Did I mention I love the nation of Malta? Malta, a beautiful nation just below Sicily which I will always cherish and love. One day I plan on living there.
Krishnamurti - Who am I?
Chief Seattle letter to the President of the United States concerning man and nature:
Peter Atkins - Four Laws That Drive the Universe (delightful):
Sir Ken Robinson on Education and Intelligence: Do schools kill creativity?
WATCH THIS:
Charlie Rose: Biologist Richard Dawkins Asks the QUESTION:
Richard Dawkins Answers the other QUESTION:
Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio lecture on Brain Education for a culture of peace @ the United Nations:
Edward O Wilson: I HAVE A DREAM; On the Fragile Nature of Life and a pleas to save it before it vanishes.
An Introduction to Neuroscience with Alan Alda:
Rodolfo Llinas tells the future of the human brain and possibly our species.
Charlie Rose Science Series: Understanding the Human Brain and Consciousness
Krishnamurti on the transformation of the individual and society:
Physicist David Bohm on psychological fragmentation.
V S Ramachandran on the three pound mass that is our reality, the human brain:
Neuroscientist Sir Jonathan Wolfe Miller with Nobel prize-winning American physicist Steven Weinberg on reality.
Richard Dawkins - the Enemies Of Reason
Part One
Part Two
Daniel Dennett reviews and rebukes "The Purpose Driven Life" by Rick Warren:
Charlie Rose Science Series: Nobel laureate Dr. Harold Varmus, Chairman & CEO of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, serves as guest host for this conversation with: neurobiologist Dr. ERIC KANDEL. Dr. Kandel, also a Nobel laureate, is a professor at Columbia University and the author of "In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind"
Charlie Rose Science Series: From Potential of the Mind to Diseases of the Brain, with Paul Nurse of Rockefeller University, Eric Kandel of Columbia University, Catherine Lord from the University of Michigan, Helen Mayberg of Emory University and Donald Price of Johns Hopkins University.
Interview with Eric Kandel, psychiatrist, a neuroscientist and professor of biochemistry and biophysics:
NVC founder Marshall Rosenberg...On Nonviolent Communication
http://www.youtube.com/v/XbgxFgAN7_w
The Infections, Blondie, GG ALLIN, the Dictators, Django Reinhardt, Louis Prima, Beethoven, Dvorak, Rachmaninoff, Iggy Pop, Marshall Crenshaw, John Lennon, Frank Sinatra, Amy Winehouse, Papa Celestine, Tom Waits, the Stooges, Dion, Nick Drake, Ravi Shankar, Elliott Smith, Luscious Jackson, X-Ray Spex, Metal Mike, Enya, Guitar Slim Jr., Dizzy Gilespie, Miles Davis, the Vibrators, the Saints, Dewey Cox, Misfits, Rolling Stones, Hollywood Brats, Joe Strummer, Paul McCartney, Loose Lips, the Humpers, Pere Ubu, Suicide, Stiv Bators, Cheetah Chrome, George Harrison, the Heartbreakers, Malcolm McClaren, Johnny Thunders, Deborah Harry, Texas Terri, Jelly Roll Morton, Sarah Jones, Ernie K-Doe, Johnny Adams, Guitar Slim Jr., Nina Simone, Billie Holiday, Patti Smith Group, Sonny Boy Williamson, The Chiffons, Ventures, Fab Five Freddy, Joan Jett, Cramps, early Dylan, Huey Smith and the Clowns, Minnie Driver, DVDA, Patti Smith, Buddy Holly, Roger "Syd" Barrett, the Beatles, Jello Biafra and the Melvins, the Dead Kennedys, Pink Floyd, the Yardbirds, the Normals, the Dukes, TMGE, Goran Bregovic, the Clash, Rage Against The Machine, Jonathan Richman, Emir Kusturica and the No Smoking Band, Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller, Wynton Marsalis, Reagan Youth, Die Toten Hosen, Pere Ubu, Chuck Berry, Nina Simone, Albert Collins, MC5, Julian Lennon, the Dictators, DMZ, Joey Ramone, Dee Dee Ramone, James Cotton, Richard Hell, Lazy Cowgirls, Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Bix, Peter Salett, Dave Bartholemew, King Oliver, Kermit Ruffins, Elastica, Wire, Sex Pistols, New York Dolls, Wayne Kramer, Ernie K-Doe, Quintron, Gangwar, Reagan Youth, Black Flag, TMGE, Lou Reed (especially Metal Machine Music), the Mirrors, the Eletric Eels, the Deadboys, Stiv Bators, the Stooges, the Shangri-Las,White Lodge, the Ramones, Quintron, Peaches, David Johansen, Nico, Peter Laughner, Minnie Driver, Gene Vincent, Hanoi Rocks, Lloyd Price, Led Zepplin, Larry Williams, the Sonics
Mamie Van Doren with the extraordinary scientific brain as "the Girl Who Invented Rock N' Roll":
How can anyone not like Betty?
