* Although I hear that nothing disappears once it is posted on the internet, I myself have posted loads of stuff that is no longer available at the places I left it, Including the first two chapters of this 1999 work of Cosmology. With this first chapter I attempt to establish a broad shared exceptance of a number of basic elements that make up every person's life. Altough you may feel this exercise seems pointless because you learned all of these points in childhood, it can be useful to consider in each meditition, that there are many people who lack one or many of these understandings, and the negative effects these have on their lives, personalities and relationships. *

More On Civil Disobedience

By Comic Book Shaman

Chapter 1

To Do Whatever I Want, Whenever I Want To

Education

What We All Want

People live under constraints. We all feel yearnings, each person with her own individual desires. Whatever your dreams or station in life you have one thing in common with everyone else. That is, that you are yourself. Within your family, within your school or job or profession, within your church or your sangha or your basketball team you are a unique individual. There are suprisingly few real differences between one individual and another at her core. We all want four things: happiness, security, employment and prosperity.

2. Condensed Truth

Although this truth has been well recognized in academic and political circles there is little agreement on how we may all have it. I shall be so bold as to state to you now that I have considered this question deeply and find that I am able to express its answer concisely and directly. This expression is a work of Art, expressed in the form of the book that you hold in your hands. In it I condense a lifetimes search for truth in art, literature, popular culture, religion, history, philosophy, economics, and politics. By testing and comparing facts and theories, consuming and appreciating and evaluating art and culture I have amassed a certain volume of truth, which I understand thoroughly, and which I propose to express succinctly to you now.

Nature of Truth

The foundation of even the smallest truth is education. I am the product of a public school education. I graduated from a typically appalling high school and briefly attended a rather good university, long enough to understand the essence of our educational system. That is, essentially, you pay a lot of money for a degree that in turns buys you into the closed doors of commerce, education and politics. What offended me at 18 years of age still offends me at 42, and is the assumption that college will instill real value in a person that she couldn’t find somewhere else. This assumption is the result of what I term“holdover values.” That is beliefs and understanding held over from bygone stages of human development. In my lifetime there was no VCRs or cable T V, in my parents lifetime there was no television at all, in their parents lifetime there was no radio or automobiles. Each new innovation brings about new truth, and with it, out goes old truth. It is as simple as that, as inescapable as gasoline taxes: To know truth one must constantly seek it throughout her life, and carefully examine it anew to be sure that it has not passed away.

Begin with an Interest

The belief in the efficacy of public education is held over from a time before my grandparent’s generation, when the wonder communication devise was the telegraph. Art and culture didn’t just come to you. You had to seek them out with determination, if you could find them at all. So they were concentrated into colleges and were distilled down to schools in individually whimsical manners. To “be some one”(specific) one had to learn in the only game in town, the college or university. The lyric “Who needs T V ‘cause I got T Rex!” illustrates the concept of the transcended mind. The concept that may leap, from material gratification to something material within the mind; the goal of a college education. The goal is to create a well rounded person who can work and make her dreams come true, support her family, fulfill her obligations, contribute to her church and her causes and generally benefit society in her existence.

Self Taught

I tell you plainly that a person can have all of these things and more without a college education and one may acquire a college education and yet possess none of them. A person can only be so elevated by her own effort and perseverance. All the money and advice and good intentions in the world will not let you succeed to your full potential until you can assess yourself, your knowledge, experience and understanding and see your life in context with the whole world. To learn how we must only be interested.

Gratification

Interest and learning go together so well that I am surprised they have not been linked together as interchangeable. Pursuing an interest and learning more about it brings gratification. Of course gratification spurs further interest, greater learning and a broadening of the intellect. Learning can be fun for everyone but it helps to recognize its physical demands. Learning is work and work makes you tired. You can only absorb a limited amount at one time, however great that volume might be. We see it and feel it in conversation. You may like the topic but prolonged concentration gives you a headache. We become tired and all sorts of thoughts and emotions are evoked within us. These are physical manifestations of learning.

