I came across a quote by Mahatma Gandhi :
"Victory attained by Violence is tantamount to Defeat, for it is momentary".
It reminded me of something Sun-Tzu said :
"Ultimate excellence lies not in Winning every battle, but in Defeating the enemy without ever fighting - The highest form of warfare is to attack strategy itself; the next, to attack alliances; the next, to attack armies".
That prompted me to think of our current culture and society and the enemies we face almost daily. I think Lee Child said it a superior way in one of his novels :
1. Be on your feet and ready.
2. Show them what they're messing with.
3. Identify the Ringleader.
4. The Ringleader is the one who moves first.
5. Never back off.
6. Don't break the furniture.
7. Act, don't react.
8. Assess and evaluate.
9. Don't run head on into me!
My apologies to all those authors concerned, if I seem to have taken them out of context, but there is an association of philosophies implied herein.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Saturday, July 11, 2009
From Dennis Leary to Timothy Leary
In 1956, Timothy Leary was the Director of Psychology Research for the Kaiser Foundation Hospital in Canada. He had just completed writing a 518 page book titled - 'Interpersonal Diagnosis of Personality: A Functional Theory and Methodology for Personality Evaluation'. It was described as the 'Best Book on Psychotherapy of the Year'.
In early 1960 he ingested seven of the Sacred Mushrooms of Mexico - 'psilocybe Mexicana', and as a result of the experience, dedicated his life to this 'new instrument' of psychology.
By 1963 he was experimenting with and studying the effects of LSD. He was using two books by Aldous Huxley as reference points, The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell.
In 1969, Leary joined John Lennon and Yoko Ono at their Montreal Bed-In and Lennon subsequently wrote him a campaign song called "Come Together". In the same year time he wrote an essay for David Solomon's book The Marijuana Papers. The following is an excerpt from that article.
"None of us knows how to handle the power and promise-threat of mind-expanding chemicals. But if I am confronted with a fifteen-year-old who does not know what he is doing and a fifty-year-old who does not know what he is doing, I'll take the fifteen-year-old every time. In using a new form of energy, whatever mistakes the teenager makes will be in the direction of sensation, love-making, curiosity, desire for growth. The fifty-year-old has abandoned sensation, lost the impulse to make love, killed his curiosity, and dissipated his lust for growth. You know how he uses new forms of energy: for control and power and war making.
Support the kids. Listen to them. Learn from them if they will let you. They are closer to their nervous systems, closer to cellular and seed wisdom, closer to the Divine Energy than we parents".
In 1971, Hunter S. Thompson, (a compulsive hermit with an atavistic fondness for the .44 Magnum and extremely amplified music), put an altogether different twist on the culture of drugs and kids.
In Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas he said: "The big market these days is in downers. Reds and smack - Seconal and heroin - and a hellbroth of bad domestic grass sprayed with everything from arsenic to horse tranquillizers. What sells today, is whatever Fucks You Up - whatever short-circuits your brain and grounds it out for the longest possible time.....The Milltown man has turned, with a vengeance, to skin-popping and even mainlining.....and for every ex-speed freak who drifted, for relief, into smack, there are 200 kids who went straight to the needle off Seconal".
With that oblique thrust at Timothy Leary, Hunter S. managed to predict the sadness of the current youth culture. Those of us older and sane enough to remember the opening of the doors of perception in the 60's and 70's should be ashamed that we, as a majority of substance abusers, did not use the newly gained awarness to positively change the world.
Help the youth of today to experience mind altering substances completely and safely. We, as adults and parents are responsible for the corruption, greed, death and poverty that plagues mankind today.
Sorry kids, we just got too stoned and forgot about the consequences of the fun we were having.
Timothy Leary passed away in 1996 and his ashes went into space.
In early 1960 he ingested seven of the Sacred Mushrooms of Mexico - 'psilocybe Mexicana', and as a result of the experience, dedicated his life to this 'new instrument' of psychology.
By 1963 he was experimenting with and studying the effects of LSD. He was using two books by Aldous Huxley as reference points, The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell.
In 1969, Leary joined John Lennon and Yoko Ono at their Montreal Bed-In and Lennon subsequently wrote him a campaign song called "Come Together". In the same year time he wrote an essay for David Solomon's book The Marijuana Papers. The following is an excerpt from that article.
"None of us knows how to handle the power and promise-threat of mind-expanding chemicals. But if I am confronted with a fifteen-year-old who does not know what he is doing and a fifty-year-old who does not know what he is doing, I'll take the fifteen-year-old every time. In using a new form of energy, whatever mistakes the teenager makes will be in the direction of sensation, love-making, curiosity, desire for growth. The fifty-year-old has abandoned sensation, lost the impulse to make love, killed his curiosity, and dissipated his lust for growth. You know how he uses new forms of energy: for control and power and war making.