And now a message from Iggy Pop:
Movies
BANARAS, Monty Python's Life of Brian, Chungking Express, the Golden Compass, Gone Baby Gone, Secretary, Stranger Than Fiction, The Power of Myth, Arizona Dream, MAN BITES DOG, Bad Santa, Fantasia, THX 1138, the Wanderers, LIFE IS A MIRACLE, Snow White, the Notebook, There Will Be Blood, Derzu Uzala, Johnny Depp's The Brave, A Very Long Engagement, Labyrinth, 1984, M, Battleship Potempkin, Metropolis, Olympia Festival of Beauty, Olympiad, Triumph of the Will, The Wonderful Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl, Alexander Nevsky, the Elephant Man, Ran, Sin City, Taxi Driver, Heavenly Creatures, Walk Hard, Reservoir dogs, Big Top Pee-Wee!, Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, the Wanderers, A Summer Story (British film), the Queen, Brother's Keeper, the Fog of War, A Clockwork Orange, Battleship Potempkin (silent/russian), Lawrence of Arabia, M, Europa Europa, the Big Red One, the Third Miracle, Once We Were Warriors, What the bleep do you know?, Black Cat White Cat, Underground, the Naked Kiss, Johnny Got His Gun, Shock Corridor, Manchurian Candidate (original), the Unbearable Lightness of Being, Gandhi, Citizen Kane, the Count of Monte Cristo, Henry and June, Andrei Rublev, the Human Condition (trilogy/japanese), the Hidden Fortress, High and Low, Black Rain (B&W japanese), Dark Passage, the Wizard of Oz, Blade Runner, Paths of Glory, Supersize Me, the Wild Bunch, Rumble Fish, Kill Bill 2, strange days, the Frisco Kid, Why We Fight, Blazing Saddles, 1984, Dr. Strangelove, Return to Oz, Crusoe, the Big Red One, Amelie, the Corporation, Keeping the Faith, Pollock, Europa Europa, the Game, Why We Fight, Crumb, All Quiet On The Western Front, North By Northwest, Vertigo, Garden State, Jersey Girl, What's Eating Gilbert Grape?, Black Rain, Yojimbo, Harikari, Kwaidan, Amelie, the Last Castle, Fisher King, Crumb, Thank You For NOT Smoking
Television
I don't watch TV anymore though if I am around it... anything comedic especially with a British sense of humor or even toilet, Pinky and the Brain, Charlie Rose, National Geographic Explorer, Smallville, Scientific American Frontiers, Bill Moyers Journal, 60 Minutes, Simpsons, South Park, Monty Python, Benny Hill, NOW, Frontline, Jonathan Miller’s ‘A Short History of Disbelief’, Faulty Towers and documentaries.
A tribute to art spiegelmans Pulitzer prize winning masterpiece MAUS:
I have my own personal library... David Bohm, Krishnamurti, Eric Kandel, Rodolfo Llinás, Toni Packer, Julian Jaynes, Christopher Hitchens, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Daniel Dennett, Peter Atkins, Steven Weinberg, William James, Carl Jung, Karl Pribrahm, Judith Rich Harris, Antonio Damasio, Ron Chernow, James Bovard, Mark Twain, Roger Penrose, V S Ramachandran, Oliver Sacks, Thomas Metzinger, Christopher Koch, Keiji Nakazawa, F A Hayek, Karl Pribram, Libet, LLinas, Stephen Wolinsky, Gerald Edelman, Marshall Rosenberg, William Isaacs, Michael Gazzaniga, Joseph Campbell, Jamie Ward, J Storrs Hall, Larry Squire, Joseph J. Ellis, Toni Packer, Thomas Cleary, Ron Chernow, Paul Auster, JK Potter, art spiegelman, Legs McNeil, Thomas Flemming, Edwin Black. J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Philip Pullman's Dark Materials..
I love Russian literature and can be considered a quasi-polymath along with other members of my family. Love Marcel Proust and Fyodor Dostoevsky.
MAGAZINES: the Comics Journal, the LINK (Krishnamurti Link International), Print, National Geographic, Scientific American Mind, Scientific American Body, Scientific American, Reason, Liberty, Washington Report On Middle Eastern Affairs, the Economist, Forbes, American Free Press, Bust, Bitch, The Journal of Neuroscience.
Heroes
Be your own hero ~ Richard Hell
"I don't have any influences, any heroes, it's just me." ~ G. G. Allin
Hallcyon "Remember where you came from, where you're going, and why you created the mess you got yourself into in the first place." - Richard Bach Posted at 10:04 PM Nov 20 view more
About me: "Condemnation without investigation is the height of ignorance." ~ Albert Einstein
UPDATED: aprils fools day 2009, this profile is being remodeled.
Please.. excuse me, for presuming to speak to you without an introduction. Have always felt it rather unfortunate that human beings fragment psychologically into what our brains view as the described/what we identify with, than understanding our own biological architecture. Am just being, living, seeing as there is no separation in communication whether it is on a phone, in person, or via the internet (myspace). Einstein pointed this out directly, "Our separation of each other is an optical illusion of consciousness". The only division is the that which one creates and lives (prejudice).
If that which is you desire communication, have the capacity to care and love so that you may with sincere, compassionate communications skills. If however you can't reciprocate communication or are a judgmental schizo then I will block you and eradicate "you" from any contact with "me". The "Me"? Sincere, unattached, nonjudgmental, open to reciprocal free form dialogue. Otherwise go away, as far away as possible or else. Also if you are on my list and can't, do delete me. I despise cowards. Why? What does it mean to be dumb? Being ignorant of love so that you can't see past your selfness; Thus being unable to communicate and investigate with compassionate scientific inquiry.
This isn't psychobabble, to quote Vladek, "What do you know about friends?" Well? Cheers to free-form BOHMIAN-DIALOGUE..
