Ode to My Job

. 'Arbeit macht frei' is a German phrase meaning 'Work shall set you free' found above the entrances to a number of Nazi concentration camps during World War II. More than 70 years later, almost everyone is an inmate of the global concentration camp of modern human culture.

Work doesn't make us free, it enslaves us. A person at work is a person with no identity. Ze is not a person, just a uniform, a suit. A person at work has no mind of zer own, no brains, no head. As the painting suggests, the body of a person at work ends at the neck.

The corporatisation of human life and culture proceeds at an accelerating rate. One of the results is the destruction of our humanity itself. Another is the destruction of the planet.

A person at work is a psychopath with no personal values, just a fake but hearty enthusiasm for the values of the corporation. Every morning, when we walk into the workplace, we leave our personal values at the door. We're all psychopaths, these days, or sociopaths if you're into labels. We repress and suppress our personhood, our empathy, at the behest of the employer. That's why there are cruel red eyes in the lapels of a pin-striped suit. They are the insane eyes of one who has lost zer personhood.

And yet, as Jesus is said to have said, "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin. And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these."

And here we are, 2000 years later, toiling and spinning for dear life, and not liking it very much at all.

Painting by SRS, oils on board, 54.5 x 74.5 cm.

No agenda was tabled
No meeting was chaired
All came who were abled
No-one was spared.

No minutes were red
The suits were all blue
All heard what was said
About what they should do.

No actions were listed
As open or closed
No task-owners queried
No deadlines imposed.

The guest speaker rose
He got to his feet
Assumed a cool pose
Said “Hi there, I’m Pete!”

That’s what he said
When he got up to speak
No hat on his head
At the meeting that week.

So why was he there
At the Monday team meeting?
Dark suit and great hair
Fake warmth in his greeting?

And what did he say
That well-groomed consultant
On that awful day
What was the resultant?

"Your boss couldn’t be here
He was feeling quite tired
But He asked me to tell you
You’re gone, you’re all fired!

"Not moved or suspended
And not redeployed.
We recommended
Now you’re unemployed."

For those who ...

... CONTINUES in ... AWAREWOLF & Other Crhymes Against Humanity for kindle, tablet, smartphone or e-reader.

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eBooks by Cosmic Rapture
(for kindle, tablet, smartphone or e-reader.)

NIGHTMERRIES: THE LIGHTER SIDE OF DARKNESS. This so-called "book" will chew you up, spit you out, and leave you twitching and frothing on the carpet. More than 60 dark and feculent fictions (read ‘em and weep) copiously and grotesquely illustrated.

AWAREWOLF & OTHER CRHYMES AGAINST HUMANITY (Vot could be Verse?). We all hate poetry, right? But we might make an exception for this sick and twisted stuff. This devil's banquet of adults-only offal features more than 50 satanic sonnets, vitriolic verses and odious odes.

MANIC MEMES & OTHER MINDSPACE INVADERS. A disturbing repository of quirky quotes, sayings, proverbs, maxims, ponderances, adages and aphorisms. This menagerie holds no fewer than 184 memes from eight meme-species perfectly adapted to their respective environments.

MASTRESS & OTHER TWISTED TAILS. An unholy corpus of oddities, strangelings, bizarritudes and peculiaritisms, including but not limited to barbaric episodes of herring-flinging and kipper-kissing. A cacklingly bizarre read that may induce fatal hysteria. Not Recommended!

FIENDS & FREAKS and serpents, dragons, devils, lobsters, anguished spirits, hungry ghosts, hell-beings, zombies, organ-grinders, anti-gods, gods and other horse-thieves you wouldn't want to meet in a dark cosmos. Immature Content! Adults Maybe.

HAGS TO HAGGIS. An obnoxious folio featuring a puke of whiskey-soaked war-nags, witches, maniacs, manticores and escapegoats. Not to mention (please don't!) debottlenecking and desilofication, illustrated. Take your brain for a walk on the wild side. Leave your guts behind.

We are all strange loops

In “I am a strange loop” (2007) Douglas Hofstadter proposes that the self -- personal consciousness -- is a pattern. Hofstadter notes that patterns exist at different levels of resolution, ie at different points on a spectrum of granularity, from coarse-grained to fine-grained.

Here’s an example: Jack and Jill are persons who know each other. Per Hofstadter’s idea, the knowledge of Jill in Jack’s mind is as much a valid part of Jill as Jill's physical body is part of Jill. But the knowledge of Jill in Jack’s mind is “low res.” compared with the knowledge of Jill in her own mind. Jill’s actual body and mind are at the highest res available.

