Tag Archives: power

FTAC: Turn Off, Tune Out, Drop Back In

20 Wednesday Dec 2017

Posted by in Also in Media, Asides, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Philology, Political Psychology, Psychology

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Shared inspiration:

Response:

More than “eyeballs” are involved in the stimulation of our defenses and imagination: there are tens upon tens of thousands of jobs created to deal with threat as fielded by various industries, and there are governments for which the installation of fear produces political power. Putin, for example, ran a false-flag operation to gain election and then had Russian troops unofficially run amok in Chechnya to strengthen the rebel opposition. He knew how to produce and use war, and there’s great suffering for that today along the spine of Moscow’s favored relationships and colonial or chaos-inducing ambitions.  I suppose for the west, we now have a super counterterrorism industry, much needed, but one also begging the question, “How broad, how large, how institutionalized?”

That’s life.

Rob Dial offers an interesting view of the media-saturated mind.

Indeed, some of us used to do other and more pleasant things than share in the watching of the world’s great issues and tragedies for days, weeks, months, and years on end.

My own answer to that: try to get into retreat! 🙂

And narrow the scope of personal mission dimensions and project: “Tune Out; Turn Off: Drop Back In!”

That today is Counterculture!

In-Line Reference Added

Putin ran a false-flag operation to gain election and then had Russian troops unofficially run amok in Chechnya to strengthen the rebel opposition.

Back Story Reference on a Facet of the Real Counterculture of the 1960s: “Turn On, Tune In, and Drop Out.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turn_on,_tune_in,_drop_out

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turn_On,Tune_In,_Drop_Out(album).

Timothy Leary speaking the message (short documentary video).

Visual interpretation of Timothy Leary’s 1967 album, “Turn on, Tune in, Drop out”.

Leary, Timothy.  Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out.  Via Amazon, USA.

The 18- to 21-year-olds of 1967 would today be 68 to 71 in age, and, oh my, how the once “hippy” world of “recreational drugs” has morphed into the world’s most lucrative scourge — and it’s not the “high”(ness) that makes it so, but in relation the lives thrown into associated industrial control — from manufacture to shipping to sales, related industrial-scale warfare across every continent, and that’s on one side, for on the other comes the policing, and that too would seem a rough business —  and for the end-users, often enough wrecked lives — careers, jobs, homes, ordinary relationships — habituated and racked health, and, also and still, accidental death.

Related affected and infected states and larger regions have stories too in relation to their own “monkey” — there’s another phrase signaled by that metonym — and their own yards and backyards, but BackChannels will here reserve comment on that.

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FTAC – On Empiricism and Power

15 Tuesday Dec 2015

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation

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There may be subjective experiences, but there’s is no “whose truth” in empiricism, and especially as regards forensic investigations and the courts (open, of record) and processes the support them. The feudal lords of any era would, of course, control the courts and influence or control the clergy, dealing themselves the power to rule capriciously. As regards the leverage provided by metaphysical beliefs to provoke mobs, there is no end or settlement: what human would presume to know the nature of God? 🙂 The structures built atop such assertions lend themselves to arguments that cannot be resolved — in Obama’s term pluralized, “dumb wars”.

Among observers — detectives, journalists, lawyers, scientists — one viewer always views only a portion of the crime, parade, or war, so there’s room for “whose report” but as data developed with integrity compiles into contribution to case, hypotheses, and theories, that subjective character becomes increasingly objective plus + “valid and reliable” — and the same remains challengeable forever although challenges may stop as they drift into absurdity.

Perhaps loyalty to one point of view or another proves power because someone (by way of intimidation or reward) has developed the ability to get others to see as might be wished.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/…/quote-manipulation…/

The blog represents only a developing perspective, of course, but the reference points and their sources may all be examined. We do not have to live in a world “framed” by the caprice and foibles of the powerful. The public has tools more powerful than the same and can in good conditions hold the same to account.

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Proposed: A Great Conversation About Power

18 Wednesday Jun 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Iraq, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Philosophy, Political Psychology, Regions

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Pharaoh to Hitler to Assad to ISIS: let’s have our talk about power, personality, and politics.

Now.

I don’t know what metaphor suits that concept that is time when it is time for one to seal off a section of history, to have arrived at the end of a chapter of one’s own story, and to have to look across a river (in time) or desert (in time — add the biblical term of forty years for wandering lost in the foyer to the future) — and to leave one bank (in time) to wade, swim, or bridge and walk to that other shoreline.

Is there parochial time?

Is there universal time that contains parochial time?

I feel that with the destruction of Syria, which carnage has exceeded that involved in the Destruction of Jerusalem by Titus (70 CE) and the challenge posed today by ISIS in Iraq, some Islamic introspection and review of Sunni-Shiite rivalry (throw in Arab anti-Semitism while at it) might be helpful.

Iraq is a test: will parochialism seek through blood letting a nation divided by sectarian identification that guarantees perpetual war — or will the middle, mild, and moderate of Sunni and Shiite humanity recognize ISIS as an alien force inimical to the survival of either and therefore band together to eject and destroy it?

What is the timeline for the development of either path?

The world would seem to have all of the time in the world for this conflict between (BackChannel’s trope coming right here) “two mad wasps in a bell jar”.

There’s a terrific political cartoon by artist Talal Nayer at this location: http://tnayer.blogspot.com/2014/01/sunni-vs-shiite.html.

Irshad Manji has featured the same on her Facebook fan page, and it has been shared about 500 times, a good indicator that others are seeing the same thing.

Power.

I think the Jews — because our stories compel us to argue about these things and one may have opinions — took the monotheist power represented by Pharaoh and threw it out into the universe — and beyond the universe — to an abstract conception of God (“King of the Universe”) — and that was that for the people who walked away from what Pharaoh represented as a power unto himself.

