Global Revolution!

[Enishi]

[witch]

Drat it all, Tao Meow.

 

All right, I'll do my little bit. Blarg, but they are so untasty, those old men's souls.

[Birch]

Power is the ONLY issue in the universe. (I'm told by people who know Chinese better than most that the correct translation of TTC is "The Way and its Power." Makes sense.) It's not power vs. control, it's power use vs. power abuse. Power must be used when it must be used, not using it when it must be used is one way to abuse it. I've read of a telltale instance of such abuse by non-use in Crowley's biography, e.g.. He was an avid mountaineer in his youth, among other things, and one day he climbed to a higher ground and put up his tent while four of his companions who were still climbing behind him got caught in an avalanche. They hit some rocks and some were injured and some buried in the snow. They were close enough for Crowley to hear their screams for help. He decided it was not his problem, had some dinner and went to sleep. The others made it to the camp many hours of struggle later, except for one whom they couldn't dig out fast enough who was dead by the time they got to him. So, like I said, once power is abused, there's no getting it right -- someone who abuses power will abuse it by non-use as much as by use.

Yes, I'd seen a documentary about Crowley that mentioned this event.

Thanks for that post TaoMeow, many things to ponder in there. Far too many.

[steve]

Power is the ONLY issue in the universe.

What about love?

[Vanir Thunder Dojo Tan]

[JustARandomPanda]

For those who can't afford the admittedly expensive but totally awesome Lost Science of Money I recommend the following book

 

Web of Debt

Way cheaper and gives a fascinating overview of the way money is created, flows and destroyed in the U.S.

 

Although Amazon shows The Lost Science of Money as being out of print it's not. You can get it (like I did) direct from the American Monetary Institute. Web of Debt is also a fantastic book.

 

I'd try to see if you can get either one from a library first or maybe an ebook.

 

One thing I DO recommend even if you never read either book is to take the time to read the actual REVIEWS on Amazon for both books.

 

For example:

 

Did you know GOLD is also a FIAT currency? Yep. Sure is. History proves it despite all the GoldBugs out there who love to chant otherwise. Such people's heart is in the right place but because they fail to follow up on the actual history of money in all it's assorted forms we keep dooming ourselves to repeated cycles.

 

Take the time to read this fascinating transcript of a talk given by Stephen Zarlinga to the British House of Lords on the actual history of money (including all that messy history that usually doesn't make it into PHD economics textbooks, etc)

 

 

 

 

Here are some Yin Money movements sprouting up

 

 

Openmoney.org

 

There are also barter exchanges popping up

 

Barter Exchanges facilitated via the Internet (that is only one example I linked to)

 

 

 

 

Another book I recommend

 

Why Most Things Fail: Evolution, Extinction and Economics

 

 

Here was the review of the book I submitted to Shelfari after reading it:

 

 

"I am shocked at how many people here and Amazon only gave this book 3 stars. Did we even read the same book? What Ormerod discusses is really about all kinds of failure. Failure of species, failure in business, failure of public policy, etc.

 

I looked up a prior reviewer's Agent Based Model explanation and it does sound a lot like how the author explains some things in the book. He never comes right out and says he's examining things from an Agent Based Model perspective but after seeing the Wikipedia page it definitely describes some methods Ormerod uses to critique the failure of Economics to explain real world behavior (although it's not the only one).

 

I loved the story where he described how in a real world experiment the Testees failed to act the way Nobel prize winner John Nash's (the brilliant mathematician of A Beautiful Mind fame) game theory model predicted they would and should have . Nash critiqued the Testees in light of the model but not the model in light of the Testees.

 

 

I see Ormerod's book as kin to Taleb's The Black Swan as it is concerned with related things (the mismatch between what models say how things will happen versus what actually does happen in the real world). Ormerod talks about failures due to - as Rumsfeld once put it - the Known Unknowns. Taleb's book discusses the Unknown Unknowns.

 

Although Ormerod is not bombastic or mocking like Taleb I do get the sense that he would be one of the very few economists Taleb might actually like. Ormerod is an economist for The Economist Magazine. Talk about biting the discipline that feeds you.

 

What most interested me is how well other disciplines are able to account for real world economic behavior without using a single postulate of Economics.

 

On a different note here's one example Ormerod reports. Computer models were run with two extreme end postulates on the actions agents take and firm extinctions. One had the agents act as if they had full possession of all information and so were the rational maximizers of Economic Theory. The other postulate was that the agents had zero information and acted completely at random.

