Lunchtime on the Playground of Our Commonalities

Posted on 19th May 2012 in Peace, Poetry, Self Determination
 
 
“Don’t take my love for you personally” — Polish Proverb
 

You’ve all heard about the “Falafel Stand in No Man’s Land,” of course. Certainly, it highlights the irony of war. Such things do take place during war when people will take little breaks from fighting to smoke opium, masturbate, medibate, and even kill some more; Such things do take place on both sides of Terra Nullius (No Man’s Land). That is, in their hatred, both sides are the same. In the way they masturbate, both sides are the same. There are cultural differences in toilet paper, no doubt, like sheet size and overall accepted textures, but toilet paper  serves the same function across conflict boundaries.

The irony runs deep. Our most fundamental needs as human beings, our commonalities, are a cause for struggle. How do we transform competition for provision of our human needs into cooperation for the provision of our human needs. Yo, I’m not just talking about food, clothing, shelter, sex, drugs, and rock and roll. We have spiritual needs. We humans have emotional needs. Human beings have psychological and psychical needs as well.

Still, we can do much better than cooperation. We can actually have fun hanging out together in between the bullets and the bombs,  the fists and the knives. Yes, it can be like recess – with the broken monkey bars, the tire swings, the cigarette butts from last nights hoodlums – during Lunchtime in elementary school before our egos are developed enough to take our differences to war.

And why not learn to play nicely together since we all need the same things? Well, it has to do with desire and expectation of course. That is where the struggle comes from. Maybe it is true that the tapeworm in your gut actually pulls the trigger, or the spirochete in your mitochondria deludes you into thinking you’re in love. More likely, it is the self love/loathe — you know, when your self hatred cultivates narcissistic asshole behavior, apathy, and/or  self-deprecation — which prevents us from seeing self as other, gears us towards exploitation of others as we try to control them; steal their resources to acquire our desires (not mutually beneficial) not our human needs  ( “They” could be a person, place or thing).

Of course, what I am suggesting is the Unified Field Theory of Human Endeavors – that which draws us to the Playground of our Human Needs. It requires a transformation of our core temperament with the intention of transcending the border between self and other. Perhaps when the human population was approximately 18 it was not such a difficult task to perform.

Yet, even the internal workings of a persons fwang can, and often do, cause conflict. When our emotional, physical, sexual, psychological, psychical, and spiritual needs are not thoroughly understood – that is, when our internal states are not clearly defined and in resonance with our  core temperament- there exists a fertile ground for conflict. Toss into that internal mix the external forces of 7 billion people working towards the same thing among the external forces of economy, environment, politic, media, and other socal influences and you are left with a highly complicated system in which there is a great deal of friction and uncontrolled oscillations.

In the language of Natural Philosophy this dynamic is  considered to be a ‘many body problem’ for which there is no exact solution. However, this does not mean an empirical solution can not be expressed. That is, the way we live can be transformed – through a series of practices and rituals – to unravel our fwang and re-ravel it with a new formulation more in resonance with our original instructions – this time derived from our practices and spiritual advisers who will prompt us towards expressing who we are supposed to be. This guidance and practice, along with the tools of non-violence and conflict transformation, will instruct us in a way that we can learn to play nicely among the commonalities of our human needs.

 

From the Polish Book of the Dead and Other Drunk Incantations

 

Bardzo VII

 

bardzo zimna
we carried our corpses
a flute a guitar a violin an accordian
and a case of vodka
accomplanied by
a dancer a trickster a warrior a crier
cursing along the backroads of the nowe miasto
to where
we once gathered to play
our love songs
after the invasion
and the next
 
to the places our father’s
fought to their deaths
to play for them
to drink for them
to sing to them
to smoke their last cigarettes
until we were drunk
hurled on the ground
our cold red faces pressed against
white crystals formed around
the edges of bootprints in the mud
sleeping as they do
a few meters underground
buried by decades of war
covered by the new world order
and a fresh layer of snow
 
