''Scopul vietii''

Cat de domesticiti suntem

Experiment social , organizat de Washington Post.
Joshua Bell, unul dintre cei mai talentati muzicieni ai lumii, la doua zile dupa ce are o reprezentatie in Boston, unde sunt vandute toate biletele, la pretul de 100 $ bucata, canta gratis piese de Bach in metroul din Washington DC.
Timp de 45 minute cat a cantat, din 1,100 oameni care au trecut pe langa el,  doar 6 oameni s-au oprit pt o scurta perioada de timp, iar singurul care ii acorda atentie reala este un copil de 3 ani, care este insa grabit mana de mama sa pt a tine pasul cu ea, totusi copilul se opreste iar, pt ca in final mama sa sa il smuceasca tare de brat si sa il ia din loc.

"Cine esti?"

M-am gândit la toate cazurile din raporturile cu autoritatea statului, corporatista, etc, daca te opreşte un poliţist, şi alte poveşti nasoale pe care le-am auzit,  sau la care am fost martor, sau din experienţă şi, după ce le-am pus toate cap la cap in minte, mi-am zis: "Care este răspunsul la toata aceasta tiranie?" 
Raspunsul a venit ca o imagine. Am scotocit prin memorie sa descoper că imaginea a fost o scena din filmul "Mystic River". Pentru răspunsul la întrebarea "De ce toata aceasta tiranie?", uita-te la primele 6 minute din film (mai jos). Asta e tot ce ai nevoie ca sa intelegi mesajul.

Cum s-a ajuns aici?
Familie, şcoală, medici, biserici, etc sunt instituţii înfiinţate de "societate", toate cu scopul de a te "programa", prin disciplinare. Doar câţiva dintre noi au privilegiul de a face o alegere personală care sa se bazeze pe respectul de sine, probitate, şi înţelepciune. "Liberul arbitru" este trasatura cea mai valoroasă a umanităţii noastre, dar, în esenţă, este curmat de la rădăcină înainte sa fi avut timp măcar să luam în considerare conceptul. Până la vârsta de 7 ani, deja suntem  programati pentru viaţă.cu cat stam mai mult în şcoală, cu atat ne inrautatim situatia. 
Asta este motivul pentru care majoritatea corporaţiilor preferă să angajeze numai acei candidaţi care au fost programati mai mult, lucru evidenţiat prin grade universitare, decât pe cei care au fost suficient de înţelepţi să fi scăpat de abuzul cultului ritualic,  astfel incat sa afle despre lumea reală.


Gândiţi-vă la cum ati rezolva situatia în această scenă - în primul rând, la vârsta acelui baiat - 7 ani, şi apoi la stadiul prezent la care va aflati în viaţa.


Amintiţi-vă să întrebati: "Cine esti?"

Dezumanizare prin civilizare

China- 1.5 miliarde roboti.

O tanara disperata sare de pe un pod direct in mijlocul traficului. Nimeni nu se sinchiseste sa ajute femeia, nici macar sa blocheze traficul pe banda unde zacea tanara. Masinile trec in continuare, reactia este zero.

Domesticirea si munca

Vor veni unii si vor zice: bine, dar cine va spala vasele si va duce gunoiul?
Este intrebarea , cheia de bolta a oricarui sustinator al actualului sistem.
Si le raspundem (vezi pe blogul pai mei):

-"Cine vrea! ". 
Veti zambi: 
-Si daca nu vrea nimeni?!
- Nici o problema din nou. Inseamna ca aia vor sa faca, sa stea cu vasele nespalate si gunoiul nedus. 
- Dar nu e bine!
- Dar e treaba lor :). Oricine or fi "aia". 


Intr-o lume libera oamenii care vor sa spele vasele ar trai langa alti oameni cu aceleasi inclinatii. Fara sa fie deranjati de vecinii care pana la urma au renuntat si la farfurii, decat sa le spele. Sau nu le-au inventat. Treaba lor. Fara "un singur mod corect de a trai, pentru ca asa trebuie". Asta e nebunie.

"Dar intr-o familie, cine face treburile astea??". 
Din nou - "cine vrea!". Daca e nevoie ca cineva sa fie amenintat fizic, emotional, santajat - ca treburile astea sa fie facute - aia nu e o "familie". 

