http://www.progressiveindependent.com/d ... c_id=78891 (http://www.progressiveindependent.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=78891)

http://blogs.usyd.edu.au/theoryandpractice/monolith-thumb.jpg

Descent into madness is right. You have to wonder why some are attracted to PI, some to BFN, and some to RigInt. What clues let them know they are in the right crowd? The three groups have some things in common - they all hate us lol. They are all transcending all of that old-fashioned political stuff and going for this "consciouness" thing. I am critical of that shit, but truth be told I don't really get it. I don't know what they are talking about. One poster at RigInt has been pointing that out - how hopelessly unenlightened and unprogressed I am - by shouting "wake up!" at me, accusing me of "regurgitating things I have read or heard" of having an "ideological agenda" etc., along with some of the worst red-baiting I have ever seen.

So they are all oh so radical - just way beyond any of us with out limited and outmoded ideas. YET despite their transcendant grooviness - as they go soaring into the unexplored realms - they argue violently for voting for Democrats as the only possible political action to consider. At the same time, extreme right wingers and Paul supporters and racists are tolerated and seen as allies, providing that the proper respect for New Age consciousness-expansion is shown.

I was just reading a book where they played a word game called "In A Word". They take a topic or person and try to describe it one word. It has to be taken more as a metaphor than an actual descriptor but it forces you to come up with words that are very imagery intensive and evocative.

For that thread, and PI in general though, I think its easy: Jackshack

For those who don't know, it used to be -- especially in San Francisco -- that Asian Message Parlors were a code word for other "services" including the Happy Ending. The slang name being Jackshack.

That thread is unbelievable, a work of dystopian art.

That place is getting positively weird. Ripley's gone to a place I feared back in my acid days, Virgil sounds relatively sensible, sweetheart shows his stuff...if Cthulthu and Nyarlathotep showed up and consumed the lot of them I shouldn't be surprised, they axed for it.

OMG, everybody this it! The end really is nigh..!!!!


Virgil sounds relatively sensible

That idea of "searching for the truth within us" is so popular today, but it is dangerous. What better way to divide and conquer us then to convince everyone that we must seek a personal solution, and that the solution must be interior, subjective, individualized and non-material? In other words, don't work together cooperatively, don't look for common ground or find common cause, don't look outward at what is happening, look inward to see how you feel, and don't look for real objective results but rather seek intangible inner feelings only.

I can actually remember the first time I heard someone say "we need to search for the truth within us." That was 40 years ago. It sounded very odd when I first heard it. What did it mean? For one thing, I thought we were fighting for civil rights, for ending the war in Vietnam, for Black representation in the UAW, for economic justice and equal rights under the law, for the rights of labor. I didn't know that we were searching for "the truth." Soon I heard it more and more often, but little did I know that I would live to see millions of people so determined to only think of everything in terms of personalized spiritual solutions that the entire population would be helpless and paralyzed and divided in the face of a terrible crisis.

This is the prime cause of many of the political problems. Notice in the recent witch hunt against us (one of the worst I have ever seen) at RigInt that people there cannot tell the difference between and ad hominem attack and a rebuttal of their arguments? They think that when their arguments are attacked, that they themselves are being attacked. That is because they ARE their beliefs - they aren't making arguments, they are describing reality - about themselves not external reality. Each person has their own truth, truth is found only within. Attack their arguments and you are attacking their beliefs. Attack their beliefs and you are attacking their reality. Attack their reality, and they perceive it as an attack on them - since their interior beliefs are who they are and are all they have that is "real."

Since all truths are made up by the individual, and since those are the only truths, and since each person's individual beliefs are equal to those of anyone else's and all beliefs are to be considered as equally valid and "true," there is no need for them to be consistent, logical or to have any congruity between their internal "truth" and objective reality.

And how do we know which things that are going on inside of us are "true?" If they "feel right."

One of the "we must all find the truth within ourselves" posters over there made dozens and dozens of red baiting personal attacks on me, impugning my integrity, motives, and making all sorts of snide insinuations and engaging in character assassination. When I challenged her on that, her defense was "you dismantled me" so it was only fair play that she be allowed to attack back. I didn't dismantle her - I dismantled her arguments and did so without any hint of personal attack against her. I don't think she can see the difference, and she fell back on the ultimate argument, which I will describe.

The ultimate argument, the ultimate killer attack - the unanswerable charge, the certain way to discredit and silence a person - is to suggest that they are "unaware" or "asleep" or "duped" or "un-evolved." Back in the 60's, it took the form of calling a person "uptight" or not properly vibrating or mellow. "Chill" and "you are harshing my buzz" came later, then "winners" versus "losers," and "awake" versus "asleep," and "realistic" versus "dreamers," but it is all the same shit. It is upscale white Protestant American suburban peer pressure - demands for social conformity to the ideas and behavior of the "cool" crowd. The "search for the truth within us" is a lie - it is a tactic for imposing white suburban values and politics on everyone.