 

Both postulates were shown to result in the same outcome.

 

Both can not be true. Yet both lead to similar ends. How then can Economics make claims of even limited rationality in human economic behavior when purely random action produces similar results?

 

Ormerod gives a better summary on p. 209 than I ever could.

 

 

"As we noted in previous chapters, conventional economic theory has a great deal to say about how it believes firms behave, but we have not needed to invoke any of this at all in order to be able to account for the key empirical features of firm extinctions. Not a single ounce of orthodox theory has been of any use. We do not need the hypothesis that firms act rationally in a way calculated to maximize their profits. We do not need the rule that price should be set equal to marginal cost, which we came across in the second chapter, nor do we need any more sophisticated variant of this rule which theory suggests should be used in appropriate circumstances. The theories of perfect competition, imperfect competition, oligopoly, duopoly, monopoly, each purporting to describe company behavior depending upon how many firms there are in a particular market, none of them are relevant. The whole panoply of the economic theory of the firm can be cast aside."

 

Talk about (as C&C Music Factory might say) "things that make you go Hmmm.....""

[Birch]

What about love?

 

Sometimes I think that's what it (Power) is. Sometimes I feel that's what it is. Power is an ability, a capacity, an action, a drive and an intention. Love is none of these things but it's the power behind power.

 

(sorry if that sounded corny, I'm feeling corny and when I feel that way I don't know anything).

[strawdog65]

Sometimes I think that's what it (Power) is. Sometimes I feel that's what it is. Power is an ability, a capacity, an action, a drive and an intention. Love is none of these things but it's the power behind power.

 

(sorry if that sounded corny, I'm feeling corny and when I feel that way I don't know anything).

 

Not sounding corny in the least bit.

Love or the lack thereof, is a power motivator for

many kinds of dominating behavior (I believe).

 

 

Here is what's attributed to Jimi Hendrix:

 

When the power of Love overcomes the love power,

only then, will the world know peace.

[Taomeow]

What about love?

 

Love is a kind of power. Like any other, it can be used, not used, abused. If you love me, honey, shape yourself into what I want -- if you don't, I won't love you. This is how love is abused every second of every day -- beginning with parents, of course, getting transferred to the rest of relationships. I love you is a spell of power one casts upon oneself -- everything in one's life will obey this spell. When the other party casts the same spell, their combined power is exponential, it is the power of the cosmic process -- Conception, Growth, Fruition, Consummation. I don't love you is a spell of power too. You need to know the context to determine whether its power is being used or abused. Said or implied to a child, it's horrendous abuse. Said or implied to an equal in response to atrocious behavior it's the use of power, or non-use if the atrocious one couldn't care less, or abuse if your love is the only thing that could stop more atrocities. Said or implied to an incorrigible evil entity, it's fair use. And so on.

[Birch]

Love is a kind of power. Like any other, it can be used, not used, abused. If you love me, honey, shape yourself into what I want -- if you don't, I won't love you. This is how love is abused every second of every day -- beginning with parents, of course, getting transferred to the rest of relationships. I love you is a spell of power one casts upon oneself -- everything in one's life will obey this spell. When the other party casts the same spell, their combined power is exponential, it is the power of the cosmic process -- Conception, Growth, Fruition, Consummation. I don't love you is a spell of power too. You need to know the context to determine whether its power is being used or abused. Said or implied to a child, it's horrendous abuse. Said or implied to an equal in response to atrocious behavior it's the use of power, or non-use if the atrocious one couldn't care less, or abuse if your love is the only thing that could stop more atrocities. Said or implied to an incorrigible evil entity, it's fair use. And so on.

 

Oh. I had this feeling, that it (love) wasn't ever to be used in those ways you mention (and you didn't mention the reverse of the abuse) and that if it was used like this it became BS, worthless, demoted from love, lost of and from love, recognized as something else but not it, corrupt, insane.

 

I had this feeling love was beyond all of that. Are we speaking about the same 'thing'?

[Birch]

Not sounding corny in the least bit.

Love or the lack thereof, is a power motivator for

many kinds of dominating behavior (I believe).

 

 

Here is what's attributed to Jimi Hendrix:

 

When the power of Love overcomes the love power,

only then, will the world know peace.

