Fitzcarraldo (movie review)

A fun way to watch this movie, if of a Buddhist slant, other reincarnation religion, is to see our dashing Fitzgerald as Aguirre reincarnated.

True to karmic form, he's learned a thing or two in the afterlife. For example, he's now much better with women (which isn't saying a whole lot, given where we were in Part One).

Herzog provides this outrageous director's commentary, providing this back story about how the movie had to restart when Jason Robards and/or Jack Nicholson fell ill and/or thought life was too short, and Mick Jagger (Herqueque?), though willing to forego many pleasures, had gigs to get back to.

So it was back to Klaus Kinski, always Werner's top choice, but too inclined to freak out in the Peruvian Jungle (witness Aguirre).

That scene with Fitzgerald going absolutely bats in the belfry, wanting his opera house, rivals the best of Jim Carrey, with or without a mask. And he gets one in the mix, dreams do come true, which is the happy ending... and that this movie got made, yay.

Earth Day 2017

The organizers had rented a fairly high powered sound stage and were able to project speeches to the gathering thousands, after which followed a march, permitted, peaceful. One black-block-looking guy seemed out of place, furtively glancing about from behind his mask for at least one other anarchists in his tribe.  Police kept a low profile, with no riot cops in gear that we could see.

Glenn and I took the bus downtown and joined in the march but also stood on the sidelines, the better to take pictures and enjoy the exotic assortment of science advocates.

We adjourned to the Yard House where we were soon joined by Dr. DiNucci, an expert in parallelism and operations research.  He'd been marching with the Humanists' banner.

I saw several people I know in the crowd today, including a few Quakers.

The perception among many is that politicians, a lower ranking form of social engineer, may have lost their grasp on reality, in an effort to govern through make-believe.  Their policies seem increasingly irrational to the point of crazy.

Washington DC, a distant city, run more by lawyers than engineers, seems to have dwindling relevance around the Pacific Rim.  All those bellicose threats against our way of life add up to a big turn off.

Those avidly seeking greater political power inadvertently advertise their sense of not having much.  The End of Power comes to mind, a book in the Blue House collection.

On Individualism & Transcendentalism

another kitchen collage:
banana, four-balls, fridge magnet

One hallmark of American Transcendentalism may be its celebration of the self, including its so-called "earthly" (or "earthy") aspects which some other traditions have tended to demonize, or at least ridicule, in an effort to dominate or control.

Making the self or persona a project, or series of projects (as in "self reinvention"), requires a level of detachment, which is where "transcendence" enters the equations.

Ideally, the alchemical archetype surrounding such work is one of serene equanimity, versus wallowing in paranoia and/or megalomania and/or other obnoxious conditions, each with its attendant signs of imbalance.

Walt Whitman's Songs of Myself gives a good sense of the aesthetic that helped get the ball rolling here.

Managing one's identity is a responsibility, and a privilege, not a curse, a way to participate in Creation just as surely as having a body is (the two go together).

The association of "subjectivity" with "responsibility" is in contrast to more repressive teachings about cultivating "cold dispassion" towards "untrustworthy emotions" or whatever.

Celebrating the integrity of one's subjective individuality hearkens back to Kierkegaard's Concluding Unscientific Postscript, which exposes the hollowness of hiding out behind some omniscient- sounding "objective voice" and using that voice to tell history, versus accepting personal responsibility for adding a spin.

Accepting responsibility for "creating a self" is an essential move within existentialism and related psychologies, in turn a healing response to the devastation of WWI.

Post-modernism was perhaps more rebellious than brave in its protests against "objectivity" (associated with authoritarian voice overs, especially in documentary film making), whereas more rugged individualists, such as Hunter S. Thompson, embraced a "new journalism" on the understanding that these wildly differing perspectives might co-exist as our collective heritage within our shared democratic context (worth defending!).

Making "identity crafting" a chief responsibility (like a full time job) is akin to the "soul-making" project of James Hillman, a Jungian talking about individuation, or "self actualization" (Maslow). The alchemical experience of Synergy is one of a guiding and/or intuitive hand (God's grace and/or will), such that one's own person becomes a vehicle for surfing atop a broader, more oceanic intelligence, an experience of Inner Light as Quakers are wont to call it.

Minus transcendence, "identity crafting" degenerates into shallow self- absorption, other lower forms of consciousness (or unconsciousness). The Catholics are right to warn us about the high cost of vanity, the prideful taking of personal credit for that which emerged from deeper sources. The ego is not forged by the ego alone, another way of casting the "no self nature" teaching, a dharma perpetually frustrating to Milton's Satan in Paradise Lost. To invert Paul Tillich's pithy meme, it takes courage to not be as well (i.e. to accept the only quasi- or even pseudo- reality of the persona, the mask).

