Taomeow

34 minutes ago, Taoist Texts said:

Gnosticism;)

Am I to be offended or flattered?  

8 minutes ago, Taoist Texts said:

excellent. now the next step is ask yourself: who engineered the engineers?

I'm a taoist.  The Great Mother, of course.  And what did she engineer those scoundrels for one might ask?  She sort of didn't, she merely allowed for their appearance because she engineered Yi, irregular stochastic variations and changes.  Which physicists have a vague idea about being one of the fundamental blocks of creation having something to do with probability theory and the uncertainty principle.  20% uncertainty is engineered into everything. 

Why did she not make it all good and regular and precise and predictable?  Because it's a live thing, not a machine.  An eternal ever-predictable machine would have been the most boring arrangement one could imagine.  Live things can't be fully predictable, one has to allow for irregularity, variety, surprise, perhaps even miracles...  probabilistic events, processes and entities.  So in order for it all to be alive, the Great Mother was bound to allow for some really bad apples among her countless children.  Some call them demiurges.  I suspect they might be the engineers responsible for our very own project...  ahem...  world.  Just our stochastic luck I guess.    

I'm not a fan of "Dune," I found the book rather tastelessly pompous and essentially boring, the movie version even more so (I only watched the first of the new ones), but there was this one concept therein, a pearl in a box of pearl barley, regarding Bene Gesserit.  A powerful ancient order busying itself with political, genetic and religious engineering of planets toward their own agenda.  The fact that in the book it was a "sisterhood" instead of the "brotherhood" it's always been in real life is a fly in the ointment, but other than that, this concept, of something akin to Bene Gesserit as the actual shaping force behind our planet's predicament, makes more sense to me than all religions combined.       

1 hour ago, Taoist Texts said:

oh those congregations are essentially for joyfully getting in touch with the inner knowledge (same as religious liturgies), the actual verbiage they recite is unimportant

I didn't know that.  So if I were to show up and recite La Ilaha Illallah Muhammadur Rasool Allah, no one would bat an eye?  Even though it means there's no god but Allah (and Muhammad is his prophet)? 

There's currently 2 billion people on Earth who believe that and only that.  What happened to their innate knowledge about the other guy?        

4 hours ago, Taoist Texts said:

Because all humans are born with "a soul". A soul is a part of our mind that innately knows these things. This innate  knowledge is  called "a religious belief". Humans connected to their souls are called "believers". Humans disconnected from their souls are called "atheists". Humans trying to reconnect to their souls are called 'thedaobums.com forumers".

I seem to recall that many versions of the Christian doctrine were based on the assumption that "heathen" and "barbarians" don't have a soul, and that they get a chance to acquire one if they accept Jesus as their savior.  Some went farther -- I'm not someone who has all the references on hand for all occasions (to my chagrin), but I read a medieval treatise titled "Is Woman Human?" with my own eyes, and it proved with multiple biblical quotes that she isn't, and therefore, while "all humans" have a soul, this only implies all male humans.

Also, if these things are innate knowledge, why study them in a Sunday school?  I was born in a country where for 70 years atheism was the state policy, so I first had a chance to read the Bible (smuggled from the US) when I was 20 or so, and most of it was news to me.  Perhaps because I'm a woman and didn't have the innate knowledge due to gender-specific lack of a soul?  

1 hour ago, Apech said:

Can a virgin get pregnant without having sex with a man?

Parthenogenesis, aka asexual reproduction, aka immaculate conception, does occur in nature, although seldom in vertebrate species.    In humans (as well as other primates), it also happens on occasion, but in every single case results in a tumor rather than a god.  Theoretically it might be possible to accomplish via genetic manipulations, except the resulting organism could only be female and the exact replica of the mother at that.  If some geneticists from some "kingdom not of this earth" were to induce it in virgin Mary, the child would have been a little virgin Mary all over again.  Although if all the genetic material from a man's spermatozoon were to be implanted artificially into Mary's egg, perhaps that would also count as immaculate conception, since artificial insemination happens outside the sinful act.  In which case the baby had a 50% chance of being male.  I have long suspected some extraneous genetic shenanigans with our species -- not because of Christian stories, chiefly for other reasons, but some of those stories do start making some sense if you allow for this possibility -- and only in this case.