“Suppose we were able to share meanings freely without a compulsive urge to impose our view or conform to those of others and without distortion and self-deception. Would this not constitute a real revolution in culture.” ~ David Bohm
"Nothing is written." ~ Lawrence of Arabia
"We put our hands over our eyes and weep that it is dark." ~ Swami Vivekananda
"As long as our brain is a mystery, the universe, the reflection of the structure of the brain will also be a mystery." ~ Santiago Ramon y Cajal
"I think we need to understand how sensory information is translated into action. We need to understand how unconscious mental processes develop. Where do they occur? What are the processing steps? What is the nature of decision making? Of free will? Can we get a vantage point on consciousness?" ~ Eric Kandel
“I think that we’re not really aware of what is happening in this system which I’ve called ‘thought’. We don’t know how it works. We hardly know it is a system; it’s not part of our culture even to admit that it is a single system.” ~ David Bohm
"This is the threat to our lives. We all face it. We all operate in our society in relation to a system. Now is the system going to eat you up and relieve you of your humanity or are you going to be able to use the system to human purposes? [...] If the person doesn't listen to the demands of his own spiritual and heart life and insists on a certain program, you're going to have a schizophrenic crack-up. The person has put himself off center. He has aligned himself with a programmatic life and it's not the one the body's interested in at all. And the world's full of people who have stopped listening to themselves." ~ Joseph Campbell
"To educate a man is to unfit him to be a slave." ~ Frederick Douglass
"There is no “I” to get enlightened. That’s illusion. There’s only being here with what’s here without division. Eyes open. Eyes and ears open, to let everything reveal itself as it is. And maybe feel this Love. In loveness with life, as it is." ~ Toni Packer
"Truth has no path. Truth is living and, therefore, changing. Awareness is without choice, without demand, without anxiety; in that state of mind, there is perception. To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person. Awareness has no frontier; it is giving of your whole being, without exclusion." ~ Bruce Lee
"Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world." ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, "Studies in Pessimism," Psychological Observations, 1851
"Did you ever wonder if the person in the puddle is real, and you're just a reflection of him?" ~ Calvin and Hobbes
"Those who are enslaved to their sects are not merely devoid of all sound knowledge, but they will not even stop to learn!" ~ Claudius Galen (c.130-c.200) Greek physician, writer, philosopher. On The Natural Faculties.
"One brain has developed a capacity to create for us a world of our own making and imagination. Very few of us live in the real world. We live in the world of our perceptions, and those perceptions differ dramatically according to our personal experiences. We may perceive anger where there is none. If the distortion is ever enough, we may think we are living among enemies even while we are surrounded by friends." ~ Willard Gaylin
"What is essential here is the presence of the spirit of dialogue, which is in short, the ability to hold many points of view in suspension, along with a primary interest in the creation of common meaning." ~ David Bohm
"To confront a person with his own shadow is to show him his own light." ~ Carl Jung
"The emergence and blossoming of understanding, love and intelligence has nothing to do with any tradition, no matter how ancient or impressive - it has nothing to do with time. It happens completely on its own when a human being questions, wonders, listens and looks without getting stuck in fear, pleasure and pain. When self concern is quiet, in abeyance, heaven and earth are open. The mystery, the essence of all life is not separate from the silent openness of simple listening." ~ Toni Packer
"The general plot of life is sometimes shaped by the different ways genuine intelligence combines with equally genuine ignorance." ~ Lucy Grealy from 'Autobiography of a face'
"I am not myself apt to be alarmed at innovations recommended by reason. That dread belongs to those whose interests or prejudices shrink from the advance of truth and science." ~ Thomas Jefferson to John Manners, 1814
"I have thought it my duty to exhibit things as they are, not as they ought to be." ~ Alexander Hamilton
"I assumed that the memories I did have, especially those which were vivid, concrete, and circumstantial, were essentially valid and reliable. And it was a shock to me, but I found that some of them were not." ~ Oliver Sacks
"That we are no longer this poor little stranger and afraid in a world it never made. But that YOU ARE THIS UNIVERSE and you are creating it in every moment...Because you see it starts now, it didn't begin in the past, there was no past. See, if the universe began in the past when that happened it was now, see, but it still now. and the universe is still beginning now, and it's trailing off like the wake of a ship from now, and that wake fades out so does the past. You can look back there to explain things, but the explanation disappears. You'll never find it there... Things are not explained by the past, they are explained by what Happens Now. That Creates the past, and it begins here... That's the birth of responsibility... ~ Alan Watts
"Even though it is common knowledge, it never ceases to amaze me that all the richness of our mental life - all our feelings, our emotions, our thoughts, our ambitions, our love lives, our religious sentiments and even what each of us regards as his or her own intimate private self - is simply the activity of these little specks of jelly in our heads, in our brains. There is nothing else." ~ V.S. Ramachandran, A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness: From Impostor Poodles to Purple Numbers
“The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion ... draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises ... in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former conclusions may remain inviolate.” ~ Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, 1620
"Any object of thought is both 'more than what we think, and different'." ~ Alfred Korzybski
"Brain: an apparatus with which we think that we think." ~ Ambrose Bierce
"The tension felt in the modern world between those who look at the confluence of neuroscientific data, historical data, and other information illuminating our past and those who simply accept received wisdom as their guide in life is real and profound. Yet it may not be as divisive as one would think. It appears that all of us share the same moral networks and systems, and we all respond in similar ways to similar issues. The only thing different, then, is not our behavior but our theories about why we respond the way we do. It seems to me that understanding that our theories are the source of all our conflicts would go a long way in helping people with different belief systems to get along." ~ Michael Gazzaniga
"Every sentence I utter must be understood not as an affirmation, but as a question." ~ Niels Henrik David Bohr (1885-1962) Danish physicist.
To all whom read this, do you have a question? Then ask me, be upfront so we can have a dialogue, presume nothing. Like Jim Mora once stated, "You think you know, but you don't know and you never will." I agree with that statement but not in the way Mora intended it. I challenge all on what they think they 'know' as we live in a perceptual reality of the brain.
Now to another issue here is simply the complete, absolute, unconditional undivided freedom of each and every human being, or is it? What is the reality we live in and need to be free of or from? As how can we communicate if we are divided from within? So is it the story is as always that 'good' guys win, 'bad' guys lose and ignorance prevails? Unless one opens ones minds eye to see the illusion you live in, one can't even understand this question. Not that I presume you the reader are aware and/or understand any of this. Prejudice is not needed to communicate, nor knowledge. Just good will, compassion and clarity of vision.
