Who Am I? Koan

I’ve been working this week with the simple “Who Am I?” koan. Lots and lots of thinking, concepts, ideas, strategies, illusions, lies, aspirations, projections, fears, introjections, stresses, acts, masks, stories, narratives, connections, social expectations, hopes, shadows, disgraces, disgusts, denial, disrespect, inflation, pains, wishes, unmet fantasies, poor decisions, circumstantial karmas……

… and then, just a moment ago, a fearless opening where the act of inquiry itself became the most compelling of answers. A shift where presence-in-act replaced concept, and was intimately plausible. It felt like a radical rewiring in logic. Nothing owned the shift. The movement was the answer, and the self. The question and the answer weren’t ever opposed.

The most striking part of this episode has been the plausibility. This isn’t some interesting mind trick or some ‘clever’ ‘skill'. It's a space with a different dimensional approach to active reasoning. It was the intimate disclosure of my location as myself. An uncommon yet perfect merging of time and space, perception and perceiver, well beyond fusion. And all so simple. So plausibly, truthfully, crystalline in simplicity.

Beyond just this. Simply. This.

You Can't Get Economies of Scale In Labour

Genius comments from the Business section of the SMH today about the collapse of ABC Learning Group (this generation's Bond Corporation). Such a stark case of misinterpreting the nature of the 'units' being 'shifted': people.

"A corporation will only be more efficient than a family business if it can amalgamate small disparate holdings, achieve economies of scale in purchasing power or marketing power, and lower the cost of production.

It works in retailing, and that is the reason large retailers can offer lower prices than corner shops.

That model was never adopted by ABC Learning because it could never be implemented. Child care is labour intensive. It requires skilled labour by individuals devoted to the task, not just paid employees".

From http://business.smh.com.au/business/learning-an-old-lesson-a-sucker-is-born-every-minute-20081114-677q.html

Blood-Boiling Rage

Pauri, boiling with rage the demon-king summoned his demons.

Free Fallin'

She's a good girl, loves her mama
Loves Jesus and America too
She's a good girl, crazy 'bout Elvis
Loves horses and her boyfriend too

It's a long day living in Reseda
There's a freeway runnin' through the yard
And I'm a bad boy cause I dont even miss her
I'm a bad boy for breakin' her heart

And Im free, free fallin
Yeah Im free, free fallin

All the vampires walkin' through the Valley
Move west down Ventura Boulevard
And all the bad boys are standing in the shadows
All the good girls are home with broken hearts

I wanna glide down over Mulholland
I wanna write her name in the sky
Gonna free fall out into nothin'
Gonna leave this world for a while

And Im free, free fallin
Yeah Im free, free fallin

- Tom Petty

The Edge of MySelf

Brilliant boy's sad death not in vain

Joel Gibson, November 10, 2008
From: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/11/09/1226165386588.html

As a fearless 18-year-old, Nathan Trepezanov arrived on the same Footbridge Theatre stage that produced the Chaser team and promptly brought the house down. His famous kebab skit, written and performed with friends Leon and Mohammad, injected some raucous wog humour into that year's usually white-bread Sydney University Law Faculty Revue.

The Sickest And Most Hectic Kebab In The World: Tribute was a parody of a song by the US comic Jack Black. It told the tongue-in-cheek tale of some Bulldogs fans who make the perfect doner kebab for a Subaru-driving "glamour" at an Auburn shop.

"It was easily the best thing in the show," Tom Glasson, solicitor and former revue director, recalls. Like Fat Pizza and Nick Giannopoulos's comedy, it "found the funny" in stereotypes and turned them on their head.

Even as a brassy 10-year-old, Nathan had "smarts", his cousin, the Silverchair bass guitarist Chris Joannou, recalls. The dux of Newington College, he asked for a copy of the Koran as his prize. As a university student, he sometimes went to the races to test his own algorithm for calculating each horse's chances.

After a study exchange to Paris in 2004, he travelled to the land of his forebears, Macedonia, and the former war zones of Kosovo and Albania.

"The Albanians have welcomed me like a brother," he wrote to friends. "When I arrived in Paris, I had a lot of trouble finding accommodation and was extremely stressed out. A Muslim guy from Tajikistan met me and offered me his kindness - we lived together for four months like brothers. When I asked how I could thank him, he told me to help another Muslim.

"In Sarajevo, a young guy walked up to me saying that Allah had directed him to ask me for help. He needed a bus ride back to his village. I helped him out and was told that, as well as being assured a place in paradise by his mujahideen father, a Muslim on Earth would help me. This has happened in Albania. Co-incidence? Probably. But enough to get any atheist thinking."

"I remember thinking what a grounded guy he was," Glasson says. "He seemed so in touch with everything."

In January 2006, Joannou received a call from his sister, who told him his 21-year-old cousin had stepped off the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

No one saw it coming. Nathan's usually brilliant mind had been going "around and around". A GP diagnosed mild depression but stopped short of prescribing medication. "You can only wonder whether he thought, 'If this is only mild, what will it be like if it gets worse?' " Joannou says.

But there was no note and no answers. Almost three years later, his friends and family are still searching.

Whether creative people are at higher risk is a matter of debate, Professor Ian Hickie from the Brain and Mind Research Institute says, but their loss hits us particularly hard.

"There is no typical person. We are just as likely to get depression if we are high-achieving, if we've got success, personality and other skills as anybody else," he says.

He says 75 per cent of illnesses arise before the age of 25, "when people are at the peak of their physical fitness, when they're starting to succeed in the world, and when everyone expects everything to be fine".

Studies show young people know mental illness is common but don't know what it is or what can be done about it.

Like Tristan Jepson, another revuer and young lawyer whose death forced the legal profession to re-examine its responsibility to young professionals, Nathan's death has not been in vain.

With the Sydney CBD Rotary Club, his family has established Nathan's Bequest to fund research and awareness of mental health and to stop others taking that awful final step.