Individuation actually involves increasing one's awareness of otherness, multiplying the variety of viewpoints from which one's self and one's world might be viewed. Fuller quotes Robert Burns on this subject, at the start of his Critical Path: "Oh wad some power the giftie gie us to see oursels as others see us." Know thyself!

Cultagory Theory: Revectoring Psyons

Experienced readers in the humanities may want to link this lecture, or presentation, to Harold Bloom's Map of Misreading, as to "revector" as I call it, is to willfully, or perhaps unconsciously, "misread", meaning to "warp the meaning of", to re-aim or re-spin. 

Sometimes one misreads "under the influence of" meaning one can hardly help but apply such-and-such an interpretation, because of one's operational context and background i.e. one's world view (gestalts). Is "misreading" a bad thing then? That's not the right question.

I think of Synergetics as "an alloy", meaning another tensive through-line within the culture serving a binding or interconnecting purpose, as an airline does over a geometry, or a weather report over a region. We get a more informative map from flyovers, ala the U2 or that other one, on exhibit in McMinnville (SR-71). 

An alloy is strong because of the electromagnetics and how local adjacency adds up to global properties and capabilities. But then Synergetics brings "gravity" into the equations where a regular chemist might not, because the language itself is the alloy in this picture, and "gravity" is always being "revectors" or "accelerated" as some invisible membrane. The field gets bestirred. 

What's interesting about spy novels and TV shows, including kid cartoons about Gru and his minions, is the emphasis on psychological, meaning theatrical, concepts of persona and mask. Felonius Gru and his wife Lucy Wilde have to take regular jobs and act like muggles. They're not good at living in disguise though, to comic effect. The point for the more casual reader though, just going for the gist, is that one is thinking one way and acting another. The outward character does not reveal in inward thought process. That's what's oft highlighted in spy novels, but it's characteristic of the human condition more generally and a major topic in psychology.

What is the point of my point though? I'm suggesting the Synergetics is a "spy discipline" in that it's masked as some sort of particle physics maybe, and yet it's a work in the humanities, all about keeping its vocab remote and applying spins of its own. If you want to move towards Synergetics, then think about words revectoring, such as in advertising, such as in Cultagory Theory, wherein the re-vectoring of words along new word-meaning trajectories, is the whole point of the science.  Both doing it, and appreciating how it's done.  Precession, in other words. That's a keyword in Synergetics. The side effects turn out to be the effects we're after. There's a link here to "misdirection" as well then, as in stage magic.

We might characterize Synergetics as a "fast lane" or "fast track" that continues to provide traction, allowing purposeful motion, closer to "as the crow flies" (or the drone). Thanks to the memorized maps, obtained through misreading (warping lenses), we're ready to see our way clear between subcultures along routes that definitely appear as shortcuts to those just starting to tune in. You'll get to virology quickly, without tuning out, without needing a long detour in the medical sciences. The icosahedral nature of the nucleocapsid, not a feature of all viruses, is something you can read about, and even visualize, without glazing over (tuning out).

Competitive Gaming?

In a post queued for tomorrow on the CSN blog, I take up the subject of proprietary games, cite a somewhat violent one (Half Life 2). I know cynics are thinking I might be hiding behind AVP talk, using Quakerism as a mask, while giving a green light to tastelessly violent video games of no socially redeeming value. Am I selling out to make money then?

The question is misconceived in the sense that I'm not playing traffic cop, am not some uber-censor handing down edicts on what people might play. Personally, I'm looking forward to cooperative, team-building sports, not necessarily indoors, that make use of new toyz.

Geocaching is certainly a start, already has group aspects.

The question about proprietary games "in principle" is more properly a concern for the CIO probably, but I'm already somewhat aware of his thinking on this issue. Engineers want layers of open source at strategic levels within the chip-to-cloud stack. Closed off, veiled and/or private levels (as in proprietary) are not an anathema. It's only if private interests become greedy and seek to exert some kind of stranglehold on resources held in common, that we must be prepared to defend our freedoms.

I'm so far unable to see Milk, even though it's close by at The Bagdad. Too much happening, no frills allowed. I appreciate getting the invitation though. Someday I'll have a social life again. As things stand, I'm grateful for congenial coworkers. Increasing the supply of qualified personnel remains a top priority. I'm seeing some positive signs, amidst a lot of unrealism.

I'm glad the FWCC meeting went well. I appreciate hearing from attenders Eddy and Leslie, as well as from Nancy herself. Had I not been so immersed in Wanderers Retreat XVII, I might have made at least part of it, even though Canby is a ways (just south of Oregon City).

