wood's character, we see the 'Hotel Odessa'.
ODESSA, also stands for the German phrase Organisation der ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen, which in turn translates as “Organization of Former Members of the SS,” is the name given to an international Nazi network alleged to have been set up towards the end of World War II by a group of SS officers in order to prevent their prosecutions for war crimes.
The CT RT can't help possibly interpreting this as a really sick fucking joke. Letting a (Illumi)Nazi-themed movie start in Odessa...

During the aformentioned drive this little subliminal is flashed on a billboard for a split second. It appears to be a hanged woman, on the left at the bottom, that's a 'Skull & Bones'. Another iOrganization.

Elijah Wood's character Jonathan - Hutz's character Alex calls him 'Jonfen' in his premium English (Which I love and found hilarious cause I used to telephone with a lot of Eastern-Europeans when I was working as a Computer Support Engineer at an international company before I went down the rabbit hole) - goes to the Ukraine to find a woman who saved his grandfather during WW2. Alex his Ukranian family, who make money off Jewish people coming there to look for lost relatives, will help him along with his pseudo-blind grandfather and...

Upon arriving at the car, where we see the driver sleeping with sunglasses on. Jonathan gets scared by a crazy barking dog in the car, called Sammy Davis Jr. Jr. (named after likely iMember Sammy Davis Jr. was in Lavey's Church of Satan, member of the Rat Pack, and converter to Judaism after an accident on U.S. Highway 66.)

The dog barks from in the car and Jonathan is scared back a little.

Alex: Please do not be distressed, this is only driver's seeing eye bitch!
Jonathan: You mean he's blind?
Alex: Nooo! Only he thinks this. Please, do not be distressed...
Jonathan: I can't get into the car. I have a phobia.
Alex: ?
Jonathan: A Fear.
Alex: ?
Jonathan: I'm distressed by dogs.
Alex: [in Russian to Grandfather] He is afraid of dogs.
Grandfather: [in Russian to Alex] Bullshit! No one is afraid of dogs!
Alex: [to Jonathan] My grandfather informs me that is not possible.

Haha. The officious Dog Star seeing iBitch.

During the trip they pass a random nuclear sign. Which is obviously not another eye, in a triangle.



Speaking of eye

This stargate monument stands in memory of the 1024 Trachimbroders...



German fascism = iFascism = Eye-Fascism.

Ok let's slowly move from conspiracy to consciousness now...

I only noticed at the end of the movie that Alex is wearing a jacket the entire movie with a Saturnian type logo (the red patch & gold planet on the jacket), another Eye in a Circle type symbol. (I also noted a hexagonal pattern on a floor somewhere but can't find it back ;p)

Jonathan's grandfather's girlfriend at the time buried her ring before being shot by the Nazis and they find it through a woman:

Alex: "She says the ring is not here because of us. We are here because of the ring."

let's do some comparing to another movie: Find the ring Frodo (Elijah Wood)! lol

'The ring is not here because of Frodo. Frodo is here because of the ring."

The Ring symbolizing Saturn=The Lord of the Rings.
Saturn resonates a lot, including death (maybe 1024 Trachimbroders?), the god of agriculture, founder of civilisations and of social order and conformity. Some exchange Wedding Rings, to symbolize discipline and obedience... qualities of Saturn. The bright side is seemingly that Saturn can impart serenity and wisdom. And the wisdom of Saturn is the wisdom of the Earth itself.

"Death is not here because of us. We are here because of death."
"Death is not here because of Life. Life is here because of death."
Or in one word: Duality. Just playing with it here. What is intrinsic about Duality? Interconnectedness. The Yin and Yang symbolizes the duality in nature and all things in Taoism. Balance, where two opposites co-exist in harmony and are able to transmute into each other.

At the end... a narrative by Alex explaining the title, as within so without:

"I have reflected many times upon our rigid search. It has shown me that everything is illuminated in the light of the past. It is always along the side of us, on the inside, looking out. Like you say, inside out. Jonathan, in this way, I will always be along the side of your life. And you will always be along the side of mine... Jonfen, I am sending you this because we have shared something to exist for. And, of course, in case anyone comes searching."

The movie nearly ends with Jonathan going back home and recognizing a lot of seeming familiar Ukranian faces at the airport. In the next scenes the 2 main characters are then simultaniously at their grandfather's graves. More synchronicity!