It is funding research by a West Australian PhD candidate, Kristine Northey, who hopes one day to develop indices to identify the most vulnerable children before suicidal behaviours manifest in adolescence.

A fund-raising dinner on November 17 aims to raise $150,000 to pay an extra researcher on Professor Hickie's team.

"The hurdle we want to get over is for people, if they think they have symptoms, to go and start a conversation with someone," Joannou says.

"It could be a matter of life and death."

For information about Nathan's Bequest, phone Ali Wanchap on 0412 726 882.

Also see Lifeline (phone 131 114) and www.livingisforeveryone.com.au.

We Will Name Him, Sparkles...

Battered Men Get Their Own Refuge - theguardian.co.uk

Jamie Doward, Social Affairs Editor
theguardian.co.uk
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2003/dec/21/socialcare.uknews

Britain's first safe house for battered men is to open in secret over the New Year. The refuge, in south-west England, will shelter men and their children who have been physically or emotionally abused by a female partner.
A second centre will open early next year in north-west England, and organisers plan to create a national network eventually.
The revelation of the refuges is likely to reignite the debate over the true picture of domestic abuse, which men's support groups say is far more complex than is often portrayed in the media.
According to the most recent British Crime Survey, for 1996, 4.2 per cent of men and an equal proportion of women said they had been assaulted by a current or former partner in the previous year. In those incidents involving injury just under 50 per cent of women were hurt, and 31 per cent of men.
The survey found that 23 per cent of women and 15 per cent of men aged between 16 and 59 said they had been physically assaulted by a partner at some time.
Men's rights groups argue, however, that the male figure could be even higher because men are reluctant to admit being victims. They say at least one in every six incidents of domestic violence - around 18 per cent - are committed by women on men.
'At the last count there were 426 shelters for women in Britain. That means there should be at least 70 refuges for men. Yet up until now there was none,' said David Hughes, editor of Male View magazine, which represents the views of the charity Mankind Initiative.
Hughes hoped the shelter idea would take off. 'Once the first centre has opened and it's proved useful others are bound to follow. We're trying to get financing to have a refuge in each region,' Hughes said.
Ian Hancock, the NHS director of psychological services in Dumfries and Galloway and an expert on domestic abuse, said: 'It's difficult for anybody if they're being battered but with men their problem is compounded by the fact that they feel they shouldn't allow themselves to be battered by a woman.
'The idea that it makes you some kind of weakling means it's a double whammy for men. It affects their self-esteem,' Hancock said.
Many myths attached to the issue needed to be dismantled, Hancock said. 'People have this image of muscular women and weedy men but size has got nothing to do with it. A man can be twice the size of his female partner and still be battered by her.'
The crime survey acknowledged that a significant number of men believe the Government is failing to take the issue of domestic abuse against them seriously. 'Male victims of domestic violence are particularly unhappy about the level of support offered by agencies, especially by the police,' it noted.
'It may be that support agencies have a particular problem in recognising that male victims can be just as in need of support and advice as female victims.'
Steve Fitzgerald, who helped set up the new shelter in the south-west, said: 'This is a major breakthrough. Women are just as likely to commit violence in the home as men. For too long there has been this gender apartheid which has meant this important issue has been ignored.'
The new refuge, which is already sheltering two battered men, has a family bedroom, a living room, access to a bathroom and kitchen and is staffed by volunteers.
It was welcomed by David Smith, 46, who has three small children. 'I've been emotionally abused by my wife since I married her over six years ago. People see her in public and think she's wonderful, but they don't see the private side to her,' he said.
'I didn't see her angry temper until we were married. It's awful. She loses her temper a lot and uses foul language in front of the children. You can't stop her once she's started. I've asked her to go for counselling but she won't.
'I have to leave the house and take the children with me. Sometimes she hits me but I'm a lot stronger than her. I'm trained in martial arts so it's not a problem physically. We're still living together but I'm losing hope.'
While the shelter's focus is on helping men, its founders stress the help it can give to child victims of domestic abuse. 'Sixty-four per cent of child abuse is committed by mothers,' Hughes said.

Daze

Jeez last night was the business. Holidaying in the adolescent vibe of beers and Bondi bikini bods at the Beach Burrito Bar - swept away into something simpler. Cheaper yes, but so agreeably simpler. Baking in the last violet throws of the dusk sun, I decided to flick though the pages of the magazine sitting next to me: Vice. I hadn't met that mag before… and what a perfect indulgence! Stellar wordsmiths sculpting in-crowd, self-referential, pop-cult nonsense - the pomo indifferent shit that fucks me right off when I’m breathing smog in Surry Hills chained to the pain of a hard day's work, so suddenly a splendidly boundless cavern of literary tomfoolery. Willingly dissolved into my bubblegum wonderland, I guffawed at paragraphs like this one…

“How long into his life can a man keep fucking? Here in Japan, there is one brave grandpa who is using his own body to answer that question. His name is Shigeo Tokuda and he is a 74-year-old porn performer. He often stars in movies staged in old-age homes—like, as in “gramps fucks his hot little nurse”—which frankly we have no clue who would want to watch, save for the morbid chuckles factor. Regardless, we headed over to meet this geriatric pussy master and ask him questions about his ancient cock”.

… but I was left wiping guacamole from my nostrils when I read:

“You probably think of Monty Python as a symbol of the sad, forced eccentricity your uptight gay British dad used to display when he was in a cheery mood or when he was drunk on schnapps. In fact, maybe the very words “Monty Python” act as a Pavlovian trigger for traumatic memories of the shame of seeing your mum silently cry while Dad went on about the Spanish Inquisition and the Ministry of Funny Walks. But go a little deeper into your id and you’ll realize that your dad was a thwarted artist who secretly wanted to have you aborted so he could pursue an experimental theatrical comedy career. And it’s all Monty Python’s fault. The influence runs that deep”.

Ah… youth and young manhood. I’m not over the hill yet.