"Intrebarea "dar cine face..." - vrea sa spuna de fapt: "eu nu vreau sa fac asta, sclavi sau oameni pe care putem sa-i santajam sa faca asta nu sunt ?"

Da. Si nimeni, nu se intreaba "de ce trebuie sa facem?". Asa ca obtine o "mare intrebare filozofica". Nu-l duce capul sa spuna "eu fac asta, daca vreau, daca nu nu, unde-i problema?". Ce e cu fixarea asta "eu nu vreau sa fac, dar trebuie facut!". "Trebuie sa gasim pe cineva s-o faca, si daca nu vrea - sa-l facem sa vrea!" De ce gandeste asa Homo Sapiens ? 

Despre "munca". "Cum adica sa nu mai muncim, din ce traim??". Oamenii liberi nu munceau niciodata. Orice faceau, nu era munca. Datorita indoctrinarii e nevoie de multe explicatii pentru a intelege asta, desi avem ocazia sa experimentam aceasta "munca - joaca", oricand facem ceva - pentru noi.

Egocide

de Kevin Tucker

The primal war is a spiritual war. It began as the spirit of wildness was buried beneath the interests of domesticators: within history and within ourselves.

At its core lies the spiritual connection, the wordless sense of being that flows through the world. It is not about fighting for ‘Nature’ or about individual desire. It is about egocide: killing the self/Other split that underpins all civilized relationships.

There is no ‘Nature’, alone and isolated outside of our grasp. There is only the life that is in and of us. This is something that cannot be taught, written about or described. It’s not filling in space for god/s, nothingness, economics or science. It is not a cognitive force that hears every prayer.

I can’t say what it is that I feel. I can’t objectively prove its existence. But without my soul, I am as good as dead.

The domesticators have known this for a long time.

I can say that I feel something. It’s something that I know is real. It’s something worth fighting for.

That’s something that wild peoples and places have been telling us for ten thousand years. Humans, like all beings, are intrinsically spiritual. Not in the sense of elaborate ritual or religious beliefs or anything of that sort, but spiritual in a much different way: a lived spirituality.

There is a flowing, organic nature to the world. It’s something you can feel as you follow tracks through the new snowfall. Something felt in a handful of wild berries or the smell of roots. It’s something you see in the eyes of an animal as their pupils dilate for the last time. The sting of a thorn, the protests of squirrels, and the ambience of rain on leaves, the sound of rushing water: there is life in all of these things. An essence that simply living brings you into.

Modelarea mintii copiilor prin scoala publica

Un eseu foarte interesant al lui John Taylor Gatto, o expunere de 6 lectii despre cum "se educa" copii prin intermediul scolilor publice.
(ms pai mei pt link)

Call me Mr. Gatto, please. Twenty-six years ago, having nothing better to do, I tried my hand at schoolteaching. My license certifies me as an instructor of English language and literature, but that isn't what I do at all. What I teach is school, and I win awards doing it.

Teaching means many different things, but six lessons are common to schoolteaching from Harlem to Hollywood. You pay for these lessons in more ways than you can imagine, so you might as well know what they are:

The first lesson I teach is: "Stay in the class where you belong." I don't know who decides that my kids belong there but that's not my business. The children are numbered so that if any get away they can be returned to the right class. Over the years the variety of ways children are numbered has increased dramatically, until it is hard to see the human being under the burden of the numbers each carries. Numbering children is a big and very profitable business, though what the business is designed to accomplish is elusive.

In any case, again, that's not my business. My job is to make the kids like it -- being locked in together, I mean -- or at the minimum, endure it. If things go well, the kids can't imagine themselves anywhere else; they envy and fear the better classes and have contempt for the dumber classes. So the class mostly keeps itself in good marching order. That's the real lesson of any rigged competition like school. You come to know your place.

Nevertheless, in spite of the overall blueprint, I make an effort to urge children to higher levels of test success, promising eventual transfer from the lower-level class as a reward. I insinuate that the day will come when an employer will hire them on the basis of test scores, even though my own experience is that employers are (rightly) indifferent to such things. I never lie outright, but I've come to see that truth and [school]teaching are incompatible.