Please let me know that you were here. Also are you aware that this Hallcyon has nothing to with putting you to sleep or getting loaded as in the sleeping pill? Thank you..
So why, why Hallcyon? Well the golden years in many ways as this is my life, my existence... is not now, not this, not that, but the timeless unmeasured reality. Bah humbug to golden years of peaceful tranquility and the power of now. right action with love, which is not a mood, but truly an unconditional way of just being. Besides it is also the meaning of my first and last name so to speak. I'm still a formless Tasmanian wolf...
Here is a parting quote, though this page is full of them. This one in particular states so much:
"You have a concept of what you should be and how you should act, and all the time you are in fact acting quite differently; so you see that principles, beliefs and ideals must inevitably lead to hypocrisy and a dishonest life. It is the ideal that creates the opposite to what is, so if you know how to be with 'what is', then the opposite is not necessary."
~ Krishnamurti, Freedom from the Known
Finally for my personal selfish interests your viewing of this page is being monitored and tracked (no spyware).
"One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon - instead of enjoying the roses blooming outside our windows today." ~ Dale Carnegie
"Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again." ~ Matthew 7:1/7:2
"Today everything's a conflict of interest" ~ Sid Vicious
"Outrageousness is nothing more than a way to wake people up..." ~ the punky QB known as Jim McMahon, NFL Super Bowl Champion Quarterback
"I believe the game is designed to reward the ones who hit the hardest. If you can't take it, you shouldn't play." ~ Jack Lambert, Super Bowl Champion and NFL Hall of Fame Linebacker
"Just about everything we do stems from the "self" and if your asking me whether I see this? It is my life long challenge to see this. Thought(time) is our illusory trap. If one can stay with this, and observe this, than that is all one needs. The change will happen from this. However, the change is not the focus, it's the awareness and attention of the movement we call "me" that's important." ~ Kaia
"The idea that a group of people-whether defined as a nation or as a religion-could be condemned for all time and without the possibility of an appeal was (and is) essentially a totalitarian one." ~ Christopher Hitchens
"A house must be built on solid foundations if it is to last. The same principle applies to man, otherwise he too will sink back into the soft ground and becomes swallowed up by the world of illusion." ~ Sai Baba
"Everybody knows." ~ Leonard Cohen
"Can we learn to become more learning-oriented individually and collectively, rather than 'I know' oriented?" ~ David Bohm
"Forget about winning and losing; forget about pride and pain. Let your opponent graze your skin and you smash into his flesh; let him smash into your flesh and you fracture his bones; let him fracture your bones and you take his life. Do not be concerned with escaping safely - lay your life before him." ~ Bruce Lee
"Pain is physical, suffering is mental. Beyond the mind there is no suffering. Pain is essential for the survival of the body, but none compels you to suffer. Suffering is due entirely to clinging or resisting; it is a sign of our unwillingness to move on, to flow with life. As a sane life is free of pain, so is a saintly life free from suffering. A saint does not want things to be different from what they are; he knows that, considering all factors, they are unavoidable. He is friendly with the inevitable and, therefore, does not suffer. Pain he may know, but it does not shatter him. If he can, he does the needful to restore the lost balance, or he lets things take their course." ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
"It’s never what people do that make us angry, it’s what we tell ourselves about what they did. ~ Marshall Rosenberg
"Trying to capture the physicists' precise mathematical description of the quantum world with our crude words and mental images is like playing Chopin with a boxing glove on one hand and a catcher's mitt on the other." ~ George Johnson, "On Skinning Schrödinger's Cat," The New York Times, 2 June 1996.
"Man may purposely, consciously choose for himself even the harmful and the stupid, even the stupidest thing -- just so that he will have the right to wish the stupidest thing, and not be bound by the duty to have only intelligent wishes. For this most stupid thing, this whim of ours, gentlemen may really be more advantageous to us than anything on earth, especially in certain cases. In fact, it may be the most advantageous of all advantages even when it brings us obvious harm and contradicts the most sensible conclusions of our reason concerning our advantage. Because, at any rate, it preserves for us the most important and most precious thing -- our personality, our individuality." ~ Fyodor Dostoeyvsky
"I do not believe that there is any teaching; there is only learning, and this is very important to understand. When the individual who is listening regards the speaker as one who is teaching him something, such an attitude creates and maintains the division of the pupil and the master, of the one who knows and the one who does not know. But there is only learning, and I think it is very important from the very beginning to understand this and to establish the right relationship between us. The man who says he knows does not know; the man who says he has attained liberation has not realized. If you think you are going to learn something from me which I know and you do not know, then you become a follower and he who follows will never find out what is truth. That is why it is very important for you to understand this." ~ Krishnamurti
"You have to work hard but not bury yourself in the work. You have to have passion for something you want to do. And you have to work at it. If you don't have the passion for it, I don't know. But you can't neglect making a living. And have to realize as you get older, put that money aside a little bit. Don't let your passion lead you astray. Make sure it's a pragmatic thing. Don't go crazy with lack of success. As you grow up, there are many things in life besides what you do as a living, and you have to take care of yourself. And if you have a wife and children, that's important, very important. You can float away into nowhere into space. Some do that their whole life. Otherwise you just float to nowhere." ~ Hilly Krystal
"Once you go beyond your self-identification with your past, you are free to create a new world of harmony and beauty." ~ Nisargadatta
"Brothers and sisters, the time has come for each and every one of you to decide whether you are gonna be the problem, or whether you are gonna be the solution. You must choose, brothers, you must choose. It takes Five seconds, Five seconds of decision. Five seconds to realize your purpose here on the planet. Five seconds to realize that it's time to move. It's time to get down with it. Brothers, it's time to testify and I want to know, are you ready to testify? Are you ready?! I give you a testimonial, the MC5!" ~ Rob Tyner and the MC5
"To put the world right in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must first put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must first cultivate our personal life; we must first set our hearts right." ~ Confucius
"There is nothing to practice. To know yourself, be yourself. To be yourself, stop imagining yourself to be this or that. Just be. Let your true nature emerge. Don't disturb your mind with seeking." ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
"And that Aha! that you get when you see an artwork that really hits you is, 'I am that.' I am the very radiance of energy that is talking to me through this painting." ~ Joseph Campbell