The Times They Are A-Changin'

From the Gospel according to St. Thomas

Jesus said: I tell my mysteries to those who are worthy of my mysteries. He said: There was a rich man who had much money, and who said: I will use my money that I may sow and reap and plant and fill my storehouses with fruit so that I lack nothing. This was what he thought in his heart. And that night he died. Whoever has ears, let him hear.

The Next President

This is one of those moments in history when it is worth pausing to reflect on the basic facts:

An American with the name Barack Hussein Obama, the son of a white woman and a black man he barely knew, raised by his grandparents far outside the stream of American power and wealth, has been elected the 44th president of the United States.

Showing extraordinary focus and quiet certainty, Mr. Obama swept away one political presumption after another to defeat first Hillary Clinton, who wanted to be president so badly that she lost her bearings, and then John McCain, who forsook his principles for a campaign built on anger and fear.

His triumph was decisive and sweeping, because he saw what is wrong with this country: the utter failure of government to protect its citizens. He offered a government that does not try to solve every problem but will do those things beyond the power of individual citizens: to regulate the economy fairly, keep the air clean and the food safe, ensure that the sick have access to health care, and educate children to compete in a globalized world.

Mr. Obama spoke candidly of the failure of Republican economic policies that promised to lift all Americans but left so many millions far behind. He committed himself to ending a bloody and pointless war. He promised to restore Americans’ civil liberties and their tattered reputation around the world.

With a message of hope and competence, he drew in legions of voters who had been disengaged and voiceless. The scenes Tuesday night of young men and women, black and white, weeping and cheering in Chicago and New York and in Atlanta’s storied Ebenezer Baptist Church were powerful and deeply moving.

Mr. Obama inherits a terrible legacy. The nation is embroiled in two wars — one of necessity in Afghanistan and one of folly in Iraq. Mr. Obama’s challenge will be to manage an orderly withdrawal from Iraq without igniting new conflicts so the Pentagon can focus its resources on the real front in the war on terror, Afghanistan.

The campaign began with the war as its central focus. By Election Day, Americans were deeply anguished about their futures and the government’s failure to prevent an economic collapse fed by greed and an orgy of deregulation. Mr. Obama will have to move quickly to impose control, coherence, transparency and fairness on the Bush administration’s jumbled bailout plan.

His administration will also have to identify all of the ways that Americans’ basic rights and fundamental values have been violated and rein that dark work back in. Climate change is a global threat, and after years of denial and inaction, this country must take the lead on addressing it. The nation must develop new, cleaner energy technologies, to reduce greenhouse gases and its dependence on foreign oil.

Mr. Obama also will have to rally sensible people to come up with immigration reform consistent with the values of a nation built by immigrants and refugees.

There are many other urgent problems that must be addressed. Tens of millions of Americans lack health insurance, including some of the country’s most vulnerable citizens — children of the working poor. Other Americans can barely pay for their insurance or are in danger of losing it along with their jobs. They must be protected.

Mr. Obama will now need the support of all Americans. Mr. McCain made an elegant concession speech Tuesday night in which he called on his followers not just to honor the vote, but to stand behind Mr. Obama. After a nasty, dispiriting campaign, he seemed on that stage to be the senator we long respected for his service to this country and his willingness to compromise.

That is a start. The nation’s many challenges are beyond the reach of any one man, or any one political party.

New York Times Election Night Editorial
(from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/05/opinion/05wed1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin)
A version of this article appeared in print on November 5, 2008, on page A34 of the New York edition

Hope

Ashes to Ashes

Enfrightened

Voter registration at highest level since women got the vote

From http://blogs.usatoday.com/onpolitics/2008/11/voter-registrat.html

The Center for the Study of the American Electorate today released its voter registration figures for this election. The increase was moderate -- 2.5% -- but the result is a record.
The center, part of American University, projects that 153.1 million of the country's eligible citizens are now registered to vote. That's 73.5% -- better than the previous high of 72.1% in 1964 and the highest since at least 1920, when women were given the right to vote.
Center director Curtis Gans says this is the second straight election with a significant registration increase, coming after a 3% boost in 2004. He says as many as 135 million people -- nearly 65% of those eligible -- could turn out to vote. That would be the highest turnout since 1960.
Gans projects Democratic registration will be up 1.4% or 2.9 million this year, while GOP registration will be down 1.5 million. The center said that's a small drop but that it declined at all "in this year of intense citizen interest in the election is significant."
Twenty-eight states and the District of Columbia have partisan registration. Based on information so far, the center said, Democratic registration went up significantly in Nevada, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Arizona, New Jersey and Maryland. GOP registration declined in Colorado, Florida and Pennsylvania, but rose in Nevada.

photofunia.com

I've been having a cheap laugh with this website over the last day or so: photofunia.com

Zak Stein in Integral Leadership Review

I didn't know this cool tidbit from the social commentariat.

"In the early 1970's the sociologist and cultural critic Daniel Bell wrote a book titled, The Coming of Post-industrial Society. Across the Atlantic at the same time Habermas offered a slim volume titled, Legitimation Crisis. Both books prophetically outlined emerging trends in post-industrial economic and state bureaucracies and in post-modern cultural forms and norms. Bell and Habermas both suggested that part and parcel of the major socio-cultural shift underway are drastic increases in the task-demands of work and life, which require the emergence of a new group of knowledge workers specifically concerned with the psychological complexities of the new socio-cultural milieu. Bell in particular foretold of a shift in the value of different types of knowledge. As techno-economic innovations accelerate we will come to devalue specific types of technical knowledge regarding production processes because this knowledge is destined for obsolescence. Instead, we will begin to value psychological knowledge about the motivational and cognitive processes of the people who face the ever-shifting demands of post-industrial society. Habermas saw a comparable trend affecting political systems. The problems facing state bureaucracies are quickly becoming so incomprehensibly complex that leaders may feel forced to manufacture consent, e.g. via the strategic deployment of psychologically sophisticated advertising regimes. Fueled by this insight Habermas would write prolifically on the psychological demands of a post-modern democratic public-sphere and on the need for sociologists and psychologists to arrange ameliorative interventions. The bottom line in both accounts is that there are world-historical structural transformations underway that demand the creation and dissemination of psychological technologies. Psychological technologies are becoming a valuable resource".