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FTAC: Empathy is not a Given – A Note on Conscience and Language

07 Friday Dec 2012

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation

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It took me a long time to realize that “empathy is not a given in human affairs” — not even between brothers. The development of a quality — empathy’s an interesting one — requires motivation (for me: wanting to be a writer). Moving sideways but down the same line: “conscience” is also a quality developed in language out of perceived personal and social necessity. Essentially, it’s a code of behavior. The kicker, imho, involves a simple two-part argument about language itself: language behavior clinically observed may be predictable — it will have nouns and will be rule-based; however (!), language invention may be wild (it is, I assure you and will provide reference if necessary) and it’s that invention in language in which each culture suspends itself.

A friend who had cared for a senile and dying parent for some time said to me about her experience, “Can you imagine what it must have been like to be in the presence of an elder suffering from senility without the concept of senility?”

You may see where this may go with regard to excesses, cruelties, and sadism on the part of cultures that have invested heavily in the legitimacy of absolute power or who haven’t registered as problems bipolar mania, for example, or messianic delusion (we could build a long list of concepts not shared across cultures and therefore invisible from one to the other).

Remember this event? http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/africa/08/28/libya.gadhafi.nanny/index.html

How could somebody do that? How could an entire family hide it (or, sadly, do similar things)?

Somebody had convinced themselves they had the privilege and right, and that was their consciousness and conscience.

Yesterday, another “malignant narcissist” had his military prepare nerve gas for use, probably, in his own state — estimated impact if released in an urban area: 100,000 dead within minutes. In that monster’s head, he may have the privilege and right and cause to drop those weapons in relation to his own (going colloquial here) “head trip”. Assad’s cloak has been Soviet Era Ba’ath Party ideology and encouragement, and — the same as with Saddam — it has helped him endorse his own grandiose delusions.

I’ve wandered long here and apologize if it’s too much. Nonetheless, if “language has a power” it’s this power to produce our story and suspend us — person and culture — in it, and the content of it, whether it defines a strong leader, a good man, greatness in some way, perfidy in another may determine what will matter to us and how conscience will work or seem to be absent altogether.

FTAC – Comment on an Hamas Missile Battery

26 Monday Nov 2012

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation

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I am becoming a defender of Islam.

One of my Facebook buddies wrote in relation to the Hamas missile battery pictured to the left, “I love to hear the muslim’s [STET] cry about how offended they are! They can start a war by launching rockets at Israel and then they cry about it when they get retaliation for their acts.”

By now it should dawn on the infidel (and “The People of the Book” AKA “The People of the Five Books” AKA “the people who have written thousands of books” AKA “the people who write books, grow up to be doctors, and win Nobel Prizes out of all proportion to their small number” AKA etc.) that whatever Islam is or will be, it’s most conservative expression goes hardest on Muslims, and they’re not unaware of this.

So I responded:

All legacies in culture, language, philosophy, and religion evolve, and it’s good that they do. While we Jews have been a leading part of that — a light among the nations — ours may be not the only nation or only light, and it may be part of our character-in-eternal-myth to find that light in others as well.

Some, like Hamas and Hezbollah, make finding that light difficult for us, but it would be a mistake to think for a minute that others do not suffer before the strident and violent expressions in speech and in reality of such as the Muslim Brotherhood and the Taliban, not to completely equate the two but to suggest than an INCLUSIVE universalism is greater in latency within our species than so many attempts by fascist entrepreneurs to leverage exclusive and deeply narcissistic programs, whether by way of nationalist or religious ambitions, into their own power or wealth. Some get away with what they do on the backs of others: Robert Mugabe foremost to my turn of mind. 🙂

I’ll tell you a not-so-secret secret: it’s not the dictator who destroys his people; it’s the dictator’s people who allow themselves to be destroyed, either in their humanity or in fact.

So it is with Hamas and others: they’re gettin’ rich (or they’re getting weapons, at least) while “their people” are allowing themselves to “get owned” in the worst ways imaginable. The day will dawn when they know they can fight back and will.

Contributing to that thought this morning was this reported this morning in the Los Angeles Times:  “I’m demanding that Morsi sit down with the opposition and listen to the different people of Egypt. He must also retract his decree and reform the police system,” said Arafat Moawad, a protester in Tahrir. “He needs to do these things in order to become a president for all Egyptians. Now, he is just a president for [his] Muslim Brotherhood movement.”  (“Egyptian stock exchange falls, protesters converge on Tahrir Square”).

To be clear: there is the voice (supported on the “Arab Street” by the presence of the body) protesting both the latest power grab by dictator wannabe (President-for-Life) Morsi and, associated with him, the ascendance of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

It’s not the dictator, is it?

Dictators, generally speaking, are but common assholes who have managed to elevate themselves above all others — not for nothing do we call them “malignant narcissists” — by way of intimidation, theft, and murder.

It’s The People, Los Pueblos, the Every Man and Woman, who allow them their outrageous license, which I believe they do in relation to their own cultural or social disorganization and lack of comprehension and prescience.  No one alone and innately possessed of a decent ethics and humanity can stand up to a thug; anyone alone, however, may band with others to shut down the same, and then, when that happens, the movement, the True Revolution, may be called an expression of righteous political will, this provided the same is itself possessed of a broad scope and related insight.

From the Haggadah with which I grew up: “With every generation, a little more freedom is won.”

Moses left Egypt with not only the Jews but a “mixed multitude” — i.e., all who wished to abandon the world constructed around and for Pharaoh, as malignant a narcissist as any who has ever existed.  That story, intact, transmitted faithfully across generations for now thousands of years, remains eternal, true, and adaptable.