Taomeow

18th-century European botanists named this Asian plant after the Bible’s Job due to its tear-shaped seeds. It was their poetic way to associate the shape of the seeds with tears, and tears with Job's suffering. The name 薏苡 (Yìyǐ) has no link to the biblical Job — it’s a phonetic approximation of the plant’s ancient Chinese name. The Divine Husbandman (神农 Shénnóng) is attributed in authorship to a group of gods prominent in polytheistic ancient Chinese culture. It is credited with introducing agriculture, herbal medicine, and the use of the plow to early Chinese civilization. Job, who lived at least 1500 years later, couldn't have written this text without the aid of a time machine. Besides, he was a wealthy herdsman (Job 1:3) and had nothing to do with agriculture, herbal medicine, and the use of the plow.

Well, we could go into physics or neuroscience or religion/philosophy from here, but I prefer to define "distortions" on species-specific terms. Whales have dichromatic vision, only discerning shades of yellow and blue -- but it doesn't mean their eyesight is more distorted than ours, or less. It's adequate for the species. If perceptions work long term (in terms of evolutionary spans of time -- tens of millions of years or longer) toward a species surviving and (importantly) thriving, I say its perceptions are not distorted, they are selected and are doing their job adequately. No one can perceive "everything" if we want life on Earth. Similarly, no one can perceive "nothing" and be alive. So selected perceptions is the normal state of affairs that is a prerequisite for both biodiversity and survival of particular species. We are experimental, we haven't been around long enough to draw conclusions -- but I've a hunch we don't operate a set of selected human perceptions that are accurate and life-supporting anymore. If we ever get ourselves out of this perceptive mess, we may still straighten out our plight... time will tell. But what it "tells" right now is not very encouraging IMO. To paraphrase a well-known maxim, you can fool all your perceptions some of the time, and you can fool some of your perceptions all of the time, but you can't fool all your perceptions all of the time.

Things aren't what they seem. Our perceptions have little to do with reality and are instead the outcome of filtering the input through multiple pre-installed prisms that can (and do) do a number on the incoming light. What is worse, the incoming light -- or what we perceive as light, as truth, as reality -- is, in the case of any incomplete, lacking personal participation, indirect, manipulated, or outright fake picture presented to us is pre-filtered for us through someone else's carefully installed prisms. Ulteriorly distorted, mind you. The range of distortion may vary, from slight to total. Yet perceiving a totally distorted picture can be every bit as convincing to the observer as looking at an absolutely accurate one. More so, because distortions tax the brain, it's scientific fact (established in experiments with very young children, too young to have learned to lie) that lies require of our brain the kind of equilibristics and contortions that the rest of what we are can't possibly accept, and that's the beginning of the split, of the fragmentation of consciousness. The outcome may vary -- from mild stupidity to profound mental disorders. (Caption: "The brain doesn't immediately understand what's going on in this picture." )

I can't imagine what today's kids imagine when they're taught "sex education." I guess it used to be simpler for kids in the countryside -- they could at least observe what animals do. An animal doesn't screw with one's mind when it screws. It's all rather straightforward. My own ideas at the age of innocence came from misinterpreting an article in a magazine called "Health" -- a kind of medical 101 for lay people, which my mom was subscribed to and I loved to read. The country kept all sex related information under wraps back then but the magazine devoted to 'Health" had to somehow mention STDs at some point, right? Well, at seven, I read this article therein about syphilis. It was presented in the form of a real life story: a girl meets a guy, they hit it off and start dating, then they exchange kisses... Then the guy disappears and the girl starts experiencing this and that, all symptoms presented in dark and gloomy but rather unclear hints as to what they are exactly -- the only symptom that was clearly named was, her eyebrows started thinning out. And also there was clear emphasis on shame, this was no ordinary disorder, apparently it was something that destroys one's social status and turns the victim into some kind of untouchable whom everybody shuns and despises. The article terrified me. Since nothing sex-related was revealed, I had to infer that the sequence of events leading to this shameful, despicable, and in some unclear way horrible disease was just this: 1) girl meets boy and likes him; 2) they kiss; 3) he leaves; 4) as a result she gets a horrible disease. I gave the article to my best friend to read, and we discussed it, wide-eyed with fear, trying to figure out a way to prevent this syphilis thing by never liking boys and never god forbid kissing them. Then keeping our fingers crossed and hoping that no boy would ambush us, jump out of some corner and plant a kiss -- oh horror, this could result in that devastating disease! We better watch out! (An aside: Naive as it was, today I believe most people's ideas about where and how various illnesses originate are as much removed from reality as was the case with that one in our case. And I don't just mean lay people.)