Spider-Man: Brand New Day (movie review)

I’d declared a moratorium on having frivolous summer fun enjoying first run blockbusters as long as the City of Morons was on a global rampage to prove itself relevant. Today though, I got the same vibe Tim Dillon was sharing, that we’d turned a page and smarter cities were taking over the decision making, so I dipped into The Bagdad for the latest Spidey movie (I’ve seen a bunch of em).

I saw a lotta plot parallels with the latest ET movie, in that the Department of Damage Control was much like the evil agency seeking to exploit ET tech. 

That’s a common theme: anything powerful, like the Nazi ideology, needs to be harnessed and redirected, hence Operation Paperclip and the birth of NASA, which JFK then refocused away from Los Alamos style phallic missile play to a moon-focused Apollo Program, effectively making the most admired job (that of astronaut) seem civilian instead of military. 

Apollo-Soyuz threatened a lotta personality cults, distracting the rank and file from wanting military style glory. Vanity dictated a solution be found. But I digress.

Peter Parker is very lonely, because he has these unrealistic spidey powers no one else has. Sure, there are other circus freaks out there. 

He’s got company. Just no good friends, as anyone with superpowers is likely villainous (back to Department of Damage Control), whereas Parker is a stereotypical “good guy” (his character has always been “a protagonist” in the Ancient Greek sense of the word i.e. noble, heroic).

Peter really wants to get back with MJ and is somewhat the obsessed stalker. But in wiping her mind for her own protection, he wiped out the old MJ. The new MJ is kind to him, but not madly in love, not up to reciprocating his tender feelings (I shoulda said “spoiler alert” but y’all coulda predicted this twist). 

Then Peter meets a different girl with powers rivaling his, and so another villain at first, predictably. 

But after a Vulcan mind meld of sorts, they both realize they have more in common than not, so why not be on the same side against the City of Morons (or the NYC-based equivalent)?

The subplot is Peter is entering a next chapter in becoming more like an adult spider, which is kinda gross. Younger viewers will recognize the onset of puberty is being alluded to, much like in Inside Out 2. Hormones. 

Peter is doing his best to tamp it down, by means of a neck implant (he and MJ are both genius level in biochemistry), as his becoming more spidery is really messing up his game, and taking a toll on his self control. He even hurts (not fatally) an innocent cop, one of the good guys, in a blind rage.

What he really needs is some R&R, but the situation he faces (MJ is in danger) is way too dire. Heroes need an heroic journey, ways to prove (and develop) their metal. Marvel comics (akin to manga) know the formula. 

Did I mention the Hulk gets to be a star too? This is the MCU (Marvel Comics Universe) after all.

I’m not being negative or dismissive when I say “formula”. Movie alchemy is based on casting the right spells at the right time, thereby being bewitching and giving audiences their money’s worth (as a dude with a senior-priced ticket, in a cool theater on a hot day, I did not feel ripped off).

Upon discovering his female counterpart (his anima in Jungian terms) he’s freer to loosen up about his true identity. His closest friends get to know what’s behind the mask. He reintegrates into society more successfully, realizing he’s appreciated (so not so alone after all). 

By the end, he has regained his equilibrium, and is ready for a next movie, perhaps with more friends. The franchise must go on. Stay tuned.

Diplomatic Gaffs

There's some loudmouth general on the Official Washington press release circuit who is probably making life harder for diplomats, in saying he expects to have permanent bases in Afghanistan, just like in Okinawa, Korea and Germany.

Generals may be too busy administering bureaucratically intensive Iron Mountain activities to bone up on recent history.  The granting of bases to the US was always with a veneer of sovereignty to paper over any sense of perpetual empire and hegemony as officially the New World Order (as purveyed by one District of Columbia).

That face-saving rhetoric was thin, as in hollow, but now that it's nakedly controverted, there's no way to restore the mask.  The sugar coating has now dissolved away, leaving only the bitterness of strong medicine -- or was it really a toxic poison?

The nightmare has by now become official policy.  "We're not trying to solve these problems, we're making them pillars of our institutions, our way of life" is the new line.  The War on Terror, as many predicted, is to be hard-coded, with AQ, IS and the Taliban the now eternal justification for ongoing combat (with a fallback to China and North Korea).

The US military is now frankly admitting it has no plans to scale back, meaning what were once called "zones of insecurity" are actually its source of security, with many "fighting seasons" ahead (just like "football season"!).  That's a meal ticket right there.  War is indeed a racket, feeding on deliberately induced fears, inflamed to hatred by war-monger PR.