 

Check this out SD. http://rockprophecy.com/hendrix_quotes_hoax.html

 

Although it was nice of you to find me not corny :-). Sending you both power and love (but be careful to take only what's good for you. I learned that a while ago:-))

 

[strawdog65]

Check this out SD. http://rockprophecy.com/hendrix_quotes_hoax.html

 

Although it was nice of you to find me not corny :-). Sending you both power and love (but be careful to take only what's good for you. I learned that a while ago:-))

 

 

 

Oopps!

Wow...I have always thought that quote sounded like something similar to

something I had read many years ago, but could not place it...till now.

 

Maybe Jimi was famous for "paraphrasing" it?

 

Doesn't change his music or contribution to me, but it is still a

very meaningful quote. The love of power is the like the loss of compassion.

 

Still think Love is the most important motivator of them all.

[Taomeow]

Oh. I had this feeling, that it (love) wasn't ever to be used in those ways you mention (and you didn't mention the reverse of the abuse) and that if it was used like this it became BS, worthless, demoted from love, lost of and from love, recognized as something else but not it, corrupt, insane.

 

I had this feeling love was beyond all of that. Are we speaking about the same 'thing'?

 

I used to read a lot of poetry and write some too. I made a point of never writing about love. I felt as though there's something inherently cheap in glorifications of romantic or universal or whatever love which do not impact the world at all, just make pretty noise. A lot of pretty noise -- songs of love ad nauseam, love movies, valentine candies. I then discovered Chinese poetry -- and most of it is about friendship. Love poems exist, but very marginally, i.e. the situation is the opposite of Western poetry where friendships don't get to be noticed all that much and it's all love, love, love, all you need is love, meow meow meow meow meow. So I started thinking why.

 

Because, I thought, a friendship is not a power relationship. It's not as intense, and not as demanding, and not as edgy. It is the middle way of human feelings. Or maybe there's other reasons. I liked the fact a lot. Poetry used to be (and in places still is) a magical art, you didn't create poems and songs "about" stuff, you created them in order to move and shake stuff. It's a shamanic art. A true spell is superb poetry (which is one reason I never got interested in modern wicca which lacks superb poetry.)

 

So why is so much of Western art an attempt at love spells?

 

Don't people use spells when something they want isn't there?

 

No one creates spells about fried eggs for breakfast -- until he or she goes hungry.

 

What happened to us, why is love supposed to be separate from power? Why does a doctor go to work every day for money or for status or for curiosity (the first year) but never for love anymore?

 

It's only our sad state of affairs with power that makes love something you want to cling to when looking for things that are exempt from power transactions, because everybody is pretty sick of all things power as we know them... except for the powerful as we know them, who are sicker than most, but it's a kind of self-perpetuating sickness where one isn't seeking a cure and, on the contrary, defines himself by his disease, derives his image of who he is from his sickness -- in this case, the sickness of chronic power abuse. If it wasn't so, I don't think you would disagree that love is not beyond power. Don't think boyfriends-girlfriends to get my drift, think parents and children. This is the pattern of love-power later used in all relationships.

 

Ultimately, the only, the original, the source-love in the universe is the love of the creatress to her creations, of the mother to her children. This is the only source children can learn love from. But don't buy the BS about love of the source and of everything that is universal and impersonal -- this is a big lie, a big cop out. Love is always personal. A pregnant creatress can't love a child in someone else's womb as much as the one in her own because she has no power over the child in someone else's womb. Love IS power. To use power without abusing it is to love. Everything else is lip service of the unloved to the unlovable aimed at placating the loveless, powerless, barren state of affairs in the world of power abuse. Word.

[Birch]

"If it wasn't so, I don't think you would disagree that love is not beyond power."

 

I'm sorry TaoMeow, this kind of sentence throws me offside. I don't get it. I get a "blank" when I read several negatives in a row. If I turn them all to positive then I find you agreeing with me, which is not important BTW. I just want to 'get it'. If I turn some of them to positive - ahh, think full and broken lines...

Maybe my present incapacity itself is telling, but I'm asking you bear with my handicap and help me 'get it'.