So Everything is Illuminated really means Everything is Connected.

We finish with another quote by the angry critic Harry Siegel, BS this time:

"The (9/11) book's themes—the sense of connection we all feel when the coffee or acid hits and everything is illuminated, the brain-gurble and twitch and self-pity we all know better than to write about—have nothing to do with the attack on the towers, or with Dresden or Hiroshima, which Foer tosses in just to make sure we understand what a big and important book we're dealing with."

So the interconnectedness of everything... has nothing to do with something... Harry?! ;p

I had a huge déjà-vu wrapping this up too.

update: more at Alienpunk.

Large Hadron Collider: "Public" chooses 'Halo' as its new name

Large Hadron Collider: "Public" chooses 'Halo' as its new name (psst, nope!)

"The name 'Halo' sounds much catchier and should adorn the £4.4 billion experiment, according to a poll organised by the Royal Society of Chemistry in London."
Hey, how about minding your own science, royal pain in the ass chemists? I guess they were bored, when they were not reading about the LHC! lol!

"But this 'fails to reflect the drama of its mission, or the inspiration it should be conveying to the wider public,' says Dr Richard Pike, chief executive of the Society."
Yeah! Here come the chemists to remind us what's important, the public image of something!

"After sifting more than 2,500 responses, ranging from The Big Banger to Infinite Devil Machine and The Matter Splatterer, it has now selected a winner to rechristen the vast enterprise."
"The public" from the title apparently = 2,500 responses with not a single decent one quoted here lol.

"Halo conjures visions of radiant beauty, power and wisdom. The circle of light reflects the collider's form; it is a crowning achievement of science and engineering. It also gives more than a nod to the experiment's importance to religious debate."
Oh rly? It conjures up visions of a shitty overrated X-Box game for the non-English. Btw that game takes its name from Halo Megastructures, which is taken from the Ringworld sci-fi novel by Larry Niven, in which Halo Megastructures are (really) basically huge ringed Stargates which contain worlds. A Halo is another stargate symbol, obviously, and check out the last words of this post!

"But the Society has dismissed the suggestion that it was suffering from 'professional jealousy'. 'Far from it. The RSC congratulates the physics community with nothing but admiration for their amazing project - it just has a very boring name.'"
"We think you guys are doing great work, but you have no taste and we still get more chicks than you."

"James Gillies, a spokesman for CERN said: 'We're flattered that the RSC should take such an interest in our public image, and we find the name Halo to be apposite (appropriate :p). However, the LHC will not be changing its name.'"
*Guitar solo*

To reflect the endless quest to find the answer to life, the universe, and everything, some suggested Cern should name the experiment after the computer designed to do just that in Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Deep Thought.
Other favourites were:The Particrasher, E=M25, The Big Banger and Big Bang Two Point Oh, Collider-torus Rex, The Boffin's Bagel and Doughnut of Discovery.
Telegraph readers also rose to the challenge with several hundred suggestions. They came up with:
Ovid's Phaeton
The Magic Roundabout
The Genesis Engine
E42 - E for Energy, 42, from The Hitchhikers Guide
Adam Smasher
Hawkinator after Stephen Hawking
Puff The Magic Hadron
Bosonator
BOB - Biggest Of Bangs
Mr Twirly Beams
The One Ring
Stargate

Derren Brown and a BS exercise

Inspired by this post at Posthuman Blues and the comments!

Derren Brown and a BS exercise. First watch this:

Derren Brown: Staring Competition

Then: watch this

Then read the YouTube comments of that second video.
If you didn't notice, I'd like to point out that some YT comments got over 200 robot thumbs up because they defended a mutual belief.

Exercise:
How convinced are you of your convictions about this?
How many times did you get (unnecessarily) emotionally involved?
Were some of the commenters able to make you look back to both videos?
How many times did you switch sides?
Are you thinking, seeing, or believing?
Do you think you have enough evidence to judge if Derren Brown is a fraud from this post?

"'Seeing' is not a function of the eyes alone, but of the eyes-and-brain working together. A popular proverb says, 'Seeing is believing,' but as the philosopher Santayana once pointed out, humans are much better at believing than at seeing."
Robert Anton Wilson

Thanks again Posthuman Blues

A.J. Ayer, a prominent skeptic's beliefs challenged by NDE

Thanks to Càm for this:

Sir A.J. Ayer (October 29, 1910 – June 27, 1989), was a British philosopher known for his promotion of logical positivism, particularly in his books Language, Truth and Logic (1936) and The Problem of Knowledge (1956).