- Zak Stein, from 'Myth Busting and Metric Making:Refashioning the Discourse about Development Excursus' Integral Leadership Review Volume VIII, No. 5 - October 2008
http://www.integralleadershipreview.com/archives/2008-10/2008-10-article-stein.php

Bizarre insult redux

 

"He believes in redistributing wealth, not in policies that grow our economy and create jobs".

• John McCain
  

 

From SMH - Ah, McCain, you've done it again - now he's after the middle class

Mira Oberman in Durango, Colorado

JOHN McCAIN has cast himself as the defender of the middle class and the American value of rewarding hard work while warning voters of his rival's plans to "tax and spend".

With frontrunner Barack Obama off the campaign trail - on a mercy dash to his dying grandmother, who raised him - Senator McCain continued to try to tar the Democratic presidential hopeful as a secret socialist in a bid to sway voters 11 days before the November 4 election.

"He believes in redistributing wealth, not in policies that grow our economy and create jobs," he told a rally in Colorado Springs, Colorado. "Senator Obama may say he's trying to soak the rich, but it's the middle class who are going to get put through the wringer, because a lot of his promised tax increase misses the target."

But the gap has narrowed this week as Senator McCain hammered away at Senator Obama for telling an Ohio plumber - wary of the Democrats' tax plans - that everyone is better off when you "spread the wealth around".

The Rise of the Idiots

(and don't forget ya roots: www.tvgohome.com)

Cute Spiral Dymanics Picture

State of the Union - Edmund Berrigan

I want you to understand

that I don’t know why I’m here.

I was born in another country

with which I now have no association.

I was raised in a New York City

that has been wiped away by economics.

Much of my immediate family has

been removed from this life,

& much of my sense of experience

of this life has been removed with them,

making all of us new people.

I have let much of my sense of self

be informed by an art that is little used

& undervalued. I have sacrificed many

social relationships to these experiences,

which are inextricably linked, because

I come from a family of poets. The life

& values of a poet are antithetical to the

political landscape of the country

I live in, & no political machination

that I may inhabit remotely serves

the causes for which I live, though

I am bound to this land by knowledge of it.

I continue in poetry & song

because the experiences of my senses

are wholly held in these continuous

& inexplicable drives, their reason

& mine never idle or held to law or language.

The Paranormal is Terrific

The paranormal make furnace fetishes,

beyond the will of a shoveller

I'm dumb enough to know coal

is a poor whore so I sleep not

where I work but where I dream.

• Edmund Berrigan

On Singing

I've attempted this post a couple of times this morning, each time left despondent in the face of a remorseless laptop nemesis.

So - the bare facts instead of the story.

I have fucked shoulders and neck pain after impacted wisdom teeth broke my jaw, a stupid bout of tomfoolery in my youth broke my shoulder and years of study and work at a computer when I should have been out sewing my wild oats broke my heart.

The worst of it is the way my throat locks up and makes it impossible for me to find my real voice. I haven't known how to catch it for almost four years, and trust me, not sounding like yourself really plays terrible tricks on the identity.

Coming out of it, I've learned that extended periods of singing works better than almost anything else.

I find it stretches my throat muscles, heats up my larynx, energises my bloodflow, and today the whammy... reminds me that I don't speak from my mouth. I speak through my mouth, but before that comes the voicebox.

This is a big realisation. I'm simply more embodied. I've been stuck in my head for a long time, but also feel very large in my heart - which makes the process of dragging the crown back down to the root is really difficult when my throat is so closed up. The bridge is busy.

Singing not from my mouth, but from my throat seems to give me access to a deeper expression of true intention... which, most happily, leaves me more transparent for others therefore making connections more authentic. The face of God which arises in the I-Thou relationship between people is my most cherished, and sadly, least frequent. It's lovely to have more access to this part of myself again.

The energetic crowd would say that I'm not speaking my truth thereby closing down the Vishudda centre - and they'd certainly be right. I haven't robustly known my truth for a long time through this existential crisis and dark night - and so authentically speaking anything other than that has been impossible (especially when I have competing needs for social communion and nobody's truly interested in hearing the depths of my process - not to mention of course, the clusterfuck of lies that make up my working life). Again, this process of singing has allowed me to capture a powerful location of manifestation in that region, and a sense that my crown is allowed to stretch up again, giving the postural channels for flow between chakra points more room to discuss their perspectives.

I'm endlessly touched by these powerful gifts we're handed, and the complexity of their unfoldment. Who do I thank for the gift of singing? It's always brought me such joy, and now also physical, emotional and spiritual therapy. And, like all that is truly nourishing, it don't cost a dime.

Is NZ the first hint of a Children of Men-esque crisis?

In uncanny timing, this article was published in the SMH today after Sass and I last night finally sat down to watch Alfonso Cuarón's superb apocalyptic flick Children of Men.

The quality of New Zealand men's sperm has halved in two decades - the most dramatic drop of any western country.

New research presented to a gathering of international fertility researchers in Brisbane today was told that the sperm volume carried by the average New Zealand man decreased from about 110 million to 50 million per millilitre between 1987 and 2007.

"It's rather dramatic indeed, and one of the largest seen in studies in other parts of the world," said lead researcher Dr John Peek, of Fertility Associates in Auckland.

He said the fall represented a drop from very good to good sperm quality.

But if the downward trend continued towards the 20 million "danger mark, we would definitely be running into trouble".

The findings, to be published in the New Zealand Medical Journal, are based on sperm quality data from men volunteering as mystery sperm donors.

The biggest drop was seen in the first decade with a slower decline in recent years.

This contrasts with Australia and the United States, where no decline has been seen. Studies from Scotland and France show marginal declines.

Dr Peek said there were two broad theories on sperm quality decline, one being that semen was affected by environmental toxins, diet and modern changes in lifestyle.