Very true. Also... In taiji, we always go slightly back before any move forward -- it sort of helps gain the correct vector, along with "stitching together" the move forward with the previous one -- which was also forward so if you "stitch" forward to forward you can't get a seamless move! And after a turn to the left, a turn to the right follows, and then if you still need to keep going to the left you go slightly to the right first. And of course opening and closing alternate -- opening is akin to light/yang/expansion, closing, to dark/yin/contraction... and they interchange continuously. (One hallmark of bad taiji is when they don't, and the practitioner remains "too open" or "too closed" without minding this rhythm.) Sorry... couldn't resist a taiji example -- "everything" philosophy is therein, it so happens that all questions are answered there... including those one hasn't thought of asking.

Chapter 24 of the I Ching (as used by Syd Barrett in the great song of the same name based on it nearly verbatim): "The seven is the number of the young light, it forms when darkness is increased by one." Taoist dialectic: extreme yin turns into yang, and vice versa. Of course those who are not familiar with this inevitable cosmic scale dynamic process that is followed by all of the "ten thousand things" will always try to increase light by taking it all the way to its ridiculous, caricature level extremes. Whence it will flip into darkness -- inevitably. In social movements and in "spiritual" pursuits alike it's especially obvious -- the best, most enlightened ideas, trends, intentions inevitably flip into their darkest opposites. (And, less obviously, vice versa. And slower. Yin is slower... yang is always in a rush. That's why light flips into darkness more readily than vice versa.) So, the sensible way to increase light without going overboard is by increasing the nourishing, nurturing dark yin which we all come from (remember the womb?) and return to. A good night's sleep A dark retreat, or at least meditation with your eyes closed, in a dark room Black sesame seeds, blackberries, bilberries (nourish the retina and literally make it more receptive to light, improving night vision while protecting from the irritating effects of excessive illumination) A screens/electronics fast -- limiting one's exposure to all those oh so bright, oh so much light devices that, predictably, darken the soul. And so on. Look for where yin is deficient and increase; look for where yang is excessive and decrease. This is a yang-skewed civilization, in most situations you will find you need less light, not more. And if you do find you need more light, go for the mellow kind -- sunset, sunrise...

Georgian suitors (not all of them of course, but there's always something like trends...) are passionate and can go over the top at that, but there's a bit of a double standard regarding how they treat their own (pretty traditionally, at least it used to be the case) vs. "foreign" girls. Sorry to hear your landlady wasn't prepared for this turn of events and had to suffer. In middle school I was friends with a girl who was Georgian, Lali was her name, and she was very popular, perhaps the first girl to "wake up" our boys to the existence of girls, a coming of age thing. After the 8th grade the family moved back to Georgia, and some heart-wrenching letters followed -- Lali fell in love with an Ossetian (an ethnic and religious -- Muslim -- minority in Georgia) and her family demanded that she has nothing to do with him. It was a drama of many years that ended in their eloping I think and getting disowned by both families -- such a medieval story, I thought, so weird -- Lali was so modern, always on the cusp of fashion and trends... and voila.