By describing pressure for social conformity - which has profound political consequences - as some sacred spiritual journey for the truth, which each little (white suburban) individual has the right to pursue without any interference, the truth about white privilege and power can be safely denied. When one is nestled snugly in the lap of privilege and status, surrounded by the protection of massive armaments and police agencies, of course one would not want to discuss power, class, race, or collective political action - or any politics of any kind that dealt with objective external reality other than the most tame and conventional notions of "personal choice" in selecting a candidate, or in making self-serving and superficial lifestyle changes. All of those are a threat to their status and privilege - in their own mind if nowhere else - a threat to their sense of status and privilege and their determination to keep that hidden.

"We each must find the truth within us" is the solid foundation of reactionary politics that serve the ruling class.

It is spoiled pampered self-centered suburban white kids throwing little temper tantrums when they are challenged ort interfered with in any way. It is the very heart of racism and defense of the ruling class . It is not any “search for the truth” - the longer that goes on the more ridiculous the “truths” get—the 911 truth movement being the culmination of spoiled white kids shitting all over everything and superimposing their own comic book psycho-drama on the national political discussion.

“How dare you challenge us????”

That is the common thread running through the libertarians, the spiritual seekers, the liberals, the progressives, and the truthers. How dare you challenge white suburban kids?

1.
Pinhead angel-counters emphatically assert
All truth is falsehood, mere subjective observation
Objectively enshrined by pomp and circumstance
Endless equations in which each element
Cancels all others to the infinite of Zero:
“I Kant know nothing --
And even if I could know
I couldn’t know it”
Knowledge is ignorance
Consciousness is but deception
From the protocols of the Schoolmen
O Lord of Imbeciles protect us
Reductio ad absurdum.

2.
The great gurus meanwhile
Are paradoxical by proclamation
The way to Eternal Knowledge
Is through the Temporary Brain
The ageless avenue to Wisdom
Is gated by a single season’s weeds
The seeker who hunts a destination
Forever loses the Path
The inner truth that can be named
Is a lie by definition
And if you meet the Buddha squatting in the benjo,
Fart joyously and share with him the buttwipe
Reductio ad absurdum.


3.
Thus, as in (2) above, the mothers of old
Condensed the incomprehensibly absurd Sacred Secret
Without diluting its incomprehensible obviousness
Thus, as in (2) above, the sages of old
Transformed the inconceivably bizarre Holy Mystery
Without diminishing its inconceivable normalcy
Thus also, as in (1) above, do Pinhead angel-proctors
Having numb-ered their minds on academic hamster wheels
Now flee toward ego as their last-chance exit from despair
Running in ever-decreasing concentric circles, perchance
To lose both conscience and consciousness
By flying deep into the foetid darkness of their fundaments:
The self-protective realization of an Inner Truth
Reductio ad absurdum.

Loren Bliss
26-27 November 2007

Hey Wolf I wrote one today too:

Cute, cute girl
You're really cute
I'd ask you to go out with me
But I don't really like you
So I guess thats it

1.
Pinhead angel-counters emphatically assert
All truth is falsehood, mere subjective observation
Objectively enshrined by pomp and circumstance
Endless equations in which each element
Cancels all others to the infinite of Zero:
“I Kant know nothing --
And even if I could know
I couldn’t know it”
Knowledge is ignorance
Consciousness is but deception
From the protocols of the Schoolmen
O Lord of Imbeciles protect us
Reductio ad absurdum.

2.
The great gurus meanwhile
Are paradoxical by proclamation
The way to Eternal Knowledge
Is through the Temporary Brain
The ageless avenue to Wisdom
Is gated by a single season’s weeds
The seeker who hunts a destination
Forever loses the Path
The inner truth that can be named
Is a lie by definition
And if you meet the Buddha squatting in the benjo,
Fart joyously and share with him the buttwipe
Reductio ad absurdum.


3.
Thus, as in (2) above, the mothers of old
Condensed the incomprehensibly absurd Sacred Secret
Without diluting its incomprehensible obviousness
Thus, as in (2) above, the sages of old
Transformed the inconceivably bizarre Holy Mystery
Without diminishing its inconceivable normalcy
Thus also, as in (1) above, do Pinhead angel-proctors
Having numb-ered their minds on academic hamster wheels
Now flee toward ego as their last-chance exit from despair
Running in ever-decreasing concentric circles, perchance
To lose both conscience and consciousness
By flying deep into the foetid darkness of their fundaments:
The self-protective realization of an Inner Truth
Reductio ad absurdum.

Loren Bliss
26-27 November 2007

That's great Loren, thanks.