 

"Ultimately, the only, the original, the source-love in the universe is the love of the creatress to her creations, of the mother to her children. This is the only source children can learn love from. But don't buy the BS about love of the source and of everything that is universal and impersonal -- this is a big lie, a big cop out. Love is always personal. A pregnant creatress can't love a child in someone else's womb as much as the one in her own because she has no power over the child in someone else's womb. Love IS power. To use power without abusing it is to love. Everything else is lip service of the unloved to the unlovable aimed at placating the loveless, powerless, barren state of affairs in the world of power abuse. Word. "

 

I think I was getting at that. IME, "universals" are extrapolates (attempts at, whoever they're by and however many books and followings and cults they spawn). But you know. I still kind of have that 'blank' about it (not your doing, obviously, unless you did :-)) so I'll have to re-read, re-cognize, review at some later point.

 

Thanks for the (don't have a word for it).

 

K

[Taomeow]

K,

 

wow, I didn't realize until you pointed it out that I was THAT negative in that sentence which was supposed to be positive! Sorry.

 

Thank you for your thoughts and feelings.

[Everything]

700 protestors arrested today? Still stuck at the bridge?

 

I wonder what happened to the voice of the protestors, lol. They screamed to the police all day, now no voice left to request what they want. The throat has to get used to screaming for long periods of time. If you've never done it, your voice flee from your throat very quickly. Few hours at night of loud talking at a party is already enough for my voice to give up on me the next morning.

Edited October 2, 2011 by Everything

[LBDaoist]

What about love?

 

Love exists as a manifestation of personal power. It has the power to heal and to empower others to feel good about themselves. That sensation of love, that good feeling... that is power.

[JustARandomPanda]

Pretty honest guy who works on Wall Street.

 

 

 

 

 

Short Selling

[steve]

Some cool stuff to think about in this thread (not too close to the OP though)

 

It's funny that you say this. It occurred to me one day that Jesus, if the Bible is truly historical, did wu-wei at the end of his life. He performed 'do-nothing' at the end of his life; he said nothing in his own defense, that conversation he had with his higher self the night before must have been intense. But he let it all happen. He did not change the dynamic in action. Wu-wei. And loving to the end (father, forgive them for they know now what they do). This was a sage, a man in total awareness, performing the wu-wei of the TTC, or the Power of Silence as articulated by Castaneda, or occult yogi philosophy, or seemingly the end of any viable path that takes us to the center. It's a way of stopping the world, letting all the chips fall where they may. His chips, if the historical aspect is correct, fell pretty damn hard. But he loved til the end. the man was a sage; a shaman; a light warrior; a christ spirit. Pretty darn impressive, if you ask me. Must've been some guy.

Very true - his explanation/demonstration of truth is through love.

And not too many people can become him, and belief isn't enough.

You must become what he was.

 

 

Sometimes I think that's what it (Power) is. Sometimes I feel that's what it is. Power is an ability, a capacity, an action, a drive and an intention. Love is none of these things but it's the power behind power.

 

(sorry if that sounded corny, I'm feeling corny and when I feel that way I don't know anything).

 

Yup - love is none of these things, even power. Although it can produce power, I think.

Not the other way around though. Power can't produce love.

 

 

 

Love is a kind of power. Like any other, it can be used, not used, abused. If you love me, honey, shape yourself into what I want -- if you don't, I won't love you. This is how love is abused every second of every day -- beginning with parents, of course, getting transferred to the rest of relationships. I love you is a spell of power one casts upon oneself -- everything in one's life will obey this spell. When the other party casts the same spell, their combined power is exponential, it is the power of the cosmic process -- Conception, Growth, Fruition, Consummation. I don't love you is a spell of power too. You need to know the context to determine whether its power is being used or abused. Said or implied to a child, it's horrendous abuse. Said or implied to an equal in response to atrocious behavior it's the use of power, or non-use if the atrocious one couldn't care less, or abuse if your love is the only thing that could stop more atrocities. Said or implied to an incorrigible evil entity, it's fair use. And so on.

 

I think love is different from all these things... they are valid points, every one, but not really love.

 

 

 

Oh. I had this feeling, that it (love) wasn't ever to be used in those ways you mention (and you didn't mention the reverse of the abuse) and that if it was used like this it became BS, worthless, demoted from love, lost of and from love, recognized as something else but not it, corrupt, insane.

 

I had this feeling love was beyond all of that. Are we speaking about the same 'thing'?

 

I agree. Love is 'beyond' all that.

Whatever that means

 

 

Love exists as a manifestation of personal power. It has the power to heal and to empower others to feel good about themselves. That sensation of love, that good feeling... that is power.

 

I don't thing power creates love but at the same time, maybe one does need a lot of personal power to reach love, at least at some point. But like manitou points out in the beginning, the power of love comes from complete acceptance and with complete awareness - Wu Wei.