The lesson of numbered classes is that there is no way out of your class except by magic. Until that happens you must stay where you are put.

The second lesson I teach kids is to turn on and off like a light switch. I demand that they become totally involved in my lessons, jumping up and down in their seats with anticipation, competing vigorously with each other for my favor. But when the bell rings I insist that they drop the work at once and proceed quickly to the next work station. Nothing important is ever finished in my class, nor in any other class I know of.

The lesson of bells is that no work is worth finishing, so why care too deeply about anything? Bells are the secret logic of schooltime; their argument is inexorable; bells destroy past and future, converting every interval into a sameness, as an abstract map makes every living mountain and river the same even though they are not. Bells inoculate each undertaking with indifference.

"Masina din cap" de Glenn Parton

(merci, pai mei,  pentru traducere :)
Criza mediului inconjurator consta din deteriorarea si distrugerea completa a ecosistemelor in intreaga lume, inseamna eliminarea a nenumarate creaturi din aer, de pe pamant si din mare, cu multe specii impinse spre limita disparitiei sau disparute deja. Oamenii care permit pasiv aceste lucruri, in afara de cei care le promoveaza activ din motive economice sau alte motive, au calatorit deja o distanta buna pe drumul nebuniei. Cei mai multi oameni nu vad, nu inteleg si nu le pasa prea mult de aceasta catastrofa planetara deoarece sunt in totalitate preocupati cu probleme psihologice grave. Criza mediului isi are radacinile in criza psihologica a individului modern. Acest lucru face cruciala cautarea unei eco-psihologii, trebuie sa intelegem mai bine ce lucru teribil se intampla cu mintea omului modern, de ce se intampla si ce poate fi facut.

Gandirea profunda

Solutia pentru criza globala in fata careia ne aflam depinde mult mai putin de raspandirea de noi informatii decat de re-intrarea in constiinta a vechilor idei. Ideile primitvie sau ideile tribale , inrudirea, solidaritatea, comunitatea, democratia directa, diversitatea, armonia cu natura, ofera cadrul sau fundatia pentru orice societate rationala sau sanatoasa. Azi, acestor idei primare, daruri ancestrale mostenite, li se blocheaza accesul in constiinta. Marea majoritate a oamenilor moderni nu pot vedea adevarurile simple pe care stramosii nostrii le cunosteau, si pe care trebuie sa le cunoastem din nou, despre viata in echilibru cu natura. Suntem pierduti in dezbateri politice interminabile, cercetari stiintifice si compromisuri deoarece cea ce era de la sine inteles pentru mintea primitiva a fost uitat.

Pentru sute de mii de ani, pana la inceperea civilizatiei cu aproximativ 10000 de ani in urma, oamenii au trait in societati tribale, care produceau o constiinta tribala, un set de idei sau principii calauzitoare pentru a trai cu succes impreuna pe o planeta diversa si sanatoasa.. Invazia civilizatiei peste triburi pe intreaga planeta a fost atat de rapida si ucigatoare incat putem vorbi de trauma civilizarii. Deoarece oamenii care traiau in triburi nu erau pregatiti si nu au putut sa reziste macelului civilizatiei, constiinta tribala a fost impinsa in subteran, devenind ceva interzis si periculos. Popoarele cucerite au fost oprite din a gandi si a actiona conform vechilor obiceiuri, sub amenintarea cu moartea. La originea civilizatiei se afla foarte multa frica.

Dezvoltarea individului este o repetare abreviata a dezvoltarii speciei. In copilarie o persoana moderna calatoreste o distanta enorma intre creatura pimitiva si cetateanul responsabil contemporan. Cand este confruntat cu puterea imensa a civilizatiei ai carei primi reprezentanti sunt parintii, profesorii, preotii (si mai tarziu politistii, judecatorii si sefii) copilul se afla, psihologic, in aceeasi situatie ca si stramosii sai tribali, anume conformarea la dictatele civilizatiei sau moartea. Neajutorarea copilariei face din amenintarea fizica sau pierderea afectiunii, care sunt folosite de parinti si de altii pentru a impune morala civilizata si educatia civilizata, o experienta traumatizanta. Micii persoane care se dezvolta, ii este inoculata frica de a-si exprima propria natura tribala. Este nevoie de foarte multa frica pentru a deveni un adult civilizat.