Extending the idea: A photograph of Jill is part of Jill. And so too are letters written by Jill, letters written about Jill, clothes worn by Jill, memories of Jill in the minds of her friends: these are all parts of Jill. Every part and aspect of reality touched by Jill in any way, is part of Jill — the “Greater Jill”, the total, aggregated footprint of Jill upon Reality.

Perhaps the most significant difference between the various parts or aspects of Jill is the extent to which each is subject to change. Everything is subject to change, but some things change less than others. A digitized photograph of Jill uploaded to the internet is less subject to change than Jill’s physical body.

The Assembly of Peaceful and Wrathful Deities

The male buddha Vairocana in union with the female buddha Akasadhatvisvari.

This post is about the so-called "peaceful and wrathful deities" in The Tibetan Book of the Dead (deluxe edition, Penguin, 2005).

Here's a crude summary: when you're dead, initially you may encounter things that may seem to be deities but which are really just products of the mind/imagination.

According to the Book (p 387), the deities are symbols that emerge from:

the meditator's own awareness ... and sensory and mental processes.

The 42 symbols of peacefulness:

represent the quiescent natural purity of these fundamental components of our being.

On the outside

Pacing the icy hallways and crystal corridors of the Fortress of Solitude, Superman pondered the meaning and purpose of his life. Frozen tears sparkled on his super-cheeks, for the steel-trap mind of the man of steel was corroded and tarnished with self-pity.

Alone. Sad. Tired. He ventured forth seldom those days into so-called civilisation. Alienated and profoundly depressed, he no longer sought to wreak justice upon the wrongdoer. Apparently indifferent to the plight of the undefended innocent, seemingly unaware of the cataclysmic disasters besetting a helpless world, the superhero disgruntedly trundled the polar passages, ruminating on the ingratitude of those for whom he had laboured long and mightily to protect.

And for what? The people of Earth had never been overly generous towards their saviours. Crucifixion for example seemed about as rewarding as a jab to the eye with a sharp piece of kryptonite. Which was why he'd been forced to keep his true identity a secret.

Resentment and bitterness permeated his super-soul. He felt used, dirty, discarded. Well, he would show them. No longer would he hide behind mild-mannered reporters. He would openly express his pride. He would come clean.

He would wear his underpants on the outside.

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A sharp jab in the I

Demiurge, painting by SRS, oils on canvas, 50.5 x 40.5 cm. In the context of this post, "Where's Wally" would be a better title for this painting, "Wally" being the lost and/or non-existent Self.

According to Heraclitus you can’t step in the same river twice. Why not? Because no river is ever the same; the water is never the same – there’s always new water flowing downstream. (If the water isn’t flowing, it’s not a river). In fact, not only can’t you step in the same river twice, the same you can’t step twice into a river. Why not? Because there is no “you” that stays the same.

Physically, you’re always changing. Your body is never the same. Your blood is always flowing. Your heart is always pumping. Cells die and new cells are born all the time. And living cells are changing all the time: their biochemical processes only stop when the cell dies.

Nor is your mind ever still. New thoughts, ideas, imaginings are constantly emerging then fading away. And if you think you don’t always think, think again: you’re constantly receiving information about the “outside world” via your senses. Even when you’re asleep you’re monitoring internal processes such as breathing as well as external factors such as temperature. Your brain is a perpetual motion machine – neurons are firing all the time, in sleep and in wakefulness, even in coma.

The Binding Opportunity

The so-called "binding problem" of psychologists, neuroscientists, philosophers, metaphysicians and other horse-thieves relates to the proposition that some aspects of reality are processed in some parts of the brain, and other aspects in other parts of the brain. It's believed to be a Problem because the neuromancers cannot explain how datasets from different parts of the brain combine to form an integrated, holistic consciousness--whatever that is.

According to Revonsuo and Newman (1999) the binding problem is "…the problem of how the unity of conscious perception is brought about by the distributed activities of the central nervous system."

For instance, say that Jon sees a red balloon floating across a room. The quality of "redness" is said to be processed in one part of Jon's brain, the shape of the balloon in another, the size in another, and the movement in yet another. Where then, and how, are these qualities or qualia combined to form the unified experience ("red-balloon-floating") in Jon's consciousness?

Who are you and who is in charge?

Dialogues (monologues? multilogues?) of the self, with the self, can produce understanding, empathy, congeniality, even love. But these solipsistic conversations can also involve negative emotions---hostility, confusion, hatred, recrimination, resentment, contempt, and the like.