"This unconditioning means: the academic side, behavior in detail as well as seeing the totality, all of that running together. This is what I am trying to convey to the student and in that I am learning how to live that way. That takes too long. So I say to myself, "A miracle must happen to change it instantly." May be both together are necessary - the miracle as well as the other. Can we produce both? I think we can. And that's why, as you said just now, if we are balanced, serious - which means not sentimental, not verbal, not ideational but factual - if we are dealing with it in that way, the miracle comes." ~ Krishnamurti
"When we quit thinking primarily about ourselves and our own self-preservation, we undergo a truly heroic transformation of consciousness." ~ Jospeh Campbell
"I have never experienced another human being. I have experienced my impressions of them." ~ Robert Anton Wilson
"Indeed, to some extent it has always been necessary and proper for man, in his thinking, to divide things up, if we tried to deal with the whole of reality at once, we would be swamped. However when this mode of thought is applied more broadly to man's notion of himself and the whole world in which he lives, (i.e. in his world-view) then man ceases to regard the resultant divisions as merely useful or convenient and begins to see and experience himself and this world as actually constituted of separately existing fragments. What is needed is a relativistic theory, to give up altogether the notion that the world is constituted of basic objects or building blocks. Rather one has to view the world in terms of universal flux of events and processes." ~ David Bohm
"Politicians today are not leaders, nor are they representatives of the people. They are brokers who distribute the taxpayer money among special interests. That is all they are. And either party would much rather see their opponents win, with whom they can cut a deal, than a maverick in their own party with whom they could not cut a deal. And if you don't understand that, you're still in kindergarten." ~ C. Wilson
"Only two kinds of people can attain self-knowledge: those who are not encumbered at all with learning, that is to say, whose minds are not over - crowded with thoughts borrowed from others; and those who, after studying all the scriptures and sciences, have come to realise that they know nothing." ~ Ramakrishna
"Please don't try to understand me intellectually. I am not an intellectual, in fact I am anti-intellectual. I am not a philosopher, I am very anti-philosophic. Try to comprehend me. Listen silently with no inner chattering, with no inner talk, without evaluating. I am not saying believe what I say, I am not saying accept what I say. I am saying there is no need to be in a hurry to accept or reject. First at least listen - why be in such a hurry? When you see a rose flower, do you accept or reject it? When you see a beautiful sunset, do you accept or reject it? You simply see it, and in that very seeing is a meeting. If what I am saying has anything of truth in it, it will be understood by your heart. But the mind has to give way. And then you will not need to change your life according to it, it will be changed of its own accord." - Osho
"The time is always right to do what is right." ~ Martin Luther King Jr.
"An insincere and evil friend is more to be feared than a wild beast; a wild beast may wound your body, but an evil friend will wound your mind." ~ Siddharta Gautama
"The ignorant man is not the unlearned, but he who does not know himself, and the learned man is stupid when he relies on books, on knowledge and on authority to give him understanding. Understanding comes only through self-knowledge, which is awareness of one's total psychological process. Thus education, in the true sense, is the understanding of oneself, for it is within each one of us that the whole of existence is gathered." ~ Krishnamurti
"The remarkable thing is that we really love our neighbor as ourselves: we do unto others as we do unto ourselves. We hate others when we hate ourselves. We are tolerant toward others when we tolerate ourselves. We forgive others when we forgive ourselves. We are prone to sacrifice others when we are ready to sacrifice ourselves." ~ Eric Hoffer
"Because we are prisoners of our symbolic forms, we can do little more than reconstruct the operations that generate meaning, not only for ourselves, but for other cultures also; we are unable to transcend particular meanings in order to inquire about man himself, his destiny, etc. The most we can do is to recognize man as the one who produces symbolic forms, systems of signs, and who then confuses them with reality itself, forgetting that in order to make reality meaningful he interposes an always particular system of signs between reality and himself." ~ René Girard, Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World
"I think that parents only get so offended by television because they rely on it as a babysitter and the sole educator of their kids." ~ Trey Parker & Matt Stone
"Religion, politics, society are exploiting you, and you are being conditioned by them; you are being forced in a particular direction. You are not human beings; you are mere cogs in a machine. You suffer patiently, submitting to the cruelties of environment, when you, individually, have the possibilities of changing them." ~ Krishnamurti
"While our bodies move ever forward on the time-line, our minds continuously trace backward, seeking shape and meaning as deftly as an arrow seeking its mark." ~ Lucy Grealy from Autobiography of a face
"All human actions have one of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion, desire." Aristotle
"Never be bullied into silence.Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself." Harvey Fierstein
"A man goes to the doctor. Says he's depressed. He says life seems harsh and cruel. Says he feels all alone in a threatening world where what lies ahead is vague and uncertain. The doctor says "The treatment is simple. The great clown Pagliacci is in town tonight. Go and see him, that should pick you up." The man bursts into tears. He says "But doctor... I am Pagliacci." ~ Alan Moore
"Go without a coat when it's cold; find out what cold is. Go hungry; keep your existence lean. Wear away the fat, get down to the lean tissue and see what it's all about. The only time you define your character is when you go without. In times of hardship, you find out what you're made of and what you're capable of. If you're never tested, you'll never define your character." ~ Henry Rollins
"To talk about communication theory without communicating its real mathematical content would be like endlessly telling a man about a wonderful composer, yet never letting him hear an example of the composer's music." ~ John Robinson Pierce (1910- ) U. S. electrical engineer. In: Symbols, Signals and Noise
"There's a sense in which final causes - purposes and goals - have this kind of attractive quality. They draw things toward them.... This is completely different from the model of things being pushed from behind in the mechanical universe." ~ Rupert Sheldrake
"...the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue center light pop and everybody goes 'Awww!'" ~ Jack Kerouac
"All violence is the result of people tricking themselves into believing that their pain derives from other people and that consequently those people deserve to be punished." ~ Marshall Rosenberg
"Pseudospeciation, the ability of humans and some other primates to classify certain members of their own species as ‘other,’ can neutralize the threshold of inhibition so they can kill conspecifics." ~ from War Psychiatry
"If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" ~ Alexander Solzhenitsyn
"Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart... Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens." ~ Carl Jung
"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary." ~ Steve Jobs
"Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress." ~ Mohandas K. Gandhi
"When I'm telling you my feelings, discussing memories, in this close relationship, I'm achieving better neurological integration; I'm repairing the connections in the brain."