"The other is that it is a consequence of what happened when the guy was a baby in the womb, and what his mother was exposed to, but it's still unclear," he said.

Sydney specialist Professor Michael Chapman, from IVF Australia, said the trend was "worrying" for our Antipodean neighbours, saying it was to such a degree that it was unlikely to be random chance.

"Maybe they have something else going on over the Tasman," Prof Chapman said.

But Professor Rob McLachlan, director of Andrology Australia in Melbourne, said any trend was likely to be global, and the jury was still out as several studies were contradictory.

"Global trends are differing so we don't have a clear picture on this yet," Prof McLachlan said.

"New Zealand is unlikely to have a different situation unless," he joked, "you consider all the fertile New Zealand men may be heading over here".

Powell emphatically endorses Obama

Mind Games

Elephant In The Room - Banksy

A Most Bizarre Insult

"The whole premise behind Senator Obama's plans are class warfare plus spread the wealth around."

- John McCain revealing his core faith in systemic social stratification when shamelessly seeking to frame Barack Obama as a socialist in the 3rd and final Presidential Debate.

"Could this crisis get any stranger?"

Step right up for the $20b red-spot special
Annabel Crabb October 14, 2008

COULD this crisis get any stranger? We're now in a state of confirmed international fiscal panic, but there's money everywhere.
Six months ago, Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan were heavily involved with two mysterious women - one called Budgetary Prudence, and another one called Inflation Jeannie, whom they were keen on stuffing back into some kind of bottle.
Everyone was most insistent that Australia should be saving all its pennies for tougher times. Yesterday, all that went out the window.
"Those tough times have come, and we are well positioned to act in anticipation of them," declared Mr Rudd, with the slightly alarming blend of conviction and nonsensicality on which we have come to depend in his historic public statements.
That's right, working families: if I may translate from the original Ruddese, it's time to spend the surplus.
Prudence be damned. If you can think of a good way to spend $20 billion, then step right up.
If you have a plan to irrigate the Red Centre by means of snowballs propelled by a series of giant pea-shooters ranged around the Antarctic, don't be shy - just ask Kevin for the seed funding.
Looking for funding for your chip-fat-fuelled personal jet pack?
Get yourself to Canberra.
Got a madcap scheme to put bags on the bottoms of cows to catch their gaseous emissions?
Actually, whoops - scratch that. We're already funding the bovine bottom-bags.
Even as the Prime Minister spoke, a faint drumming sound became audible, reminiscent
of wildebeest stampeding across the Serengeti.
No prizes for guessing what it was; hordes of lobbyists, descending upon the capital to share their ideas about how to blow a gazillion bucks, pronto.
Nation-building is the new national security.
It used to be that to prove your patriotic love for this great country, all you had to do was uncomplainingly surrender your right to habeas corpus.
Nowadays, you have to be cool about personally underwriting the Government's guarantee that by the end of this decade, no Australian bank will live in poverty.
Also, you have to be really, really enthusiastic about nation-building.
Yesterday, the Opposition suggested that the surplus should be spent on tax cuts for Australians.
Mr Rudd was utterly withering in his response.
It was as though the Libs had turned up to an Ashes decider wearing Barmy Army outfits.
The humble taxpayer, watching question time yesterday, could be forgiven for feeling a bit disjointed from all of this. We know there's a crisis, because we've seen it on television.
But apart from some nervous near-superannuants and those with speculative share-holdings, there aren't too many Aussies who have felt any actual pain yet, and for plenty of home-owners, the global financial crisis so far looks like kind of a nifty way of getting an interest rate cut.
Their greatest risk of injury at this stage is getting hit on the head by a falling wad of Government hundred-dollar bills, or hearing damage from Anthony Albanese noisily digging a Paris-style metro under the nature strip.
This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/10/13/1223749937096.html

Beneath the financial crisis waits a nastier beast

Waleed Aly October 13, 2008

The most lasting fallout of the global financial crisis is unlikely to be economic. This is the nature of true financial disaster: in the long run it brings down ideas, recasts societies and redistributes power in a way that resonates far beyond its lifespan. One day, the markets will stabilise and even recover, but the political terrain will likely be altered irrevocably.
Some ideological consequences are relatively obvious. Many commentators have already written obituaries for the creed of zealous deregulation that has prevailed throughout the Western world and especially in America. Indeed, that the Australian Government faces pressure to guarantee bank deposits establishes emphatically that people still want their governments to protect them, and are simply not soothed by promises of "market correction".
In short, regulation and state intervention are likely to become more fashionable than at any time since the end of the Cold War. In political science terms, it seems we're about to veer left. Witness a Republican president's $US700 billion example.
But few are yet asking what this might mean for social politics. Perhaps this is because it seems a separate matter to questions of economic policy. Yet it is foolish to assume that each can be quarantined from the other.
Economics is important precisely because it has the power to topple social dominoes. And it is in the realm of social politics that some of the most frightening possibilities of the financial crisis suggest themselves.
Consider the Great Depression, to which some are ominously likening this crisis. Latin America, which was hit particularly savagely because of its significant trade links with the US, retreated into a shrill form of nationalism. The result was the rise of fascism across the continent.
The Netherlands witnessed a series of riots, increased xenophobia, and the emergence of the National Socialist Party. And most infamously of course, there was Germany. With the national economy overwhelmingly financed by American loans, the collapse of the New York sharemarket had a devastating impact. A desperate working-class sought solace in communism, while an emasculated middle class leapt sharply to ultra-nationalism. The familiar consequence was the ascension of the Nazis, whose support base suddenly broadened.
This is what happens in times of great insecurity. As the foundations of our lives erode, we search for an anchor, and social politics very often provides it. When all else fails, we may still rally around old certainties: nation, culture, religion, race. We crave strong authority figures that can imbue us with certainty and articulate for us a sense of self. That often involves fabricating a scapegoat who becomes a mortal enemy.