Now mostly sober
we carry our corpses back
from the Cytadela
half pickled half fermented
gathering unearthed ordinance
and dislodged shrapnel
to place inside the violin’s F-hole
drop into the sound hole of your guitar
jam into the end of her flute
pierce the trickster’s accordian
and ram down our throats
until there is no memory of the fighting
save the muted sounds of instruments
doing their dirty work

© Adam Roufberg

comments: 0 » tags: , , , , , , , , ,

The Politics of Equality

Posted on 7th May 2012 in Articles, Self Determination

by Johan Galtung, 23 Apr 2012- TRANSCEND Media Service

http://www.transcend.org/tms/2012/05/the-politics-of-equality/

From Washington, DC – USA

US politics has for a long time, since the 1970s, been the politics of inequality.  Not only have the indicators of inequality, like the ratio in average income between the top and the  bottom 20%, or the salary ratio between a CEO and the average employee in a corporation, increased (from 50 to 1100).  But the top 10 or 1 or 0.1 percent, has acquired wealth so far unheard of.  And the bottom 90, or 99 or 99.1 percent see the average family income in real terms decreasing; for the lowest down below the poverty line, way down into misery like worrying about where the next meal comes from (from the soup kitchen for very many).

With these processes going on at the same time–increasing accumulation at the top, increasing inequality, and increasing misery at the bottom–whether the total average increases, so-called economic growth, fades in significance.  And yet economists feed up with growth data, for the real and finance economy, and much less with (in)equality measures; domestically and globally.

There is a reason for that: the optimism related to economic growth.  Inequality is seen as incentive to invest, create jobs, and produce; and the fruits of that activity will trickle down. Social ills will disappear, and trade will link countries and make wars irrational, counter-productive; something of the past.

Today that optimism is of the past.  So many of yesterday’s “more developed countries, MDCs” are today in a process of de-development, “en via de subdesarrollo” in Spanish; and some of the “less developed countries, LDCs” are coming up and passing former MDCs.  Even Washington DC, WDC, is suffering the Great Recession, and nobody knows its future (prediction: a Great Depression fueled by the contradictions between finance and real economy, serving debts and serving people, and between printed money and reality.)

Then comes the book changing the discourse from growth to equality, written by two public health officials, not economists:  The Spirit Level, by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett.  They argue convincingly that social ills are more correlated with inequality than with growth: affluence and misery, homicide and suicide, incarceration rates, physical and mental illness, even obesity, not only lower down but also higher up.  More social distrust, of course, across increasing distance.  There is more to gain from “greater equality making societies stronger”, they argue already in the subtitle, not by that arguing zero growth.

Robert Reich, in his preface to the book, explains the rising inequality in terms of market competition (outcompeting others by rewarding a few inconsiderate CEOs, and saving on the wages of millions), and on the race for status, “class”.  To that can be added what happens when those lower down try to survive: crimes for the boys, and prostitution for the girls with HIV and slavery.

And what happens when those higher up have more liquidity than they can consume and invest: speculation, with long chains charging commissions whenever derivatives change hands.

And, add what those lower down do: long chains charging commissions whenever drugs change hands.  The trick is to be the penultimate before the finance economy crash taking the last dealer with it, or the killing in Ciudad Juárez of the last and richest link in the chain from thetriangulo blanco down south.

Many in peace studies have argued for decades that equality domestically and globally is a major condition for peace.  Imagine a conflict across some fault-line, within or among countries, like race or class, nation or territory (provinces, states, regions).     The less inequality, the easier to sit down and talk it over, or accept a mediator shuttling between the parties.

The less inequality, the easier to clear past traumas, to reconcile; one reason being that they may have traumatized each other, and have a more symmetric perspective on the past.

The less inequality, the easier to solve conflicts by trading or compromise, or transcending the issues, finding something new.

The less inequality, the easier some cooperation for mutual and equal benefit can come about.

The less inequality, the easier for empathy to grow, making parties suffer the other’s suffering, and enjoy the other’s joy.