~ Dr. Dan Siegal, Psychiatrist at the University of California, Los Angeles, discussing interpersonal neurobiology
"What we now want is closer contact and better understanding between individuals and communities all over the earth... and the elimination of egoism and pride which is always prone to plunge the world into primeval barbarism and strife." ~ Nikola Tesla
"Man should not be in the service of society, society should be in the service of man. When man is in the service of society, you have a monster state, and that's what is threatening the world at this minute." ~ Joseph Campbell
"To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace. A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined, but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government." ~ United States President George Washington
"One person can make a difference and every person should try." ~ President John F. Kennedy
"A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him, that of plants and animals as that of his fellow men, and when he devotes himself helpfully to all life that is in need of help." ~ Albert Schweitzer
"Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold." ~ Leo Tolstoy
"I've always felt it was not up to anyone else to make me give my best." ~ Hakeem Olajuwon
"Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocre minds. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence and fulfills the duty to express the results of his thoughts in clear form." ~ Albert Einstein
"Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning." ~ Microsoft Founder Bill Gates
"Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself." ~ Leo Tolstoy
"Language is a process of free creation; its laws and principles are fixed, but the manner in which the principles of generation are used is free and infinitely varied. Even the interpretation and use of words involves a process of free creation." ~ Noam Chomsky
"The voice of the people has been said to be the voice of God; and, however generally this maxim has been quoted and believed, it is not true to fact. The people are turbulent and changing, they seldom judge or determine right." ~ Alexander Hamilton
"The argument for liberty is not an argument against organization, which is one of the most powerful tools human reason can employ, but an argument against all exclusive, privileged, monopolistic organization, against the use of coercion to prevent others from doing better." ~ Friedrich von Hayek
"The fact is there is nothing that you can trust; and that is a terrible fact, whether you like it or not. Psychologically there is nothing in the world, that you can put your faith, your trust, or your belief in. Neither your gods, nor your science can save you, can bring you psychological certainty; and you have to accept that you can trust in absolutely nothing. That is a scientific fact, as well as a psychological fact. Because, your leaders religious and political and your books sacred and profane have all failed, and you are still confused, in misery, in conflict. So, that is an absolute, undeniable fact." ~ Krishnamurti
"A great writer has spoken sadly of the shock it would be to a mother to know her boy as he really is, but I think she often knows him better than he is known to cynical friends. We should be slower to think that the man at his worst is the real man, and certain that the better we are ourselves the less likely is he to be at his worst in our company. Every time he talks away his own character before us he is signifying contempt for ours." ~ J.M. Barrie
"To overcome evil with good is good, to resist evil with evil is evil." ~ Mohammad
"When you see evil, especially when it wears a smiling and angelic face, you must call it out. And you must deal with the consequences of calling it out, which can be bad. Because the consequences of not calling it out could be infinitely worse." ~ John Kessel
"The great teachings unanimously emphasize that all the peace, wisdom, and joy in the universe are already within us; we don't have to gain, develop, or attain them. We're like a child standing in a beautiful park with his eyes shut tight. We don't need to imagine trees, flowers, deer, birds, and sky; we merely need to open our eyes and realize what is already here, who we really are -- as soon as we quit pretending we're small or unholy."~ Unknown
"You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing, and dance, and write poems, and suffer, and understand, for all that is life." ~ Krishnamurti
"Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on Earth." ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky
"The struggle of "humanity" against all other cultures. This struggle defined what people defined as humanity. Think of it. What general ideas do you have about the emergence of man? when does human history start? In most of my education and in many books besides, I was often told that humanity truly emerged not with the introduction of homo sapiens but rather with the beginning of agriculture in Mesopotamia thousands of years ago. With this came the development of the first cities and also the birth of civilization(which comes from the Latin for city-civitas). Then came the belief that civilization can do no wrong. Think of it. We never question that civilizations basic foundation is wrong, in fact it will say it is right as it continues to destroy itself. Civilization has either convinced other cultures or forced other cultures that lived differently then them to become a part of them. They targeted people who didn't live the way they wanted them to. In Europe Gypsies, in the America's the Native Peoples, in Australia the Aborigines, etc. Now we are almost complete. The world is almost one culture. The problem arises when one tries to decide if this is necessarily a good thing or not. Is the destruction of thousands of other cultures worth it just to prove "We can't be wrong"?" ~ anonymous