In Germany, of course, Jews principally fulfilled that function, becoming the victims of an entire mythology that blamed them for the economic difficulties of "real" Germans. Such virulent prejudice soothes the insecure.
The bad news for us is that malignant social politics have been slowly returning for a while in Russia, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Italy, Britain, Denmark and Norway. And it is an affliction that spreads well beyond Europe in the form of radicalism in the Muslim world and Hindu and Buddhist nationalisms in Asia.
Ours is an age of hostile identity politics. These are not all directly referable to economic crises (even if they clearly have a relationship with the anxieties of globalisation), but they suggest something deeply troubling: that the world is rich in the kinds of xenophobic resources so easily amplified by economic turmoil.
Should the financial crisis become a global recession, there is no telling precisely what forms of extreme social politics might be unleashed. An explosion of anti-Americanism across Asia and Europe? Possibly. But what about America itself? Here, the seeds of xenophobic resentment are being sown.
Writing in The National Review, Michelle Malkin blames the crisis on illegal immigrants and Hispanics who were "greedy" enough to seek subprime loans. Blogging for the same publication, Mark Krikorian wonders if Washington Mutual's demise was caused by its propensity for employing Latinos and gays. On Fox News, Neil Cavuto blames congressmen who were "pushing for more minority lending" without disclosing that "loaning to minorities and risky folks is a disaster".
The audacity is extraordinary. Suddenly, this crisis is something poor blacks and Hispanics have inflicted on rich white people. That is beginning to sound, well, Germanic.
A reaction is inevitable: one that sees in the crisis the exploitation of poor black people who will lose their homes, by white fat cats who skip away from the rubble with millions. The potential cycle of conflictual identity politics is terrifying. And that is to say nothing of developments we cannot predict.
We can hope none of this comes to pass. Obviously much is contingent on precisely how deep this financial hole is, and how much suffering awaits. But however many reasons we have to hope this crisis will not match the depths of the Depression, after contemplating the possible social consequences, we may add several more.
Waleed Aly is a lecturer in politics at Monash University.
This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/10/12/1223749846530.html

Archetypes

Two-System Integration Chart
Focus/Motivation Core Desire Leadership Style (Element) Stability/ Structure Desire to feel safe and in control Administrator (Earth) People/ Belonging Desire to belong and feel valued Facilitator (Water) Results/ Mastery Desire to have a special impact on the world Manager (Fire) Learning/ Identity Desire to be yourself and find out about the world Mentor (Air) Stage One: Preparation Socialization Archetypes (Locates power in the group and social systems) Caregiver Orphan (Regular Guy/Gal) Warrior (Hero) Innocent Stage Two: Journey Change Archetypes (Takes back personal power and freedom) Creator Lover Destroyer (Outlaw) Seeker (Explorer) Stage Three: Return Restabilization Archetypes (Exerts personal power in the world) Ruler Jester Magician Sage From http://www.herowithin.com/arch101.html

Education for the Waist Down

From All Men Are Liars blogger Sam De Brito.
http://blogs.smh.com.au/lifestyle/allmenareliars/archives/2008/10/social_intelligence.html

As I've written previously, for many people, walking up to a stranger of the opposite sex at a bar and starting a conversation can be more more terrifying than public speaking, swimming with sharks or showering in a maximum security prison.
This anxiety is magnified if they happen to find the other person just a little bit attractive. I've seen it countless times: grown men, absolutely paralysed, friends urging them to 'go talk to her' but they won't move except to sip the beer they're holding like a baby's bottle.
If they do manage to start a conversation they'll 'umm' and 'ahh', can't meet the person's eyes, default to brutally boring questions like "so what you do you do?" or just get so drunk before they 'make the move' their dialogue sounds like Barney from The Simpsons.
One of the greatest skills an adult can possess is being able to communicate with the opposite sex, yet you could scour every school syllabus in the country and not find a subject titled 'Social Dynamics' or 'How to Talk to a Girl' ...
I've got nothing against logarithms and algebra but I've used neither since the HSC and wasted hundreds of hours of my teenage life mastering what has amounted to useless crap.
On the other hand, I've spent hundreds of nights out trying to talk to the opposite sex, yet the number of minutes I was instructed in how to make a cute chick laugh was ... exactly none.
British creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson told the TED Conference in Monterey California recently that "as children grow up we start to educate them progressively from the waist up and then we focus on their heads and slightly to one side (the left)."
One of Robinson's bugbears is that 'modern' schools are still based on an early 19th century model created to churn out workers for industrialism. As such, they value subjects like English and maths but not dance or drama, let alone body language or how to deal with a boyfriend hassling you to have a threesome.
His thoughts were echoed last month by Tim Hawkes, the head of Parramatta's The King's School, who wrote in The Sydney Morning Herald "the Western world does a poor job in preparing its students to be intimate ... in general students are required to navigate their way through the sexual swamp with minimal direction."
Arguing that "too many schools have lost sight of those things that will be used by our students when they become adults", Hawkes short-listed ten subjects that should be taught to children but are not, including "how to forge good relationships", "communicate well" and "handle intimacy and sex."
Some reading this might say "you can't learn this stuff, you pick it up along the way" but it is the belief of many experts that they're skills that can be studied and practiced just like your times tables, piano scales or goal-kicking.
Part of the problem is that some people are just born with "it", so we assume being able to walk into a party and charm the opposite sex is like having a big dick or good legs - a genetic Lotto win.
Thankfully, it is not, which has been proven by the success of the American Pick-Up Artist culture, popularised by David DeAngelo, Ross Jeffries and Neil Strauss, men who've made millions teaching socially awkward blokes the secrets of the 'alpha male'.
Unfortunately, much of what these 'love gurus' pioneered is exploitative and manipulative and ignores the needs of women, but it does show that boys (and girls) can be taught social intelligence.
Imagine then if kids were bought together and schooled in fundamental skills like 'how to talk to the opposite sex', 'body language and vocal tonality', 'how do I know if they want me to kiss them?', 'how to deal with rejection' and, conversely, "how to reject someone and not humiliate them'.Now imagine these subjects were taught just like geography - four times a week, for your entire school life: I doubt you'd have women getting double-teamed by Broncos players in toilet cubicles.
In his speech, Ken Robinson goes on to quote the United Nations, which says that in the next 30 years more people worldwide will graduate through education than since the beginning of history.
"While none of us have any idea what the world will look like in ten years, yet alone 30, our schools are educating children for that future," he says.
Now doubt we'll all need to be able to spell and count in 2038, but even more certain is that girls and boys will have to talk in pubs, ask each other to dance, kiss, have sex and get married.
I know which subjects I'd want my kids getting an A in.