8 hours ago, exorcist_1699 said:

 

Modern physics, especially quantum mechanics  , make  emptiness and consciousness / observers   factors  or issues that need to be considered when studying the essence or basic blocks of the universe ;  they are , in fact  , two , out of other few topics like qi,  most heavily  talked topics of  Buddhism and Daoism as we can find  , in Daoist cannons and  Buddhist Sutras , millions of pages  devoted to  them  . Although modern science thinks that this  Consciousness (  in reality, expressions of the Buddha Heart or Cosmic Mind* in minds of the crowds )  something intelligent arisen on planets billions years after the big-bang and the cooling down  of those solar systems , Buddhism and Daoism think that intelligent Mind  exists right at the beginning , everywhere , it is only its expressions that look seemingly  after time and look required happened under certain physical conditions, for example , in the habitable zone of a solar system . 

 

*Cosmic Mind ( '天心') , Daoist term equivalent to the Buddha Heart .

Thanks for a blast from the past.

I don't think I was making any statements about emptiness and consciousness.  I was talking of observers taken out of the equation as a matter of routine operations of what we are told is scientific objectivity.  What I seem to remember having in mind was something not as grand as the cosmic mind but, rather, things very mundane that we accept as objective scientific approach.  Not the elephant in the room but a herd of elephants, in fact.  The non-independence and non-freedom of any "objective observer" from all things subjective.  From their very own personality traits ("gotta prove it to mom and dad and the world that I'm important, that I'm worthy") to hopes of tenure or grants given or not given based on how well the results dovetail with the granting party's agenda, to the general reluctance to rock the boat that carries the "observer"-- hierarchy, career, non-alienating the peers whose careers and incomes might depend on no "independent objective observer" rocking the boat, down to the price of publishing one's scientific observations when not sponsored/desired by anything big and powerful and incorporated (a minimum of $5,000 out of the observer's pocket these days, per my scientist friends) and ad infinitum.

3 hours ago, Nungali said:

 

Yes, that is cool .  Calligraphy has been a long appreciated art there .

 

Also I suppose a good reader of this could tell if the person was writing untruths  ???

 

I mention that as when I was on unemployment payment , to get it I had to attend a how to get a job course . A big part of it was how to lie and get away with it on your resume .. seriously . And the same from job interviews .

 

The most valid advise I got was when being interviewed and   you are asked ' What is your weakest point that most needs improvement?' or similar . You should answer 'Chocolate ... I am addicted to chocolate . "

 

Nice.  I was just thinking today -- civilization is something that runs on lies as its main fuel.  What occasioned the thought was cooking some fish fillets for dinner and marveling, for the ten thousandth time, how fish and meat are invariably injected with water so each cut appears twice the actual size, and how they shrink to half the size or less once you throw them on the frying pan.  I know for a fact this doesn't happen to either if it hasn't been inflated this way, and paying an arm and a leg at a HFS doesn't really help.  And the train of thought took me to how it's really everything -- everything contains a generous portion of lies, you can't buy, beg, borrow or steal  anything without this ingredient -- often the main ingredient -- and often enough the only one.

Yes, it's probably possible to tell from the handwriting if they're writing untruths.  I wouldn't be able to (I get plenty of other clues though, too many, from multiple other sources.)  But there's things I could tell from the handwriting that would give me pause if I was the employer making that decision -- e.g. vanity, self-importance, pent up anger, a giver-upper attitude (or rather "giver-downer" -- each line tends to slide downward at its end), poor planner, miser, careless spender...  All those lessons they taught you in that course might be wasted on a good graphologist -- but our resumes are printed, so, no worries.         

2 hours ago, Nungali said:

Well, this is certainly strange   ... and rather horrible .  

 

So, our tale begins in Abkhazia in the 1860s. For months villagers near Tkhina told of a mysterious beast living in their forest. Something not quite human that carried itself on two legs, occasionally sited by someone as they gathered water, or walked to the mill. One day, hunters were shocked to find the creature had stumbled into a pit they’d dug to capture bears with. The beast was a she. She was humanoid, two metres tall, dark skinned, broad shouldered and extremely muscular. Though completely naked, she was covered head to toe in thick, dark body hair, with a long mane of red hair covering her head. 

At least so goes one tale. Another story claims she was caught in some other village – shackled and chained, then presented to the crown prince of Abkhazia. The prince had no need for a ‘wild woman’ so she was passed on to a courtier, who sold her to a nobleman from Tkhina named Edgi Genaba. 