Cartoon People

As interest is individual it follows that a person should be free to choose what she will learn, and even when she will learn it. Our present system dictating a rigid curriculum to everyone at every grade level is absurd and unworkable. As proof I need merely point to the chaos in our classrooms and to the poor academic achievements of a generation who are more sophisticated at 8 years of age than their grandparents became in their lifetime. Television, Movies, the Internet, these cannot teach us everything, but indeed they have taught us something. They have made of us beautifully colored cartoon people who know all the whats. What’s cool, what’s happening, what’s smart, what’s dangerous and what’s the sure-fire road to success. Unfortunately there isn’t much of the why and how to be had in popular culture, leaving us to fall short in our endeavors and blaming others for our own lack of depth.

Deportment

Who Am I?

Who am I? Children want to know, and when I say children I mean everyone. Each of us has a picture of herself, which is, sometimes only distantly, related to reality. Beginning with what we are taught and built with what we have learned is a Frankenstein we call our personality. Assembled of scraps of old movies and bits of Bible verse unconsciously arrived at or coldly calculated, our personality steers our lives like the rudder on a boat through the turbulence of our lives. Contrary to popular belief, it is possible to control your personality if you have insight into it. To do so we must know what we want.

What to Want

Within the framework of the Big Four: happiness, security, employment and prosperity, each individual has some formula for achieving them, however unclear, inadequate or unworkable. Those who can focus can hit the target while those with unformed personalities are left to struggle. You must learn what to want, and decide what price you are willing to pay to have what you want. Don’t be fooled by appearances. Look deeply at your desires and consider at length what they will cost in more than money, and what their fulfillment will mean as a practical matter.

10.

Things Even Out

So you move forward carefully. With effort you decide what you want yourself to be, and then what happens? You run into other people doing the same thing you are with greater and lessor success. If you are lucky you can choose most of your friends and associates, but most of us must take what comes and somehow like it. Accidents of physical development place some children ahead or behind but these largely even out with time. The same is true for mental developments, but their evening out is problematic.

11.

State of Confusion

In today’s child culture there is no allowance for free will and individuality. Our mania to protect, secure, shield and insulate our children is astounding in a cynical, self-serving way. For we do our children no service in shielding them from the realities of the only world they live in. It’s hard enough to figure out what’s going on without having the ones you depend on lie to you. There is so much more strength in knowledge and understanding than in falsehood and deception that I would term it advisable to support a child’s investigation into anything that interests her, even in the most depraved of human activity, be it crime, sex, war or politics. I believe this because a child’s curiosity is soon honestly satisfied, but is pricked to attention by the forbidden and misled by half-truths. Our squeamish deceptions demand of our children that they conduct their lives in a state of confusion. Seeing only vulnerability and lack of economic independence in children we forget that they are living, breathing, thinking people who’s lot in life is no easier than our own. They are confused by life’s variety and the responsibility of free will, but in time they will get a grip and pull themselves out of the chaos of random activity and learn to place people, events and situations into perspective.

12.

Hygiene

As concerned as we are with our own opinions we are also vitally concerned with the opinions of others. Or at least those of people we like and admire. We present ourselves to the world, as we believe it will best receive us. The importance of personal hygiene cannot be overestimated. For instance, neglecting one’s dental care for fear or financial concern carries costs to affect one’s life and personality. Failure to bathe and clean one’s clothes puts us at a disadvantage in all social and professional situations, and taxes our friendships. These are the practical aspects of hygiene a person must regard for personal prosperity. All other aspects concern vanity and fashion and are a matter of personal choice.

13.

He’s A Hippie

We build our exterior identities just as we do our minds. My personal ideal of appearance was formed in the late 1960’s so today I look like a hippie. To wear long hair and a full beard at the turn of the century is to demonstrate that one is apart from that 75% of American society that works at a job that demands conformity. Many see the hippie as a symbol of sex and drugs, but these were merely BI-products of the expanded mind.

14.

Free Choice

Live to learn, learn to comprehend, comprehend to experience, experience to understand, understand to explore, explore to discover, discover to know, know to express, express to ease suffering, ease suffering and please God, please God and live. Each step is a free choice that can only be made by an individual for herself. Hippies are free wherever they are and you can’t group them together because each is on her own trip. She will always solve her own problems by affecting everyone and everything around her because her core is rock solid, so long as her truth is still breathing.

Ghostdance Shaman Process

Monday, October 22, 2012

More On Civil Disobedience Chapter I part I