These four–reconciliation, resolution, equity, harmony–are not conditions for peace.  They are peace.  Reconciliation, empathy, cooperation and resolution can be done across vertical fault-lines, but with more difficulty.  Chances are higher for the top dog to impose his “peace” will on the underdog: the underdog must apologize for any act of direct aggression against mountains of structural violence, solutions favor the top dog, cooperation will be lopsided, and the empathy the top dog wants is admiration and emulation.  Just think of the former slaves in Haiti paying compensation to the slavers for having claimed their liberty–.

Inequality means friction in the social machinery, lasting traumas, unsolved conflicts, unequal exchange and hatred across fault-lines.  Small Nordic countries came onto the global stage not by being rich like Gulf states but by having strong societies.

The Spirit Level is mainly focused on economic inequality. But the military monopoly on violence is today challenged in many parts of the world.  So is cultural domination by one nation in a state.  So is dictatorship by autocrats, by a political class of party bosses, also by a majority democratically elected.  Answers: federalism, direct democracy.  Add more equality, and peace.  And violence may decrease; wither away in favor of conflict resolution.

________________

Editorials by Johan Galtung and articles originated on TMS may be freely reprinted, disseminated, translated and used as background material, provided an acknowledgment and link to the source, TRANSCEND Media Service-TMS, is included. Thank you.

 

 

comments: 0 » tags: , , , ,

Sex, Lunch, and Rock and Roll [or Mad Dog 2012]

Posted on 3rd May 2012 in Self Determination

‎

Adam Roufberg reads his parting words on Radio Active Lunch after 4 years of broadcasting live music in the Mid Hudson Valley on WVKR:

 

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

 

I tried to warn you people. some of you listened. some of you were too busy earning a living to listen. Some of you were too busy being stoned, or lazy, or busy being creative or helping others. Helping other’s who may not have wanted the help. Helping old ladies cross the street to steal their purses – until you came across kung fu granny. Trying to help social workers burnt out by the sickness of society by bringing them to orgasm while you vampired their energy. Teaching children about self determination while you stole their souls from the dark forces of the new world order who tried to occupy their identity. Liberating the world from struggle, war, violence, disenfranchisement and dispossession of the land and the law of heart.

I tried to warn you people about occupying the government. So many of you went ahead and did it anyway. you didn’t realize that they stole your brain and infused it with strawberry water, and bad words, and ideas rotting from the inside out such that you would mimic them in greater toxic ways creating more waste while they laughed at you and stole even more of your money while you took a break from unemployment to sit in the rain in solidarity with everyone who is sick and tired of fat cat big wig gaping anal retentive sphincters raping the earth, exploiting your children, toxifying the land, engineering your food, stealing your donuts conducting your rivers to mouth an ocean rising from the effects of black magic conjured by the narcissistic assholes who were willing to note that you would sit in the rainy may day parade protest demonstration telling them what they already know while you fight for your rights that they don’t have the right to disposes you of. But you’re satisfied with the solidarity of the union workers, police chiefs, kong fu grannies, hippies, peace loving people, and the falafel stands, and the strangers bringing food and water, and the artists, and the poets, and the public speakers that carry on the tradition of community building in the spirit of love for the sake of survival of a peoples of a particular will that you call nation.

I tried to warn you about dynamic struggle between what you people call good and evil – mutually inductive, mutually restrictive forces shedding light on others, shedding the blood of others, shredding the fretboard, sharing the creation of balance through chaos trajeculating along divergent paths and hyperbole coming out of rhetoricians ass. I did. Some of you listened. Some of you forgot. Some of you weren’t paying attention. Some of you were too busy smoking pot, playing music, harvesting medicinal herbs and foraging in the wilderness for food and love. Other’s too distracted by the coming end of times, the alien invasion, the new world order crack down, 2012, Nostradamus, gorge Balanchine, Julio Iglesias, Woodstock, Snoopy, video games, blunts, dmt, other peoples lips and ass and saliva, bananas fried in coconut and agave with dark chocolate cherries served on almond iced cream with midge larvae sprinkles battling internally with will desire and expectation in conflict with the will desire and expectations of your lover and your government while you pander and ponder not knowing the difference between …because you’ve been sucked into the vacuum of dark sorcery.