Cand copilul devine constient de ideile si impulsurile care se opun dictatelor civilizatiei, el/ea simte anxietate, care semnaleaza un pericol. Copilului nu ii este frica de idei si de impulsuri, ci de reactia stapanilor la acestea. Deoarece copilul nu poate sa scape de cei care ii controleaza viata el/ea fuge de gandurile/sentimentele periculoase. In alte cuvinte, copilul instituie o represiune asupra sinelui sau primitiv. Ideile tribale sunt acum izolate, taiate din constiinta si nu pot influenta cursul viitor al evenimentelor.

Evanghelia consumului - The Gospel of Consumption

And the better future we left behind
by Jeffrey Kaplan

PRIVATE CARS WERE RELATIVELY SCARCE in 1919 and horse-drawn conveyances were still common. In residential districts, electric streetlights had not yet replaced many of the old gaslights. And within the home, electricity remained largely a luxury item for the wealthy.

Just ten years later things looked very different. Cars dominated the streets and most urban homes had electric lights, electric flat irons, and vacuum cleaners. In upper-middle-class houses, washing machines, refrigerators, toasters, curling irons, percolators, heating pads, and popcorn poppers were becoming commonplace. And although the first commercial radio station didn’t begin broadcasting until 1920, the American public, with an adult population of about 122 million people, bought 4,438,000 radios in the year 1929 alone.

But despite the apparent tidal wave of new consumer goods and what appeared to be a healthy appetite for their consumption among the well-to-do, industrialists were worried. They feared that the frugal habits maintained by most American families would be difficult to break. Perhaps even more threatening was the fact that the industrial capacity for turning out goods seemed to be increasing at a pace greater than people’s sense that they needed them.

It was this latter concern that led Charles Kettering, director of General Motors Research, to write a 1929 magazine article called “Keep the Consumer Dissatisfied.” He wasn’t suggesting that manufacturers produce shoddy products. Along with many of his corporate cohorts, he was defining a strategic shift for American industry—from fulfilling basic human needs to creating new ones.

In a 1927 interview with the magazine Nation’s Business, Secretary of Labor James J. Davis provided some numbers to illustrate a problem that the New York Times called “need saturation.” Davis noted that “the textile mills of this country can produce all the cloth needed in six months’ operation each year” and that 14 percent of the American shoe factories could produce a year’s supply of footwear. The magazine went on to suggest, “It may be that the world’s needs ultimately will be produced by three days’ work a week.”

Business leaders were less than enthusiastic about the prospect of a society no longer centered on the production of goods. For them, the new “labor-saving” machinery presented not a vision of liberation but a threat to their position at the center of power. John E. Edgerton, president of the National Association of Manufacturers, typified their response when he declared: “I am for everything that will make work happier but against everything that will further subordinate its importance. The emphasis should be put on work—more work and better work.” “Nothing,” he claimed, “breeds radicalism more than unhappiness unless it is leisure.”

By the late 1920s, America’s business and political elite had found a way to defuse the dual threat of stagnating economic growth and a radicalized working class in what one industrial consultant called “the gospel of consumption”—the notion that people could be convinced that however much they have, it isn’t enough. President Herbert Hoover’s 1929 Committee on Recent Economic Changes observed in glowing terms the results: “By advertising and other promotional devices . . . a measurable pull on production has been created which releases capital otherwise tied up.” They celebrated the conceptual breakthrough: “Economically we have a boundless field before us; that there are new wants which will make way endlessly for newer wants, as fast as they are satisfied.”

Today “work and more work” is the accepted way of doing things. If anything, improvements to the labor-saving machinery since the 1920s have intensified the trend. Machines can save labor, but only if they go idle when we possess enough of what they can produce. In other words, the machinery offers us an opportunity to work less, an opportunity that as a society we have chosen not to take. Instead, we have allowed the owners of those machines to define their purpose: not reduction of labor, but “higher productivity”—and with it the imperative to consume virtually everything that the machinery can possibly produce.