Many a person who believes ze is overweight, for example, experiences inner conflict. Part of the person wants to stick to a diet; another part wants to feast on fast-food. This kind of conflict frequently involves a person arguing with themself, castigating themself for being weak and unable to resist temptation. But how can this be, that a person can be in conflict with themself? To be at war implies plurality. Yet personhood is a singularity. Or so we believe. Or so we are taught and encouraged to believe. But is it true?

the meaning of meaning

Gaia, Primordial Deity of the Earth, painting by Anselm Feuerbach (1875)

There are distinctions and differences throughout Reality. As humans we have the ability and the desire to identify, categorise and name those distinctions. Which is fine and good and valid. But we must always be aware that the identifications, categorisations and names we create are relative, not absolute.

The various labels we apply to the infinitely rich aspects of Reality are meaningful to us, their creators. But the labels are invented by humans for use by humans in human contexts. "Life" is a particularly mercurial label, difficult to pin down. The meaning of "life" changes over time and varies from brain to brain.

Some people believe the planet Earth is alive and name her Gaia. She satisfies a number of the criteria for life established by mainstream biologists. For example, she practises homeostasis, the maintenance of a dynamic equilibrium that ensures ongoing biological existence. She self-regulates her "metabolism" through the complex interplay of multiple systems and processes including but by no means limited to those associated with climate, ocean chemistry and plate tectonics, for example. In fact the plants and animals and other lifeforms she supports are themselves part of her physiology.

Linden dollar exchange rate crisis

Second Life and the Linden dollar have faded into relative oblivion. The currency is no longer current, having been supplanted by Bitcoin and other virtual mediums of exchange. And these days Second Life itself is worse than inadequate, it's claustrophobic. Who would want to smear themselves across a paltry two lives, now that the technology exists to support dozens if not hundreds of lives per person?

But let's not dwell on the limitations of the past. Let's not get too smug about how far we've traveled in the last few years. To maintain our blistering pace of cultural change we've had to jettison some real good stuff that in future we will wish we hadn't.

But that's enough commentary; let's eat some meat (below).

Meat jockeys ride again and again

Soul, Self, Consciousness, Mind and Personhood may not be the same thing, but they are the same kind of thing.

• They all refer in one way or another to the essence of a person.
• They are all of the same nature: they’re immaterial ie non-physical.
• They all do the same job: they’re meat-jockeys, riding embodied brains.
• And they’re all immortal*, at least in theory (unlike the body, which can’t keep it together after death).

To a duellist the mind doesn’t matter, it’s immaterial. Instinct and intuition are critical in a fight to the death where there’s little time to think. Also immaterial is the soul. There’s little love or joy or oneness when you’re piercing eyeballs with a rapier. The body, on the other hand, is very material to a duellist: you can’t duel without one. In fact, you can’t even duel with one: only two will duo. Duellists understand how one opposes another, which equals two.

persons unknown

Jo is writing a story about a person writing a story about a person whose name is not known.

The plot is based on the proposition that if the person fails to discover the name of the person whose name is not known, then the person whose name is not known kills the person who fails to discover the name.

One day the person who doesn’t know the name meets the person whose name is not known.

"What’s my name?" asks the person whose name is not known.

"I don’t know," replies the person who doesn't know the name.

"It’s Jo, fool!" ze says, killing the person who has failed to discover the name.

"Ah yes," ze says, before ze dies, "but now the end of the story is written, Jo, and it is you who are no more!"

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the zillion names of god

There are no disagreements, there is only confusion about labels. There are no arguments about meaning, there is only a failure to understand the difference between the signified and the signifier. This confusion is especially relevant and important in relation to so-called disagreements about god or gods, and the nature and meaning thereof.

Both the pantheistic position and the panentheistic position are unassailable, logically, because they are constructed on the bedrock of axiomatic definition, and the truth of any axiom is as agreed in advance of its application. (Although if Godel is right then all positions are unassailable from within but may be assailable from without).

Older men and long white beards

Do you believe in God?" is a stupid question. It invites confusion between the name of the thing, the thing itself, and the qualities/attributes of the thing (the sign, the signified and the signifier, if you want to get technical).

For the ancient Greeks, Poseidon (left) was the god of the sea. For the ancient Romans, Neptune (below) was the god of the sea. Generally speaking, Greeks and Romans accepted Neptune and Poseidon to be different names for the same god. The same qualities were attributed to Neptune as to Poseidon (e.g. both were believed to be the god of horses as well as of the sea, and both were believed to wield tridents.