He ain’t no Lucha Libre - Mexican Superheroes

These ain't the kinds of heroes usually seen on our big screens. They're amazing everyday heroes of struggle handed a rare moment of elevation in front of photographer Dulce Pinzon's camera. I found them on Mother Jones last night, as part of their impressive library of photo essays.

Tilt your hat and hand these dudes the 15 minutes they deserve.

Mexican Superheroes It's a Bird...It's a Plane...It's a Mexican Immigrant

Photographer Dulce Pinzon posed undocumented Mexican immigrants in superhero costumes and captured their feats of derring-do in New York City.

From Mother Jones: http://www.motherjones.com/photos/mexican-superheroes/

Minerva Valencia (Catwoman) works as a nanny. She sends $400 a week home to Puebla

Luis Hernandez (The Thing) works in demolition and sends $200 a week home to Veracruz.

Window washer Bernabe Mendez (Spider-Man) sends $500 a month home to Guerrero

Oscar Gonzalez (Human Torch) is a cook. Originally from Oaxaca, he sends home $350 a week.

Straight, White, Middle Class Man... a surprising absence in Obama's definition of person.

Greed Fed Market Turmoil, Says Rudd

The Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, has foreshadowed a stronger place for government intervention in business in a stinging attack on the "greed is good" ideology that he says fuelled the global financial crisis.
In his fiercest critique yet of what he termed "extreme capitalism", Mr Rudd said the market crash pointed to the need for a debate about corporate values and "the general values of our current age".
He spoke of "predatory financiers" who misled ill-informed consumers and of American bankers who were paid hundreds of millions but had no obligation to repay companies that later crashed.
"They literally laughed all the way to the bank," he said in a provocative address to the Federal Labor Business Forum on Friday night, which was only released yesterday.
Meanwhile, the former treasurer Peter Costello argued yesterday the banks should have passed on bigger rate cuts.
Mr Rudd said it was time to admit that people had not learned the full lessons of the greed-is-good ideology.
"We have seen the triumph of greed over integrity. The triumph of speculation over value creation … of the short term over long-term, sustainable growth. The fact is that Gordon Gecko was not tamed in 1987; he was simply ignored," Mr Rudd said of the character from the film Wall Street who proclaimed "greed is good" at the time of the 1987 market crash.
"Today we are still cleaning up the mess of the 21st-century children of Gordon Gecko."
Mr Rudd called for a rethink of the corporate culture of short-termism which, he said, threatens Australia's long-term future. "When we are through this crisis, it will be time to take stock."
With the Government under fire over its handling of Australian banks' interest rate policies, Mr Rudd's spokeswoman confirmed that the Prime Minister met the Governor of the Reserve Bank, Glenn Stevens, late on Friday for an update on the financial crunch.
The Treasurer, Wayne Swan, yesterday defended the Government's relaxed stance on the banks' likely refusal to pass on the full extent of a mortgage interest rate cut expected tomorrow.
But Mr Costello said yesterday that "prima facie" the banks should pass on the full rate cut, given they had already kept back half a percentage point of previous interest rate adjustments. "They're already in front," he said. "They're highly profitable."
Mr Costello also accused the Government of "contradictory" policies on interest rates - on the one hand trying to pressure downward rates by spurring competition among the banks but on the other hand "giving comfort to banks to keep profit margins".
Mr Swan yesterday released Treasury analysis showing that since last month's interest rate cut "extreme turbulence" in global markets had blown out the banks' borrowing costs. He warned the banks that when global markets stabilised "banks will have absolutely no excuse not to pass on their lower funding costs".
In his speech, Mr Rudd said much of the cause of the subprime crisis was due to the financial markets rewarding people for taking extravagant risks.
The crisis had the fingerprints of free market ideologues "who believe that government is always the problem, never the solution".
They had opposed government regulation, having privatised their profits, but now argued the public should socialise their losses.
Instead of the culture of short-termism, Australia needed long-term planning for productivity, infrastructure, ageing and climate change, he said.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/greed-fed-market-turmoil-says-rudd/2008/10/05/1223145175365.html

Question...

Is it only a vision-logic that can ponder the complex interactions like 'action-logics'?

It's All Yours! ;-D

On Passion

I'm charging through Michel Foucault's History of Sexuality Vol. 1 (in the sexy new Penguin Classics series), and loving the PoMo perspectival shift he takes in lines like: "The question I'd like to pose is not, Why are we repressed? but rather, Why do we say, with so much passion and so much resentment against our recent past, against our present, and against ourselves, that we are repressed? By what spiral did we come to affirm that sex is negated? What led us to show, ostentatiously, that sex is something we hide, to say it is something we silence?"

Anyhow, doing a bit of biographical archaeology of my own, I came across this sublime quote about his long-term relationship with philosopher/activist Daniel Defert, and I wanted to record it on this blog as a totem to the joys of conscious relationship: "I have lived for 18 years in a state of passion toward someone. At some moments, this passion has taken the form of love. But in truth, it is a matter of a state of passion between the two of us."

Family First Moving Last

From SMH: http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/man-who-holds-power-over-rudd--a-hrefhttpmediasmhcomaurid42171bunder-the-flagba/2008/09/25/1222217430711.html

Mr 2%: why Steve Fielding bothers
Mark Davis Political Correspondent

AT THE entrance to Family First senator Steve Fielding's office in Parliament lies the detritus of his penchant for publicity stunts.