Knowing and accepting was the exercise of power.

[JustARandomPanda]

A few more books to recommend since they are huge factors in how modern globalized economies are run (and hence why Wall Street and all the other world stock exchanges have so much power)

 

 

The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger

 

A book about the history of the shipping container? At first, one has to wonder why. (An eventuality not lost on the author, who muses "What is it about the container that is so important? Surely not the thing itself...the standard container has all the romance of a tin can.") The catch, though, is that Levinson, an economist, "treats containerization not as shipping news, but as a development that has sweeping consequences for workers and consumers all around the globe." That latter statement drives this book, which is about the economic ramifications of the shipping container-from the closing of traditional (and antiquated) ports to the rise of Asia as the world's preeminent provider of inexpensive consumer goods (distributed, naturally, using mammoth shipping containers). Levinson maintains his focus on the economics of shipping vast quantities of merchandise, organizing the book into snappy, thematic chapters on different facets of shipping ("The Trucker," and "Union Disunion," for instance), an approach that lends itself well to spot-reading. Throughout, the writing is clean-more informal than rigidly academic (union boss Teddy Gleason is "a voluble Irishman born hard by the New York docks")-making the book suitable for casual readers as well as students looking for a different take on the evolution of 20th-century world economics.

 

 

Oil on the Brain: Petroleum's Long, Strange Trip to Your Tank

 

Oil on the Brain is a smart, surprisingly funny account of the oil industry—the people, economies, and pipelines that bring us petroleum, brilliantly illuminating a world we encounter every day.

 

Americans buy ten thousand gallons of gasoline a second, without giving it much of a thought. Where does all this gas come from? Lisa Margonelli’s desire to learn took her on a one-hundred thousand mile journey from her local gas station to oil fields half a world away. In search of the truth behind the myths, she wriggled her way into some of the most off-limits places on earth: the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the New York Mercantile Exchange’s crude oil market, oil fields from Venezuela, to Texas, to Chad, and even an Iranian oil platform where the United States fought a forgotten one-day battle.

 

In a story by turns surreal and alarming, Margonelli meets lonely workers on a Texas drilling rig, an oil analyst who almost gave birth on the NYMEX trading floor, Chadian villagers who are said to wander the oil fields in the guise of lions, a Nigerian warlord who changed the world price of oil with a single cell phone call, and Shanghai bureaucrats who dream of creating a new Detroit.

 

Deftly piecing together the mammoth economy of oil, Margonelli finds a series of stark warning signs for American drivers

 

 

Energy Myths and Realities: Bringing Science to the Energy Policy Debate

 

Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air

 

 

You Don't Always Get What You Pay For: The Economics of Privatization

 

From some reviewers of the book above:

 

This is an excellently-written critique of privatization. In case after case, Sclar reveals that all is not as it might seem, and that beneath the apparition of improved efficiency lies a different reality supporters of privatization might not want revealed...

 

Neck-deep in ideologically driven rhetoric about how privatization is as American as motherhood and apple pie and must be good for you? Frustrated at knowing there's more to this but you would need an un-bought economist to help you understand the real story? Help is here. Buy this book. Read, mark, learn, inwardly digest. . . . Sclar is going to have an impact on this debate. His parsing of the issues is a great start and, what's best, this book is going to stimulate more like it. This is the beginning of the skeptical and critical assay of the issues.

[JustARandomPanda]

I get the weird feeling I'm just talking to thin air with my posts.

[Seth Ananda]

I get the weird feeling I'm just talking to thin air with my posts.

heheh, your not, It is just that I spent hours on just one of the links you provided:

[Here's one guy's answers to modern Libertarians.]

 

There is so much in your posts to peruse... awesome, and thanks by the way...

[Sloppy Zhang]

I get the weird feeling I'm just talking to thin air with my posts.

 

Sometimes when people make a really good post or provide a really good link, it leaves people speechless. How do you respond to a post or an article that lays it all out so nicely? Sometimes you can't.

 

Which is why it's sad whenever quality posters quit posting because of lack of responses. It's easier to start talking shit to people after a shitty post

[joeblast]

or its a matter of information blast, there is too much and it may be too broad. I'm certainly guilty of that in the past

[Birch]

I think it's great stuff SB is posting but I don't always feel competent to respond to some most of it. In my case, reading some of it makes my blood boil.