Either way the creature ended up in the possession of Edgi, who named her Zana. Equally vague, for some reason that is never specified, Edgi had an open air prison in his garden. Some sources indicate a pit. Others claim there was an iron cage in his yard. Whatever the case, Zana was thrown into the enclosure. We’re told she was far too wild to approach, so she was left there for three years. Terrified servants were sent out with food and drink. A picture is given of a wild beast roaring, or hissing at these servants – but reading between the lines, she was trapped, isolated, and probably far more frightened than the servants. Zana dug a hole in the ground, where she spent hours at a time curled up in the fetal position. 

[Hi all, this one is about to get pretty dark, ......

https://historyandimagination.com/2023/10/23/the-monstrous-life-of-zana-of-abkhazia/

I read a somewhat different version of the story, as told by one of my all-time favorite authors, Fazil Iskander, an Abkhazian Russian writer whose best (IMO) stories are true stories from his childhood and youth in his native village in the mountains of Abkhazia.  I read Zana's story a long time ago and details escape me, but she was, according to the elders in Tkhina who remembered her well, very sexually uninhibited and typically initiated sex with men rather than being forced into it.  That sort of makes some sense, considering she was two meters tall, extremely muscular, and strong like a horse.  The story was actually funny, I'll try to find and re-read it.   

Strange but cool.  70% of resumes submitted by job seekers in Japan are still handwritten.

That's because they see one's handwriting as pretty accurately reflecting their personality and ki (Japanese counterpart of qi).  They glean things like reliability, awareness, and even intelligence from one's handwriting, and in 70% of cases job applicants are confident enough of theirs to demo it to a potential employer in this direct manner.  So, instead of spelling out the "desirable" characteristics one would typically see in a Western resume -- "attention to detail," "a team player," "assertive" or what have you, they don't tell, they show.  Yes -- good handwriting means attention to detail, a team player (you need to have awareness of the strokes before and after each one so together they interact harmoniously), etc..  A trained graphologist sees a lot more than that -- and Japanese companies and banks still employ those.

Among other things, I believe this goes to show the mindset behind the current non-teaching of cursive in American schools, replaced with hand-printing letters instead.  Each letter must stand on its own without supporting, or being supported by, its colleagues and neighbors, without a meaningful connection to them, without a feel for "team work," harmony, aesthetics, "flow" etc..  Extreme individualism and disregard for others in every move.   

And not a chance to train those hand-to-brain intelligence muscles either.  When I taught in high school, I could tell a helluva lot about every student in a new class in the beginning of the school year by just looking at the handwriting of each.  E.g., if someone's submitted work had no mistakes but was executed in a handwriting that was strikingly dumb, I knew they cheated.  And I was later proved right in 9 cases out of 10 -- but only because I was not a trained graphologist, or the accuracy may have been 99 out of 100.

I started late, first with taekwondo, and loved it.  Up to that point, everything I was ever good at was self taught -- I'm an avid learner but I hadn't been all that lucky with teachers of anything until then.  Absolutely no exceptions in school (where I was either afraid of, contemptuous of, or indifferent to my teachers), and just a few at the university.  So, it was my first-ever experience, and very late in the day at that, of feeling humbled by a teacher, seeing him as a role model, admiring his skill.  He spoke very rudimentary English, most of the verbal instructions were roared in Korean (as though the louder and scarier they were given, the better they would be understood and followed).  The overall approach was harsh bordering on merciless -- I felt as though I'd enlisted in the Korean army.  But there was this fountain of vitality about the whole thing, dynamic, raw, triumphant in its disregard for complaints and limitations that made me feel awesome afterwards.  In a few months I began transforming from a non-exercising woman used to feeling physically fragile, weak, vulnerable into someone who felt like "a woman of power."

I had to quit due to external circumstances -- and then I scored for the second time, and bigger, with my taiji teacher.  That was 20 years ago. (I won't go into that though, I've a pretty detailed taiji blog in my PPD...)

6 hours ago, Apech said:

 

Although I have no harrowing stories like this I have the same feeling about Ukraine and Gaza ... even WWI was called 'the war to end all wars' and even more after Nuremberg they swore there would be peace, that we loved peace - but now it seems we have forgotten.  I think if we had a thread on WWII you would have to put up with my historical musings about why and what are the causes of these disasters ...  I would like to talk about it but fear to go there.

 

 

I thought twice about it too after you mentioned that you "fear to go there."  I haven't got as much steam for "controversial" subjects as I used to.  And way too many stories to tell on top of that...  no steam for telling them because not every political climate allows for the  freedom of, um, speech (among other things), and the current one is very evocative of what I used to know and hate and fear in the Soviet Union.  Just the flip side of the same counterfeit coin.  