Ayer was the Grote Professor of the Philosophy of Mind and Logic at the University College London from 1946 until 1959, when he became Wykeham Professor of Logic at the University of Oxford. He was president of the Aristotelian Society from 1951 to 1952. He was knighted in 1970.

Ayer is famous for his philosophical work promoting the idea that metaphysics is meaningless and only that which is empirical (receptive to the senses) during everyday ordinary consciousness is verifiable, otherwise it is 'meaningless'. Like all 'positivists' he was relentlessly skeptical (dismissive) about anything out of the ordinary.

Well, I just heard today, near the end of a presentation I gave on quantum mechanics, from the professor in charge that A.J. Ayer had a near death experience (NDE) during the later years of his life and experienced divinity during that period. After this experience he started suggesting that what he had written (his careers work) was now necessarily all wrong!

"In 1988, Ayer reported having near-death experience, after having nearly choked to death while eating. His heart was said to have stopped beating for several minutes until he was resuscitated. A few years back there was some controversy over Ayer because of accounts given by the attending physician, Dr. Jeremy George who claimed that upon awakening, after his hear-stoppage, Ayer said, "I saw a Divine Being."

Ayer said:
"I'm afraid I'm going to have to revise all my various books and opinions."

Ayer's wife was quoted as having said something like "Freddy is so much nicer since he died," in reference to his near-death experience.

"Did you know that I was dead? The first time that I tried to cross the 'river' I was frustrated, but my second attempt succeeded. It was most extraordinary. My thoughts became persons." - A.J. Ayer's words upon resuscitation

The full description of Ayer's NDE mystical experience:

"The only memory that I have of an experience, closely encompassing my death, is very vivid.
I was confronted by a red light, exceedingly bright, and also very painful even when I turned away from it. I was aware that this light was responsible for the government of the universe. Among its ministers were two creatures who had been put in charge of space.
These ministers periodically inspected space and had recently carried out such an inspection. They had, however, failed to do their work properly, with the result that space, like a badly fitting jigsaw puzzle, was slightly out of joint.
A further consequence was that the laws of nature had ceased to function as they should. I felt that it was up to me to put things right. I also had the motive of finding a way to extinguish the painful light. I assumed that it was signaling that space was awry and that it would switch itself off when order was restored.
Unfortunately, I had no idea where the guardians of space had gone and feared that even if I found them I should not be able to communicate with them.
It then occurred to me that whereas, until the present century, physicists accepted the Newtonian severance of space and time, it had become customary, since the vindication of Einstein's general theory of relativity, to treat space-time as a single whole. Accordingly, I thought that I could cure space by operating upon time.
I was vaguely aware that the ministers who had been given charge of time were in my neighborhood and I proceeded to hail them. I was again frustrated. Either they did not hear me, or they chose to ignore me, or they did not understand me. I then hit upon the expedient of walking up and down, waving my watch, in the hope of drawing their attention not to my watch itself but to the time which it measured. This elicited no response. I became more and more desperate, until the experience suddenly came to an end."

This experience, couped with countless others from people who have had similar experiences is rather strong evidence that death does not put an end to consciousness.

"The materialist fundamentalists are funnier than the Christian fundamentalists, because they think they're rational!" Robert Anton Wilson

From the wiki: Shortly before his death in 1989 he received publicity after having an unusual near-death experience, which has often been misinterpreted as a move away from his lifelong and famous religious skepticism (which is not the same as mystic or spiritual skepticism...). Of the experience, Ayer first said that it "slightly weakened my conviction that my genuine death ... will be the end of me, though I continue to hope that it will be." However, a few days later he revised this, saying "what I should have said is that my experiences have weakened, not my belief that there is no life after death, but my inflexible attitude towards that belief". Ayer was the BBC's famous atheist front-man. Ayer wrote an article in 1988, "What I saw when I was dead." In 2001 Dr. Jeremy George, the attending physician, told William Cash, who had written a play about Ayer, that Ayer had confided to him: "I saw a Divine Being. I'm afraid I'm going to have to revise all my books and opinions."

Thanks to Càm