I tried to remind you fuckers that music is the only thing that really matters. That we should replace guns and all weapons with musical instruments so that we are not cowards in the face of adversary. that we meet our competitor, face to face, and bludgeon them with our instruments lest we accidentally engage in the plucking of strings, the blowing through reeds, the pounding of skins, the stroking of hair on gut tied to the hollows of trees. lest we accidentally note that all of the world is an orchestra and everyone is playing wildly their sombre songs, dancing in the streets, naked walking Gymonopodie, death metal thrash whatever but their is no audience, no one really listening.

I hoped to imbue you with the notion that without equality there is no justice and without justice there is no peace and without peace there is violence, control, occupation, subjugation, exploitation, enslavement, brutality, and fear and there is simply no need for this when we have enough in common to learn to play nicely on the battlefield and compete intentfully on the playground of our commonalities – the culinary arts, the visual arts, the literary arts, dance, music, the quest for knowledge, a richer spiritual life, an understanding of the principles and practices of love, physical love, emotional love, spiritual love, a love superceding race, superceding gender, superceding spiritual beliefs and practices, superceding national boundaries, superceding species, superceding any of the apparent artificial constraints and projections that seem to separate us and present us with irreconcilable differences that keep us all locked in the enchanted prison.

I delivered poetry and prose from some of the greatest master’s present and past. Words to spark your imagination. Words to make you feel and think. Words that make you bleed. Words to heal. Words to draw anger and all emotion. Words to paint a picture in the sky. Words to tear down structures. Words to eradicate the past. Words to erase the future. Words to fertilize the flow, the flower, the flowering of ideas, the exponentiation of expression of DNA along the numeroligical rift of space and time, yin and yang, healing your ancestry and pushing you, thrusting you, tearing you, burning you in the direction of the gate keeper, the prison guard, the torturer, your death, to prepare you with the tools you will need to survive your death and stay cool on the other side.

We, all of us who participated in this beautiful disaster, this maelstrom of bodily fluids from the earth, this mutiny of flowers, this mad dance across the fretboard of spontaneous decision flowing through us as the spirits weave their way through our nerve cells, our impulses, giving us instruction on how to conduct our musculature to find the next note, the next word, the next tear, the next kiss, we are all responsible for pushing the boundaries of heart and head, breaking the sound barrier, challenging the darkness born of a slight asymmetry in the astral light pulsing across the great expanse of time as an infinite matrix of interconnectedness sewn together by the thread separating hatred from love.

You. My dear friend. My lover. My family. my tribe, my culture, Orenda. You, Who listened to this radio show on this radio station , dedicated or otherwise, to your community, to promote and support the music, the history, the spirit and the ancestry of this valley. I thank you for your participation on the receiving end of this transmission and I wish that you all find your relative path towards peace, love, reconciliation, creativity, effectiveness and personal truth. I am with love for you and I will that you all engage this world, that you all engage in this world in the spirit of finding our commonalities on the playground of our human needs.

 

 

comments: 0 » tags: , , , , , ,

The Golden Ratio (GR) Helix

Posted on 14th April 2012 in Theory

Golden Ratio Helix Fractal

What direction are you going and how are you going to get to your destination? What is your trajectory?

 

Unfortunately, for most of you I guess, there are things you call mathematical equations that offer a reasonable representation of how things are moving through time-space. I prefer the term “relationship” instead of “equation” because that is what it is. We’re investigating the nature of your motion through time space. This motion may be of your body, it may be of your mind, it may be of the balance of your bank account. Whatever the case, leave it to a scientist to find some set of equations to describe the universe. Better yet, let’s get rid of the term scientist and replace it with philosopher and simply say that a bloke or bird is trying to come up with a description of what is going on with something – a set of relationships describing a natural occurrence. In this case, you’re the natural occurrence and we, or I, am going to come up with a set of relationships to explain your behavior. Well, yes, we’re all somewhat predictable.