So, I'm not sure it was a good idea after all...  

@blue eyed snake Thanks for telling the story.  I didn't know it was this bad in the Netherlands, by the way...  There's never been a thread here that I recall dedicated to WW2 -- everybody is too young to have been part of it personally (I think), but family, previous generations -- some of us heard many first-hand accounts of what it was like.  Tragic, heroic, terrifying, or just "during the war we sometimes couldn't even buy chicken for a reasonable price" (an American relative of mine, my mom's cousin, sharing memories of wartime privations).  I think it might be interesting to start such a thread sometime.  

59 minutes ago, blue eyed snake said:

 

I caught myself "yes but-ting"

 

You're right.

 

were does it come from?

I am from Europe, my parents lived through WW2 as young adults, I know their fear for Russia(ns) never faded but in the last part of their life the emotions towards Germans seem to have disappeared.

 

Since WW2 so many well-promoted books, articles, movies, TV series etc. appeared which depicted how scary, ugly, stupid, drunk Russians, in the nearest future, will unleash their troops and bears and balalaikas on this or that innocent country that it's small wonder.  It's institutionalized bias, not something grass roots.  But with the Germans, it's the opposite?

8 minutes ago, Sanity Check said:

 

Putin was stripped of his TKD black belt due to sanctions? Hahaha.

 

Have you noticed those who never trained martial arts lean towards having exaggerated ideas of what they're capable of.

 

They think that they'll easily win any conflict. They've never tested themselves enough to know what reality is.

 

This leads to them being too aggressive and too overconfident in a way that spills over to their foreign policy.

 

Had they trained & been tested, they might have known it was wise to reel in that hot headedness.

 

That's what Joe Rogan opined in one of his podcasts I recall.  He asserts that his MA friends and acquaintances who are accomplished fighters are the chillest folks ever in everyday life.  They let off all the steam and release all their aggressive impulses in training and sparring, and lose the need to act them out in their interactions with others outside the training hall.   

14 minutes ago, Apech said:

Luckily no one insults the English.

 

 

Not even the French? 

A French friend of mine here in CA is Anglophilic to the core, and another one, who's British, who has dropped out of school at 15 and wouldn't be able to tell Shakespeare from Dickens if his life depended on, loves it here because people usually assume he's a college professor based on his accent alone.  Whereas I've witnessed another friend, a Russian, who IS a college professor (genetics), treated by strangers as an uncouth ignoramus and talked down to like she's 5.  

How did you guys pull it off?  

2 hours ago, Sanity Check said:

Given that there are so many martial arts practitioners here.

 

How do people feel about Putin holding black belts in judo, karate and tae kwon do?
 

If more world leaders trained in martial arts, perhaps there would be fewer wars is one thought I have had.

His taekwondo ranking was honorary (unlike in the other martial arts), he got it from the World Taekwondo Federation (which is known to have given it to other leaders it liked) when things were good between South Korea and Russia, but then they took it away as part of the sanctions.  He practiced martial arts since age 11.  I don't think it would help though if more world leaders trained in MA -- they used to, in the olden days, but wars be warring.  Although a karate match between Trump and Biden is something I'd definitely buy a ticket to see.  At the very least choosing a winner in this olden-days fashion would have been no less meaningful than the modern way, and much cheaper for the taxpayers.   

12 hours ago, Nungali said:

 

Oh good, let's play 19th century racism ;

 

 

I will see you and raise you with this ;

 

 

 

 

And I will counter with, 

it's NOT OK anymore in the 21st century to casually insult people of color in the style of the 19th century.  Toward Russians it is STILL OK and encouraged and pretty much unchanged.       

2 hours ago, Nungali said:

 

Whose quote is that ?  And I wonder why they said it and what it means ?

 

George Orwell, "1984."  It was the rationale offered for perpetual wars between the three major superpowers owning the world -- Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia.  

3 hours ago, Apech said:

We have some ‘Ukrainian’ refugees in the village now - they bought a house and have been very industrious in repairing the house and garden.  Then someone noticed that they were speaking Russian and not Ukrainian and when asked they said they supported Putin.  So it’s a funny old world.  They are extremely friendly and good neighbours.  
 

I realize this is irrelevant but I just thought I’d mention it.

 

 

Probably people from Eastern Ukraine, overwhelmingly speaking Russian as their first (and often only) language and culturally (as well as ethnically) indistinguishable from Russians (unless they belong to one of the 100+  minorities also living there.)  I seem to recall you posted a video at one point where someone British attempted to explain the real history of Ukraine.  I didn't watch it all but the bits and pieces that I did see seemed on point.  Nothing is as straightforward there as the official narrative has led most people to believe.    