Keeping Okinawa a theme park and playground for US forces is tantamount to job security complete with R&R and that's what Iron Mountain is all about (i.e. military socialism).  The military is the US jobs corps, with the least bang for the buck (in terms of dollars per livable lifestyle -- especially when lives lost or taken is factored in).

We have an Islamic bank in Whittier, part of Greater LA.  If some people want a Sharia Court satellite channel where they voluntarily put their cases and relationships under the care of Judge Imam and his code, so what?  It's not like there's a shortage of bandwidth.  We have orthodox everything in New York City already.  Lawyers are trained to merge management systems, like what US Airways and American are doing.

Some women really would prefer not to go to school, given learning from home is a viable option.  More of the men might want to stay home as well.  Lifestyles abound and the freedom to choose one is the freedom to practice and believe.  Weren't those the rights the US military was pledged to protect in the first place?  How was denying Taliban their religious freedom in any way a Constitutional value?  What is the end goal with respect to that orthodoxy?

Culture wars should be fought (debated) through one's culture, whereas wanton dismemberment and execution ala Vietnam is the antithesis of really having one.  Arguments around the dinner table are what's civilized (All in the Family), and tensions between generations over how best to adapt.  Civilian life is hard work and trying to find short cuts through violence only postpones that work getting done.  We end up back where we started, just with more haunting memories and yet deeper regrets.

Official Washington cannot be trusted to not say stupid things, is the (new?) global perception, heightened by the risks taken by political campaigners, on the Republican ticket especially.  The Russians, in contrast, have their new network of intelligence centers, one in Algebra City, where supposedly they're sharing IT skills with their new-found friends.  Iraqis have found a new way to fight back maybe?

Once the superpower mentality was allowed to reveal its innate slowness and complacency so directly, it became a farcical embarrassment.  Public opinion has intuitively recoiled, at least in some hard currency markets.  Is it good PR to fund scary clowns?  Matters of taste are at stake as always, but then having standards for quality was never trivial.

In stating the Pentagon position is so weak in Afghanistan that it must be extended indefinitely, like in Korea, like in Germany, the general is projecting weakness on a global scale.  The US clings to its supremacy more out of self-deception than reality.  That's why it's called a complex.  That's why the air is leaving the balloon.  The executive branch especially, is way over-extended.

The US is less truly capitalist than a mixture of cowardly capitalist and military socialist.  The military provides the "safety net" (full of holes) and a measure of social mobility, while the cowardly capitalist fears any government competition in the civilian sector (NGOs especially, but really anything well-managed and more multi-dimensional in its wealth-creating than "money driven" is perceived as a potential threat, Open Source included).

Bernie Sanders could probably create more space for his brand of "socialism" were his public attuned to the fact that they already live in the midst of a socialized wealth distribution system, called the US military.  As long as one signs up to fight for cowardly capitalists, one has one's meal ticket punched indefinitely.

Adult Discussion

Our Multnomah Meeting Adult Discussion section (meets 8:30 AM), was all about Occupy Portland and Occupy Together. This was not at my instigation in any way and I had no foreknowledge of the topic, though I can't say it surprised me. The white board note taker listed all of our names as we went around, although one of us (not me) declined to be identified.

Many views were expressed, including the idea that outward violence would inevitably be necessary to make some kind of point. "Mayhem = catharsis" is how I'd characterize this school of thought. One strikes fear in the opposition by seeming "out of control" -- I was thinking of Dick Nixon, who relished the "mad dog" aspect (mask) when dealing with his imagined foes.

Others spoke to the "inward weapons" in play and how the stupid stuff might be less necessary. John Wish cited a Harvard study saying that violence levels were trending down. He also explained about the city tax structure when we got around to discussing the public restroom issue, which I raised.

Lew, a water and sanitation engineer, and a member of our Nicaragua Delegation, joined myself and a few others for some follow-up discussion in the Social Hall, where other Occupiers, some new to our group, were mingling as well.

When it came my turn to talk, I mostly regaled them with stories of Smedley Butler, the Fighting Quaker, and his outreach to the Hooverville in DC. "Moron MacArthur" stormed the place, ensuring FDR's victory in the polls. Could it happen again?

Would a commitment to public infrastructure, not only latrines, but warming spaces, be considered a "victory"? The commitment to regather next year, and perhaps many years thereafter, to showcase the new village-level democracies springing up around the world, out of refugee camps in many cases, prisons and military bases in others, seems to have plenty of inertia behind it.

OPDX itself has reached a point where a phased, planned shut down, with a plan to reboot next year, would be welcomed by several of the institutions involved, not least the social service agencies who treat drug addiction. They haven't shown up around the perimeter in their community service vehicles (for the most part), to do screening and intake, but they have infiltrated and well know what's going on, and aren't shy about informing.