 

Anyway, I just wanted to get that out of the way because scientists have such a bad rap for being cold sterile reductionists with a pole up their ass who miss the big picture. This is so with many of the scientists I have known, but some of us are, in fact, decent, pole-less, creatures who simply utilize the tools of mathematics to help us understand nature’s complexities and don’t actually need to control or manipulate anything to make money. There is a difference.

 

The Golden Ratio Helix is a beautiful model to describe the desired trajectory of conflict. Ahhh, desired trajectory of conflict you are wondering. What the hell does he mean by that. Well, think about it. What is the desired outcome of an event? Do you want to know how much fuel per body stack you need to get the pile of bodies to burn by themselves? Do you want to find a way to peaceful resolution of a situation? Well it works both ways and has been employed to both ends. I hope those of you reading this are more interested in mutual beneficence than you are in personal gain through the exploitation of others. In any case, whatever your disposition, you’ll probably appreciate this – at least once I get done talking and get on with the cool images.

 

For those of you who done know what a helix looks like, here are some visuals:

 

The most famous of the helices

kick your ass helix

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For those of you who don’t know what the golden ratio looks like, it is based on a simple mathematical progression and the ratio of successive terms which, as the sequence is propagated, the ratio of successive terms approximates a number which is called the golden ratio.  This ratio appears all over the place in nature. The following images illustrate the GR’s appearance in many forms in nature:golden ratio in plant
golden ratio in a plant

 

 

If you put the helix together with the spiral you get the GR helix. The nature of the helix – depending on which way you travel along it –  is an ever diverging or converging trajectory. With respect to conflict, we travel one way along it and we are spiralling towards convergence – which I argue represents a state of stability. Travelling in the other direction represents a divergence, or escalation of conflict. In one case one is spiraling into control. In the other case one is spiralling out of control. The idea, however, is taken to represent the fact that, in the normal course of action of Conflict Transformation (CT), one hopes to reduce the term and severity of conflict towards a state of peace such that each time conflict arises, the intensity and duration of the conflict diminishes. It should be noted, of course, that motion along these trajectories can be, and often is, controlled directly by external forces with a clear intention. That is to say that some peoples, groups, governments are in the business of conflict escalation.
                                                                                       

 

Think about this in terms of one of your personal relationships. Each time you engage in conflict with your partner, hopefully the duration and intensity of the conflict diminishes. If not, you are definitely lost (or maybe wandering) in the enchanted prison. In the case of warring parties (great phrase), we should hope that the behavior is the same. However, due to the complex nature of internal and external forces in, say, the case of Palestine (the Palestinian peoples vs the Israeli government), where the nature and origin of the forces are so complex that peaceful resolve, as we have seen, is the more difficult road to travel as conflict escalation seems to be the name of the game. If the external forces could be isolated and eliminated (i.e. if the US would stop funding the Israeli military – yes, I realize it is not only the US government, I am only providing one example),  the dynamic would be more manageable.

 

Of course, if the interests of different state, and non-state,  actors in the Middle East were based on human needs and human rights, the conflict helix…the game… would be of a much different nature. In fact, if the goal were mutually assured creation there would  be little or no conflict and we would be talking about the peace helix in which an inversion of trajectories would take place and the divergent trajectory along the spiral would represent an unbounded growth of mutual inclusion and mutual beneficence – a veritable transcendence of ego (on the personal level) and nationalism. The inward spiral along the trajectory would represent a collapse into selfishness.

 

How do you deal with the internal and external forces in your life and the lives of other as you spiral along the Golden Ratio (conflict/peace) Helix?

 

As we shall investigate later, your well being is intimately tied to the well being of others. Yeah, there’s some math for that – there are a set of relationships which show how we are all intimately intertwined (and, as you expect, some of the visual representations of these dynamics are pretty cool). The more your government, your god, your parents, your partner, etc, can condition you away from this understanding of the infinite relationships we are continuously engaged in, the more you will be content serving your term in the enchanted prison.

 

The next topic shall be on “Transcending Nationalism for a Soft Landing into Extinction” or something along those lines – coming in the next day or two.

comments: 0 » tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Next »