17 minutes ago, liminal_luke said:

I wonder why.  

"Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia." 

24 minutes ago, liminal_luke said:

Maybe people are defending against their own insecurities with put-downs?  I´ve never been to Russia and know next to zilch about Russian culture but the stereotypes in my mind are of people with extreme abilities -- great gymnasts, brilliant nuclear scientists, etc.  I´m sure that can´t be universally correct.  It would be reassuring to know that there are Russians of average intelligence and athleticism -- surely there are thousands! -- but alas, you are not helping in that department.  

Russians can be pretty horrible too.  Really horrible.  I could say the same thing about any other people.  

I think the advantages and disadvantages in the way Russians are perceived, aside from political manipulations, stem from the fact that Russia is, historically/culturally, not part of the West and not part of the East ("between East and West and neither") yet has been avidly absorbing stuff from both for centuries and, in its turn, returning influence both ways.  A spectrum of consequences, from multicultural allegiances to multiple identity crises, is inevitable.  

Here's an episode from a near and dear's biography to illustrate some of the contradictions.  One dark, bitterly cold evening I got a phone call from him, which turned out to be that one call someone is allowed to make upon having been arrested.  So, he was arrested in Manhattan for stealing a book from Barnes and Noble.  It was a book on quantum dynamics, for professionals in the field.  He slipped it under his coat and got caught.  Not that he couldn't afford that book, he was a VP at a major bank at the time.  But he found the price appalling.  It was something like $60.  He thought it was unfair to charge so much for scientific curiosity.  The whole episode is very Russian.  

Thanks for the funny way you made me blush, by the way  

1 hour ago, liminal_luke said:

 

Great idea!  There are so many places where one treads carefully -- the entire current events section, recent transgender thread, etc -- so it´s nice to know there´s still someplace where we can let it all hang out.

Yup.  Especially considering that it's not some fleeting trend, it's a reliable, solid tradition that's a no brainer to embrace.  To illustrate how hoary and respectable it is, here, e.g., is a popular depiction of a Russian from a very successful 19th century American magazine of "humorous" cartoons:

Looking at some of the comments made me wonder if we should add to the rules about no bias based on race, sex, gender, religion, nationality, etc.. an amendment: "except for Russians, obviously."  

Just to make sure that anyone in need of insulting particular groups or individuals toward establishing their own superiority is reassured that their needs will be met and they will be provided with a legitimate officially approved target -- since so many former untermensch categories are now off limits to them.

Gypsies, visionaries, fortune tellers... welcome to TDB

I have nothing like that in my own makeup -- to my knowledge, the only unusual ancestor I had was French, and the four generations that went before me were scientists.  Which may explain why I had to study taoist "spirit reading arts" like feng shui, bazi, the I Ching, etc. -- the taoist way to know what you're not supposed to know. 

You have to put me into a supernatural context for me to manifest supernatural feats...  but once I'm in, I'm in...  in for a penny, in for a pound.  As for "proof" -- some of those contexts could run circles around any which proof obtainable "objectively."  

Part of my ayahuasca adventures was dedicated to visits to the upper and lower worlds, and I met demons in both.  Many.  What made the experience particularly interesting was the fact that later, when I was out of the rain forest and back in civilization, I saw artistic depictions of exactly the places and some of the creatures I met.  The first one in Iquitos, the world capital of ayahuasca they call that city, so the internet cafe in the center of the city was adorned with paintings by the local ayahuasquero artists.  Well, visions are visions, artists are artists...  but one particular painting made me gasp and almost scream.  "I know this place!  I've been there!  I know these creatures!  I've seen them there!  And this one bit me on the arm!!!"  It was a place in the lower world, with its inhabitants, scenery, everything as I remembered it.  If I was thinking clearer (I still wasn't -- for about three weeks I was in and out of "Her Waves," as I called that in-between-worlds state), I'd inquire about the possibility of buying that painting.  Or at least finding out who the artist was...  

And then in Lima, I went to a museum dedicated to pre-Columbian art and saw a number of pieces there that depicted creatures and surroundings exactly from my visit to the upper world.  It was as though people who lived hundreds of years ago had visited the same place, not of this earth, under the same circumstances, met its inhabitants, and then left accounts of those visits in bas-reliefs and tapestries.