"If we are honest—and scientists have to be—we must admit that religion is a jumble of false assertions, with no basis in reality. The very idea of God is a product of the human imagination. It is quite understandable why primitive people, who were so much more exposed to the overpowering forces of nature than we are today, should have personified these forces in fear and trembling. But nowadays, when we understand so many natural processes, we have no need for such solutions. I can't for the life of me see how the postulate of an Almighty God helps us in any way. What I do see is that this assumption leads to such unproductive questions as why God allows so much misery and injustice, the exploitation of the poor by the rich and all the other horrors He might have prevented. If religion is still being taught, it is by no means because its ideas still convince us, but simply because some of us want to keep the lower classes quiet. Quiet people are much easier to govern than clamorous and dissatisfied ones. They are also much easier to exploit. Religion is a kind of opium that allows a nation to lull itself into wishful dreams and so forget the injustices that are being perpetrated against the people. Hence the close alliance between those two great political forces, the State and the Church. Both need the illusion that a kindly God rewards—in heaven if not on earth—all those who have not risen up against injustice, who have done their duty quietly and uncomplainingly. That is precisely why the honest assertion that God is a mere product of the human imagination is branded as the worst of all mortal sins." ~ Paul Dirac, legendary scientist and physicist from Werner Heisenbergs Physics and Beyond: Encounters and Conversations
"Humanity today is not safe in the presence of humanity. The old cannibalism has given way to anonymous action in which the killer and the killed do not know each other, and in which, indeed, the very fact of mass death has the effect of making mass killing less reprehensible than the death of a single individual. In short, we have evolved in every respect except our ability to protect ourselves against human intelligence. Our knowledge is vast but does not embrace the workings of peace. . . . We study history, philosophy, religions, languages, literature, art, architecture, political science . . . anthropology, biology, medicine, psychology, sanitation . . . chemistry, physics, engineering, mathematics. But we have yet to make peace basic to our education. The most important subject in the world is hardly taught at all." ~ Norman Cousins (In the spirit of this passage, the editor has taken the liberty of editing Mr. Cousins' language to make it more gender inclusive.)
"So yes the brain seems to have evolved, or I believe and many people will agree, as
the instrument for motricity, the instrument to move. Now because it is so closely related to prediction and so closely related to intentionality when we make an impossible statement and say you know what, thinking may be nothing else but internalized movement. Why? Because it is through movement that we solve many things. And what is it that the brain basically does ultimately in all of us? What it does is generate premotor acts, inside it generates premotor events, all that we can do as human beings with our brain is activation of motor neurons, that is the only output. I tell my students you only activate muscles or you activate glands. To put it differently, you either move or drool, that’s all you can do in life. Its true. Ok so you have this apparatus that defines movement beautifully, that predicts that has all sorts of hypotheses on which to act. So thinking is a premotor act. And therefore we are fundamentally moving animals that move intelligently. The more intelligent our movement, the more intelligent we are as animals." ~ Rodolfo Llinás
"Let them call me a rebel and I welcome it; I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of demons should I make a whore of my soul." ~ Thomas Paine
"I go further, and affirm that bills of rights, in the sense and to the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed Constitution, but would even be dangerous. They would contain various exceptions to powers not granted; and, on this very account, would afford a colorable pretext to claim more than were granted. For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do? Why, for instance, should it be said that the liberty of the press shall not be restrained, when no power is given by which restrictions may be imposed? I will not contend that such a provision would confer a regulating power; but it is evident that it would furnish, to men disposed to usurp, a plausible pretense for claiming that power. They might urge with a semblance of reason, that the Constitution ought not to be charged with the absurdity of providing against the abuse of an authority which was not given, and that the provision against restraining the liberty of the press afforded a clear implication, that a power to prescribe proper regulations concerning it was intended to be vested in the national government. This may serve as a specimen of the numerous handles which would be given to the doctrine of constructive powers, by the indulgence of an injudicious zeal for bills of rights."