It's a fairly widespread sentiment in the former Soviet Union. I don't think the majority of the population got a good deal out of the break-up. Some left for greener pastures, a small percentage got rich, and a very small percentage got stinking rich -- but for the majority of ordinary folks it was just endless difficulties and complications and loss of whatever social safety net and a lot of new but not necessarily improved things that, once the initial excitement wore off, just felt alien and dystopian. That, of course, is not how "everybody" feels, and I don't really know the percentage of people who do -- but it is very, very common. Some of that sentiment is based in reality, some, in illusion that edits out the dark aspects of the past and preserves the rosier ones. I've been to all those places (except Nagorno-Karabakh, but I know what the conflict was about) -- the Caspian Sea is warm and always somewhat stormy because the wind blows relentlessly, Georgia is blessed with great climate and great soil and is home to my favorite cuisine in the whole world, Armenia is -- well, they tell the story there about how god sifted the soil through a fine sieve and made Georgia, and all the rocks left in the sieve, he threw across his shoulder to discard and that was how Armenia came to be. Azerbaijan is Muslim, Georgia and Armenia are Christian. Nagorno-Karabakh was an Armenian enclave in Azerbaijani territory and a site of several wars over whose it is, the latest ending in Azerbaijani (backed by the West) grabbing control and kicking out the Armenians. The British Empire was very active in Azerbaijan in the early 20th century, due to wanting their vast oil fields around Baku. They even gained control of it for a while after WWI and established martial law. Then they were very active there before and during the 1917 revolution and the civil war that followed. But the Soviets prevailed back then.

Salam, nəcəsən? -- Hi, how are you? There's also "Salaam aleykum" used in Azerbaijan (though it may be more of a Muslim greeting), to which a common response is "Aleykum salaam." I think you may be dealing with a rather complex accent in the case of your neighbors (or not, depending on the family.) I've been to Azerbaijan at the dawn of my misty youth (as we say to mean "young and innocent and devoid of clear thinking"). Befriended some homespun drug dealers -- they were all law students, young sons of high-ranking Communist Party functionaries, who had this idea to turn me into their Ukrainian connection for distribution and explained how protected I would be from the law ('cause their fathers were the law and could buy the law anywhere) and how safe and profitable it would be. Lacking a knack for business, illegal or otherwise, I turned down the offer. But I did get introduced to ganja -- a rarity in our parts back then -- and it was hands down the best. They spoiled me for life with that first hit, it was so superior to anything I ever encountered since that I never made a habit of it. It turned the world into a cosmic comedy show, everything was funny, all of nature was hilarious... Maybe that's how gods feel about everything.

Didn't Hollywood movies portraying Russians teach you anything? What critical thinking? All they do is plot world domination while raising their glasses of vodka and toasting each other invariably in Polish ("na zdrovie!"). As for drunken grilling accidents, that part is not very different except Russians prefer shashlik (shish kabob) to burgers when celebrating whatever. Critical thinking is for quiet conversations in the kitchen... the greatest school of thought it used to be. Mystery schools of Alexandria meet political dissidence over tea with homemade preserves and cigarette smoke. Don't know about now... that "social sciences" scene might be out of vogue by now.

I don't think taxes have much to do with productivity except strangle it. But in general I don't know the deeper why's and wherefore's of the war for independence in its non-mythologized version -- something any historical event requires much in-depth study to begin to unravel -- now the North-South civil war is a different matter, I did my homework on that one diligently... That one, indeed, had everything to do with productivity, technological advances, and all that industrial jazz.

I don't know what Montreal is up to these days, but a long time ago when I was there it looked like it was trying to strike a balance between New York and Paris -- the Paris part came from a homeless bum who asked me for a couple of dollars "for a cup of coffee." In French.

I may be bad at economy so it's a bit hard for me to wrap my mind around the fact that to celebrate winning a war over 2% tax on tea, we pay a 7.75% sales tax on anything we might want to use for the celebration. Not to mention the rest of taxes on... um... on being alive -- also on being dead, since the 7.75% sales tax applies to coffins too.

No treason. The Old World is not a lizard that can lose its tail so that the independent tail becomes the New World. Rather, it's a snake -- which occasionally plays ouroboros with itself. At least that's one way to look at it.