There is the jerry can he lugged around to highlight the effect of petrol prices on the family budget. And there is the miniature shopping trolley filled with groceries to symbolise the rising cost of living.

The only thing missing is the giant drink bottle costume Fielding donned to promote his anti-litter plan for a container deposit scheme.

But now the Victorian senator's appetite for the political oxygen of publicity is getting serious.
He has adopted a "last-mover advantage" tactic in the new Senate where the Government needs an extra seven votes to pass legislation opposed by the Coalition.

Here is how it works.

On contentious bills, Fielding lets the Government wrangle the five Greens and the South Australian independent Nick Xenophon into a deal.

As these negotiations proceed, he keeps everyone guessing about his position.

Then, when the Government has the Greens and Xenophon onside, Fielding votes their deal down and the real negotiations start.

This was the tactic Fielding used to extract concessions for farmers and tourism operators on the Government's luxury car tax increase this week after he voted the bill down last week.
Now he is trying the same gambit on the Government's plan to lift the income thresholds where people start paying the Medicare levy surcharge.

The Government was close to a deal with the Greens and Xenophon on the surcharge this week. But on Wednesday Fielding voted with the Coalition against the second reading of the bill.

That prevented it from going to the "consideration in detail" stage where non-government senators usually move amendments seeking to improve a bill for their constituencies.

Despite voting down the Medicare bill, the Victorian senator remains open to a deal that compensates low-income-earners for any increases in private health insurance premiums caused by the changes.

Fielding's conduct has bemused and infuriated the people on the other side of these transactions.

"He strung us along," said one player. "He is hard to contact. When he does return calls he doesn't level with us."

Yet, for now, the tactic is achieving its goal: maximising Fielding's bargaining power.

Rather than share the balance of power in the Senate, the "last-mover" approach aims to parlay Family First into holding the balance of power all by itself.

The party desperately needs the profile which comes with the balance of power. Fielding was elected in 2004 with less than 2 per cent of the primary vote due to preference flows unlikely to be repeated. He faces re-election at the next poll.

But his approach is unlikely to prove sustainable.

For if the Greens and Xenophon find every deal is gazumped, they may start playing last-mover advantage themselves, seeking to leap-frog Fielding's concessions in their dealings with the Government.

And it is not impossible that the Government could bypass Fielding and find that elusive last vote from an independent-minded Nationals senator.

Then the Family First senator from Victoria would be forced to fall back on his old tricks of costumes and props.

Living Your Own Life

Krishna said to Arjuna, "It is better to follow your own calling imperfectly than follow another's perfectly. If death should come while following your own path, this is surely better than living with the fear and anguish of following a false path".

Bhagvad Gita, 3:35

Integral Diagrams in What Is Enlightenment Magazine

Congratulations are in order for my friend, and integral cartographer, Stephen Lark. His integral diagrams website was mentioned in the recent What Is Enlightenment men's issue. It's an astonishing collection of maps from all corners of the integral world which you can see here: www.flickr.com/photos/slark/sets/939928

Also: integraldiagrams.blogspot.com/

My Word To All Who Would Find Heart-Breaking Freedom - Adi Da

"The illusion that sexuality can “cause” Spiritual growth stems from the fundamental illusion that Spiritual practice is a process that starts “below”, and moves from there to Above. That illusion is an unwitting validation of egoity — a declaration that, in effect, the ego must “propel” itself upward, to the Divine (thus, “taking Heaven by storm”). “Below” is not (and never can be) “causative” relative to What Is Above. Rather, What Is Above Must Purify and Transform and (Most Ultimately) En-light-en what is “below”.

- The Avataric Great Sage, Adi Da Samraj

What's good for the goose...

From the transcript of Malcolm Turnbull MP interview with Chris Uhlmann ABC AM Program 25 September 2008.

UHLMANN:
You say that they have mocked pensioners, they knocked back a bill which you raised in the Senate which was…do you believe that that bill was constitutional? You’re also a lawyer.

MR TURNBULL:
Well I take the Clerk of the Senate, Harry Evans, who is a greater expert than either of us in these areas.

UHLMANN:
And he disagrees with the Clerk of the House of Representatives.

MR TURNBULL:
Well I accept what the Clerk of the Senate said, Chris. But Chris let’s not argue about the constitution here. Let’s look…

UHLMANN:
But wasn’t it a stunt?

MR TURNBULL:
I do not believe that giving pensioners $30 extra a week is a stunt. These are pensioners who are living, trying to live on a pension that the Treasurer and the Prime Minister and the acting Prime Minister have said is impossible to live on. This Government has so little respect for pensioners they’re prepared to say, ‘We are sitting on a $22 billion surplus, you pensioners are trying to live on a pension, we the Government could not live on, but we will not give you a cent.’ Now that is just cruelty. It’s cold indifference.

UHLMANN:
But the cabinet last year, a cabinet that you were a member of also knocked back that $30 a week pay rise. So why wasn’t that cruelty and cold indifference?

MR TURNBULL:
Last year was last year. The cabinet this year, Chris, the fact is there has been enormous price inflation in the…

UHLMANN:
But you’re asking them to do something which you would not do yourself?

MR TURNBULL:
Chris last year the circumstances were different. There was enormous price inflation just in the last six months. I mean Margaret May in the parliament yesterday ran through the figures. Massive increases in milk, in bread, in tea and coffee, petrol of course. Not luxuries, necessities. Now that is what this Government has been indifferent to. That’s the arrogance.

UHLMANN:
So too hard for you last year when we had some inflation and easy now that the world financial system is melting down and we have inflation?

MR TURNBULL:
Chris we have a Government that is indifferent to the plight of the people in Australia who are doing it toughest. They have a $22 billion surplus; they say you cannot live on the pension. They cannot live on the pension and they will not lift a finger. And it is that inaction, that arrogance, that indifference- it is hypocrisy. How can you say, how can you look pensioners in the eye and say it’s impossible to live on what you’ve got but I’m not going to do anything to help you?

UHLMANN:
Malcolm Turnbull, thank you.