~ ALEXANDER HAMILTON, The Federalist Papers n. 84
"You can’t have reliable partners in a war on terrorism if they are torturing and killing their own people." ~ Samantha Power
"Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end... but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature... And to found that edifice on its unavenged tears: would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell me the truth!" ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
"Once enough of us decide we’ve had enough of all these so-called good things that the government is always promising—or more likely, when the country is broke and the government is unable to fulfill its promises to the people—we can start a serious discussion on the proper role for government in a free society. Unfortunately, it will be some time before Congress gets the message that the people are demanding true reform. This requires that those responsible for today’s problems are exposed and their philosophy of pervasive government intrusion is rejected. Let it not be said that no one cared, that no one objected once it’s realized that our liberties and wealth are in jeopardy. A few have, and others will continue to do so, but too many—both in and out of government—close their eyes to the issue of personal liberty and ignore the fact that endless borrowing to finance endless demands cannot be sustained. True prosperity can only come from a healthy economy and sound money. That can only be achieved in a free society." ~ 2008 Presidential Candidate Ron Paul
"Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That's what's insane about it." "Laurel and Hardy, that's John and Yoko. And we stand a better chance under that guise because all the serious people like Martin Luther King and Kennedy and Gandhi got shot." ~ John Lennon
"Race is, quite literally, skin-deep, but to the extent that perceivers generalize from external to internal differences, nature has duped them into thinking that race is important. The X-ray vision of the molecular geneticist reveals the unity of our species. And so does the X-ray vision of the cognitive scientist. "Not speaking the same language" is a virtual synonym for incommensurability, but to a psycholinguist, it is a superficial difference. Knowing about the ubiquity of complex language across individuals and cultures and the single mental design underlying them all, no speech seems foreign to me, even when I cannot understand a word. The banter among New Guinean Highlanders in the film of their first contact with the rest of the world, the motions of a sign language interpreter, the prattle of little girls in a Tokyo playground - I imagine seeing through the rhythms to the structures underneath, and sense that we all have the same minds." ~ Steven Pinker
"The names that do the serious damage are the ones we call ourselves. The stereotypes we give ourselves are the ones that matter in the long run, not the ones imposed on us by other people." ~ Judith Rich Harris
"Life is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be lived." ~ Joseph Campbell
"All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible." ~ T. E. Lawrence
"In proportion to our body mass, our brain is three times as large as that of our nearest relatives. This huge organ is dangerous and painful to give birth to, expensive to build and, in a resting human, uses about 20 per cent of the body's energy even though it is just 2 per cent of the body's weight. There must be some reason for all this evolutionary expense." ~ Susan Blackmore
"Every ideology is contrary to human psychology." ~ Albert Camus
"Truth always rests with the minority, and the minority is always stronger than the majority, because the minority is generally formed by those who really have an opinion, while the strength of a majority is illusory, formed by the gangs who have no opinion—and who, therefore, in the next instant (when it is evident that the minority is the stronger) assume its opinion ... while Truth again reverts to a new minority." ~ Soren Kierkegaard
"There is obviously a place in life for a religious attitude for awe and astonishment at existence. That is also a basis for respect for existence. We don’t have much of it in this culture, even though we call it materialistic. In this culture we call materialistic, today we are of course bent on the total destruction of material and its conversion into junk and poisonous gases. This is of course not a materialistic culture because it has no respect for material. And respect is in turn based on wonder." ~ Alan Watts
"Through our scientific and technological genius, we have made of this world a neighborhood and yet we have not had the ethical commitment to make of it a brotherhood. But somehow, and in some way, we have got to do this. We must all learn to live together as brothers or we will all perish together as fools. We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the way God’s universe is made; this is the way it is structured. John Donne caught it years ago and placed it in graphic terms: "No man is an island entire of itself. Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main." And he goes on toward the end to say, "Any man’s death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind; therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." We must see this, believe this, and live by it if we are to remain awake through a great revolution." ~ Martin Luther King Jr., Remaining Awake Through A Great Revolution
"You must have the capacity to doubt, so that you will discover through that doubt what is truth, what is the essential and the lasting. But to doubt everything requires strength of intelligence, of thought, because from morning to night you have to be ceaselessly questioning, demanding, urging. What is life but a mere existence – earning money, gathering and rejecting experience, with all its sorrows – what is its value unless you live like a tremendous volcano that is a danger to everything?" ~ Krishnamurti
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." ~ Richard Feynman
"Each week The X-Files poses a mystery and offers two rival kinds of explanation, the rational theory and the paranormal theory. And, week after week, the rational explanation loses. But it is only fiction, a bit of fun, why get so hot under the collar? Imagine a crime series in which, every week, there is a white suspect and a black suspect. And every week, lo and behold, the black one turns out to have done it. Unpardonable, of course. And my point is that you could not defend it by saying: "But it's only fiction, only entertainment". ~ Richard Dawkins, in "Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder," The Richard Dimbleby Lecture, BBC1 Television, 12th of November 1996
"The world is not the way they tell you it is." ~ Adam Smith
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." ~ Stephen Hawking
"Freedom is at hand when the fundamental qualities of nature, each of their transformations witnessed at the moment of its inception, are recognized as irrelevant to pure awareness; it stands alone, grounded in its very nature, the power of pure seeing. That is all." ~ the Yoga Sutra of Pantanjali, A New Translation, with Commentary by Chip Hartranet
"Telling the truth was the funniest joke in the world." ~ George Bernard Shaw on what he learned from Mark Twain aka Samuel Clemens
"Life is only what you make it, you bring the meaning entirely to it as you are reality and reality is you.." ~ Hallcyon
One more thing: Man is born crying. When he has cried enough, he dies.
Who I'd like to meet: Those alive today:
Noelle; Sara Beth Sechrist, Penn Jillette, Monica D., Liz, Meghan O'Brien, Alex, Jon, Laura Fellows, scientist Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Patricia Churchland, neuroscientists Eric Kandel, V. S. Ramachandran, Michael Gazzaniga, Gerald Edelman, Jamie Martin, Antonio Damasio, Rudolfo Llinas; biologist Ken Miller, David Walker, Professor JoAnne Freeman, David Mills, Scott Forbes, Ron Chernow, Whitney Picco, Amy Ferneyhough, physicist David Deutsch, physicist Lisa Radalll, Edward O. Wilson, Stephen Wolinsky, William Isaacs, Marshall Rosenberg, Bill Moyers, Dnaiel Dennett, Larry Squire, Mark J. A., etc.
I see no attachments, no expectations and feel fine. How about you? I seek nothing, live to learn and feel fine. Do you have the devil on your ass? That is if you can see your illusions.
hey stranger. look i have a cause and it may interest you and you an help. i need a favor. i need lots of folks to hook up with me on a new facebook group page i am building. this is in regards to a labor movement that is starting with lawsuits against pizza companies who don't pay their drivers what they are legally owed. please hook up with us on the page and ask many people to do the same. there will be lots of info very very soon and every person's presence will help our cause. thanks! roxanne
howdy partner! thanks for the video. . . it was very illuminating ;) It's been a while since we last chatted. How is everything in your neck of the woods?
I decided to check out your profile. I'm impressed. You're allowed to live another day, but you may not make it tomorrow, so. . . comment me back. It'll make my week, and you will be able to keep your life.
Online Now!
Happy Thanksgiving!
