Weighing In

I'm not one to frequently weigh in on what everyone's talking about, nor pile on where others are piling.  That behavior is less out of snobbery, I would claim, than out of respect for those more into it than I am.  "Let's not be redundant" I tell myself.  I'd prefer to be effective, have some leverage.

That being said, I think the former oval office guy is being consistent with his narrative the election was stolen. That's why he was a government in exile, still privy to all the secrets because one has to govern, it's a responsible job.  Never mind the view out the window is of an ocean and golf links, and not The District. In this day and age, one works remotely, especially if one is a powerful president.

To have the "imposter administration" (in his mind) push back against this public psychosis, shared by many who follow the one, is rubbing salt in the wound of an illegal defeat.  When sinners act against God's will and depose one of his chosen ones, they must be punished.  There's consistency there too.

Am I saying I'm on the side of Mr. T?  I'll admit my narrative includes an "impotus" in the oval office ever since at least Reagan, owing to lack of a truth process regarding the intrinsic unconstitutionality of having high offices in the pocket of The Grunch.  The monied have captured the democracy, which then died in darkness.  Getting back on track will require shining more light on the process and coming up with some new circuit designs for motherboard Earth.

However my narrative is not overtly partisan.  The two parties remain to duke it out, with founder ideals trampled underfoot. I think more people would say I'm part of a "cult of personality" in seeming to kiss the ground my Buddha has walked upon, that Buddha being one Guinea Pig B.  In translation:  my narrative about impotus and the Grunch inherits from American literature penned by a Medal of Freedom winner.

Mr. T's ego had utility as a driving engine and helped an audio-animatronic presidency seem more believable.  That same ego denied the validity of the electioneering behind 2020, but that's the only way voters know how to run an election.  Those who succumb too quickly to conspiracy theories (some of which will be true on occasion) got some therapy.  Too many conspiracy theories in thick succession (e.g. Venezuelan voting machines) tend to be self-canceling and self-undoing.

Now the momentum of Mr. T. is underlining his ongoing unhappiness with the election results and his willingness to take active measures to defend his government in exile, in an alternative reality America that's being made great again (meaning it isn't great now -- a self-defeatist attitude, as many have pointed out).  Getting an audience whipped up enough to mount another attack will likely not work twice, given the evident weakness of the leadership.

M4W

Andrius kindly had me on as a guest to discuss: "what is wisdom?" -- especially in a mathy context.

Academia R Us

 

I sense some snobbishness vs-a-vs the domain name academia.edu, even though it has the requisite global extension. 

"It can't be as real as my college" is the reflexive response, always going for the existential, and feeling threatened.  If you mean it has no dorms or physical campus spaces, you might be right (I'm not sure).

To me, it's just another walled garden with pretty flowers, many specimens, some of them Design Science related. I get to network from here, with my peers.  I get notified when another scholar checks out my Python for Calculus or whatever.

Of G & O

I recall a new relative, from South Africa, kind of squirming at TG a few years ago, when I brought up Die Antwoord, the music group.  Although self cast as a duo, the Ninja guy and Yolandi, the group has lots of off screen talent, visiting dancers and the rest.  The movie Chappie...  

I'm a fan.  But in her circles, this showbiz act was an embarrassment, as maybe some UKers felt around The Beatles, at least originally, back in the day.  This is what you admire in British culture?  What about our Victorian tea cups?

That's an odd segue to G & O I suppose:  Gurdjieff and Ouspensky.  These were not heroes in my youth, as I'd barely heard of either.  I followed Freud, Ernest Becker, Norman O. Brown, Wittgenstein... that's up through university, when I jumped into Erhard & Fuller, a dynamic duo back then (see the new bio).  I've continued to add to my graph (tree) of course.  We don't wanna be stuck in the 1980s.

I'll admit I'm thinking politically in making Ouspensky a focus, in wanting to include some folks from St. Petersburg (I'm talking Eurasia, not Florida), Moscow and like that, in the foyer of fecund philosophers.  Yes there's a "self help" angle to what they were doing.  So what?

Whereas psychoanalysts must needs be psychoanalyzed as a part of their training, we might be worried the philosophers have no therapy.  Enter Wittgenstein, with his philosophy a therapy for specific metaphysical pathologies he knew only too well.  

There's no crime in philosophy wanting to have workshops or seminars, meetups with exercises (rituals) or whatever.  The so-called church has no monopoly on soul searching and/or making.

I have other ulterior motives however.  Gurdjieff is someone Bucky jokingly found congenial, and a fellow alcohol user back then, or so Dr. Richard Buckminster Fuller seemed to suggest.  He talked about the interminable toasts to the many types of idiot, with each a raised glass of something.  Wine? Did the great master use colored water?  Random Google:  "Although Gurdjieff did show some of the signs suggestive of alcoholism, such a daily drinking, drinking early in the day, and driving after drinking...". OK, I get it, he liked to drink.  Shades of Alan Watts.

That brings us to EST:  The Steersmans' Handbook, a copy of which I've only recently (relatively) acquired and consumed.  That's where Bucky is mentioned, and this was all pre Erhard Seminars Training.  Then Bucky and est would cross paths (read the new bio for more of the story).  

That's some pretty tight semantics, and summarizes our chapter:  man the machine ("man cannot do"), man the Spaceship Earth program (woman the "womb man" -- if that's the etymology). 

[ Using "man" or "guy" as a generic actually has a feminist dimension.  The words no longer work to discriminate or distinguish.  The default could just as well be female, in our 300 man brigade, task force or group. ]

Is my point that "overcomers" (as in "we shall overcome") might be drinkers?  More to the point is the similarity across these self help systems:  how to address one's robotic behavior, complete with habits one sometimes feels at a loss to control.  Some philosophers look down on philosophies with much of a psychological dimension, especially where self improvement is involved, and use lots of pejorative language (negative adverts, attack modes), versus jumping into the fray as honest competitors (self promoting, proving positive worth).

In other words, both Bucky and G&O accentuated the positive, and we see that in their respective trackers and backers quite a bit.

I'll fade to Medium here, quoting one of my stories:

EST = Electronic Social Transformation in some passages, although Stevens is clear about the Latin meaning as well, as in “to be” (also a part of Erhard’s spin).

The book is McLuhanesque in terms of attributing the great generational divide to respective diets in terms of media, between the linear book-reading Establishment of legislators, and the immersed “simulsense” TV generation he calls the Movement.

What he calls Est people are the bridge types that still read and write in the manner of the older civilization when needing to, but that experience the new ultra high bandwidth of total immersion in an electronic field of simulcast stimuli and programming, of which television was only the beginning.

Buckminster Fuller is a “simulsense man in spite of his advanced years” (page 34) and Bucky blurbs about the book excitedly on the front cover (see picture above):

Magnificent… an extraordinarily lucid and powerful book. It may well be the straw that will save the camel’s back, of Earthean crisis.

For me, this book helps bind Fuller to McLuhan again, an old nexus I’ve talked about before, and paves the future for the “chummy” relationship achieved by Erhard and Bucky around the time I was leaving Princeton for Jersey City and my first job as a high school teacher at St. Dominic Academy.