Getting the public restrooms rebuilt, and made sturdier, for OPDX Twenty Twelve, would be part of this plan going forward. In terms of perimeter vehicles, we've mostly had voyeur TV vans serving the passivist spectator flag wavy NFL/NRA stations. The TV vans have not been exotic, just the usual networks we all recognize, except on rare occasions.

The elements for a phased shutdown are already in place, as a part of the built-in DNA. Humans have an inherent sense of community, an ability to internalize. OPDX is not a full protein, when it comes to Village life. There's no mortuary, no place to bury the dead, for example. In future versions of this microcosm, transplanted elsewhere, we'll have those features, much as the larger bases (and universities, like St. John's) have them today.

Many within OPDX are happy to work with the Portland Police on a drag net operation to purge the camp of meth dealers. The social service agencies have the same safety concerns as the public at large, which is the 99% after all.

But then will healthcare become more available, to these people in need?

The Americans may need to outsource such care-taking to subcultures with more compassion, such as doctors without borders and so on.

USAers aren't especially well known for being able to deal with their social ills; getting kids to sign up for a military adventure is one of their biggest social programs, when it comes to government handouts, and that's not necessarily a drug free career either (on the contrary). JFK (a commander in chief) was on lots of drugs.

The devil is in the details.

Big pharma, in making money (profits) the standard, is cheating (cutting corners), thereby cheapening the quality of its proposed solutions.

:: OPDX 2011 / GA Nov 6 ::

This Land is Your Land (movie review)

Mom and I joined other Portland politicos in packing The Bagdad for this radio-advertised screencast about Corporate Personhood and related notions. Most seats were taken, right down to the front row. Radio talk show personality Thom Hartmann, and Lori Cheatle, the film's coproducer were present to host the event.

You could tell people felt they were onto something, yet the issues dealt with are anything but simple, meaning it's a film that makes you think (all the more reason to show it somewhere kwel like The Bagdad -- I got my Hammerhead ™ during the Q&A).

Yes, Nike discovered something about power signs, their catalyzing role in rolling out lifestyles. But it's not like others hadn't already put a spin on Nike. Grabbing that ball from the sky: a bold move.

And certainly Starbucks is going to get creamed in any fight over the right to blend Christmas, if playing the pro Russian Orthodox. Father Tryphon barely had to add sugar.

And yes, big empty factories are an eyesore, and Harlem looks kinda stupid with too much plastic eye candy. She's sensitive to her own looks, and with that, I empathize.

Kulture is too important to just waste, and yes, brand loyalty goes way deeper than skin sometimes.

Nature's own balance works through this picture, and she's pretty unforgiving at times -- we want to be right by her, really, and she really hates to hurt humans, is my feeling about her. But couldn't they share more responsibly and not overmine that myth of "rich people" running everything?

Humans like mini-me here just aren't totally in control OK? and no I'm not talking about "my bosses the ETs" (sheesh). I'm talking about Cybernetics 101. There's the Sun and the Moon and all that other stuff OK? So let's back off about "the rich people" 24 / 7 / 365, and give some just and due credit where credit is due: to Nature, who needs us to stay smart.

Like, let's not go blaming Donald "you're fired" Trump for everything, nor any other poor slob, just because life sucks and the times are real bad. Even so, it's still a costume party, and behind the masks... are more masks (the running joke of such a festival).

The V for Vendetta guy rips off his mask: "yes, 'twas I the Nasonex Bee™."

In a lot of ways, the fast cut editing and interleaving with American icons, like Jim Hightower and Granny D, was a way of comforting us, as the vista is always changing, sometimes at a fast clip, and that's sometimes unsettling, yes.

The rest of the world is feeling it too. Don't think any tucked away urbia is somehow immune from the butterfly effects of globalization. That's just your ecosystem at work. So remember to pace yourself.

Our local Powell's Books has a Dalai Lama paper doll book (plus remember Think Different). Real American Eagles do soar in the Grand Canyon. We're all involved in branding these days.

And there's a lot at stake, yes, however I don't think that UCLA brain professor has read enough Wittgenstein. The power of Pepsi is not just that it registers higher in the right brain, but that it links to dear Michael Jackson in Thriller, a wonderfully bold production.

Great art is not always for the feeble minded or weak at heart, might be the moral of this film. And Uncle Sam is a player, most definitely. That whole tea party thing? A branding issue.

So don't count on Uncle Sam to make life easy for "idle rich" on the block, yet many rich are hard working, at least somewhat smart with their power -- including many of the liberals in this film, most of 'em quite rich by today's standards.