Support the kids. Listen to them. Learn from them if they will let you. They are closer to their nervous systems, closer to cellular and seed wisdom, closer to the Divine Energy than we parents".
In 1971, Hunter S. Thompson, (a compulsive hermit with an atavistic fondness for the .44 Magnum and extremely amplified music), put an altogether different twist on the culture of drugs and kids.
In Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas he said: "The big market these days is in downers. Reds and smack - Seconal and heroin - and a hellbroth of bad domestic grass sprayed with everything from arsenic to horse tranquillizers. What sells today, is whatever Fucks You Up - whatever short-circuits your brain and grounds it out for the longest possible time.....The Milltown man has turned, with a vengeance, to skin-popping and even mainlining.....and for every ex-speed freak who drifted, for relief, into smack, there are 200 kids who went straight to the needle off Seconal".
With that oblique thrust at Timothy Leary, Hunter S. managed to predict the sadness of the current youth culture. Those of us older and sane enough to remember the opening of the doors of perception in the 60's and 70's should be ashamed that we, as a majority of substance abusers, did not use the newly gained awarness to positively change the world.
Help the youth of today to experience mind altering substances completely and safely. We, as adults and parents are responsible for the corruption, greed, death and poverty that plagues mankind today.
Sorry kids, we just got too stoned and forgot about the consequences of the fun we were having.
Timothy Leary passed away in 1996 and his ashes went into space.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Atavism
"I am not a New Man. I drink and I drive and I smoke and I puke. I will not bond and I will not share. I will not nurture --- and you can bet your powder blue party-dress I ain't gonna cry. I pine for the sheer stupidity of the old days when men brandished hammers and built huge hulking cars which tore open the ozone layer and crushed furry little animals, and walked naked through the woods pissing and barking."
: Dennis Leary
: Dennis Leary
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Fundamental Human Truths
1. You will receive a body.
You may like it or hate it, but it will be yours for the entire period this time around.
2. You will learn lessons.
You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called Life.
Each day in this school you will be given the opportunity to learn lessons.
You may like the lessons or consider them irrelevant and stupid.
3. There are no mistakes, only lessons.
Growth is a process of trial, error and experimentation.
The failed experiments are as much a part of the process as the one that ultimately "works".
4. A lesson is repeated until learned.
A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until it has been learned.
When you have learned it, you can then proceed to the next lesson.
5. There is no end to learning lessons.
There is no part of life that does not contain a lesson.
If you are alive, there are lessons to be learned.
6. "There" is no better place than "Here".
When your "there" has become a "here" you will simply obtain another "there" that will again look better than "here".
7. Others are merely mirrors of you.
You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate in yourself.
8. What you make of your work and your life is up to you.
You have all the tools and resources you need.
What you do with them is up to you.
The choice is yours.
9. The answers are inside you.
The answer's to life's questions are inside you.
All you need to do is look, listen and trust.
10. You will forget this.
: Anon
You may like it or hate it, but it will be yours for the entire period this time around.
2. You will learn lessons.
You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called Life.
Each day in this school you will be given the opportunity to learn lessons.
You may like the lessons or consider them irrelevant and stupid.
3. There are no mistakes, only lessons.
Growth is a process of trial, error and experimentation.
The failed experiments are as much a part of the process as the one that ultimately "works".
4. A lesson is repeated until learned.
A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until it has been learned.
When you have learned it, you can then proceed to the next lesson.
5. There is no end to learning lessons.
There is no part of life that does not contain a lesson.
If you are alive, there are lessons to be learned.
6. "There" is no better place than "Here".
When your "there" has become a "here" you will simply obtain another "there" that will again look better than "here".
7. Others are merely mirrors of you.
You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate in yourself.
8. What you make of your work and your life is up to you.
You have all the tools and resources you need.
What you do with them is up to you.
The choice is yours.
9. The answers are inside you.
The answer's to life's questions are inside you.
All you need to do is look, listen and trust.
10. You will forget this.
: Anon
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Creativity
"The man who follows the crowd, will get no further than the crowd. The man who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever been before.
"Creativity in living is not without his attendant difficulties, for peculiarity breeds contempt. And the unfortunate thing about being ahead of your time is when people finally realize you were right, they'll say it was obvious all along.
"You have two choices in life: you can dissolve into the mainstream, or you can be distinct. To be distinct, you must be different. To be different you must strive to be what no one else but you can be."
: Alan Ashley-Pitt
"Creativity in living is not without his attendant difficulties, for peculiarity breeds contempt. And the unfortunate thing about being ahead of your time is when people finally realize you were right, they'll say it was obvious all along.
"You have two choices in life: you can dissolve into the mainstream, or you can be distinct. To be distinct, you must be different. To be different you must strive to be what no one else but you can be."
: Alan Ashley-Pitt
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