theverge | It’s not the first time Boston Dynamics has shown off its robots’ dancing skills:
the company showcased a video of its Spot robot doing the Running Man
to “Uptown Funk” in 2018. but the new video takes things to another
level, with the Atlas robot tearing it up on the dance floor: smoothly
running, jumping, shuffling, and twirling through different moves.
Things get even more incredible as more robots file out,
prancing around in the kind of coordinated dance routine that puts my
own, admittedly awful human dancing to shame. Compared to the jerky
movements of the 2016 iteration of Atlas, the new model almost looks like a CGI creation.
Boston Dynamics was recently purchased by Hyundai,
which bought the robotics firm from SoftBank in a $1.1 billion deal.
The company was originally founded in 1992 as a spin-off from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where it became known for its
dog-like quadrupedal robots (most notably, the DARPA-funded BigDog, a
precursor to the company’s first commercial robot, Spot.) It was bought
by Alphabet’s X division in 2013, and then by Softbank in 2017.
While the Atlas and Handle robots featured here are still
just research prototypes, Boston Dynamics has recently started selling
the Spot model to any company for the considerable price of $74,500. But can you really put a price on creating your own personal legion of boogieing robot minions?
EMG can be used to show the degree to which one is subvocalizing[5] or to train subvocalization suppression.[9]
EMG is used to record the electrical activity produced by the
articulatory muscles involved in subvocalization. Greater electrical
activity suggests a stronger use of subvocalization.[5][9]
In the case of suppression training, the trainee is shown their own EMG
recordings while attempting to decrease the movement of the
articulatory muscles.[9] The EMG recordings allows one to monitor and ideally reduce subvocalization.[9]
In concurrent speaking tasks, participants of a study are asked
to complete an activity specific to the experiment while simultaneously
repeating an irrelevant word.[6] For example, one may be asked to read a paragraph while reciting the word "cola" over and over again.[8] Speaking the repeated irrelevant word is thought to preoccupy the articulators used in subvocalization.[6]
Subvocalization, therefore, cannot be used in the mental processing of
the activity being studied. Participants who had undergone the
concurrent speaking task are often compared to other participants of the
study who had completed the same activity without subvocalization
interference. If performance on the activity is significantly less for
those in the concurrent speaking task group than for those in the
non-interference group, subvocalization is believed to play a role in
the mental processing of that activity.[6][7][8][9]
The participants in the non-interference comparison group usually also
complete a different, yet equally distracting task that does not involve
the articulator muscles [7][9](i.e.
tapping). This ensures that the difference in performance between the
two groups is in fact due to subvocalization disturbances and not due to
considerations such as task difficulty or a divide in attention.[7][9]
Shadowing is conceptually similar to concurrent speaking tasks.
Instead of repeating an irrelevant word, shadowing requires participants
to listen to a list of words and to repeat those words as fast as
possible while completing a separate task being studied by
experimenters.[6]
Techniques for subvocalization interference may also include counting,[7][8] chewing [10] or locking one's jaw while placing the tongue on the roof of one's mouth.[10]
feldenkraisresourcesformusicians | This description is marvelous because it captures the effect of integration through listening.61 Trough listening, something happens that Ephram does not ‘know’. He is given a taste of the pre-symbolic Real for a moment. He does not speak, but instead acknowledges this internal, placeless ‘fnding’ (between visible activity) with chirruping laughter; this giddy delight and uncertainty refect the trauma of the Real and the way in which the senses are unifed in this domain. Nancy attempts to come to grips with the way in which laughter mediates the senses.
He states that, Laughter bursts at the multiple limits of the senses and of language, uncertain of the sense to which it is ofered […] Laughter is the joy of the senses, and of sense, at their limit. In this joy, the senses touch each other and touch language, the tongue in the mouth.62
Ephram’s laughter is like a cloudburst. Feldenkrais touches something deeper than just Ephram’s sensorium through touch and listening, and Ephram responds with laughter: he touches Ephram’s uniqueness.63 Feldenkrais states: ‘You know what that laughter is worth? Tat is Eureka!’ Later, when Ephram laughs again, he observes: ‘You see that laughter is priceless; you can’t buy it for all the money that you have in the world.’ Feldenkrais tacitly acknowledges that in this release, Ephram as a listening being has also withdrawn from him.64 Nancy might say that essential to listening is a ‘withdrawal and turning inward’.65 Laughter provides evidence of an essential independence that signals and derives from integration.66
Trough Ephram’s laughter, the external listeners assembled are exposed to a moment when Ephram is on a fulcrum of listening. It is not just that in Nancy’s terms he has become present to (him)self, but that he registers the trauma of the Real; Ephram’s laughter registers the possibility of change in his self-image. In Nancy’s terms this is the ‘reference’ (renvoi) of sound, ‘from a sign to a thing’.69
But what is this ‘thing’? Te making of ‘sense’ within Ephram’s sensorium is the jouissance of precisely that which does not make sense to him, a new self-image which cannot be immediately rationalized or assimilated.70 So when Nancy states that ‘a self is nothing other than a form or function of referral, a self is made of a relationship to self, or of a presence to self’, this can be considered only part of the story.71
One of the functions of FI is to bring the subject into an encounter with what is unknown, moving from the self that is known, founded in gravity and their own body image in the world, to a new image of the self.72 Ephram’s laughter bubbles up; it escapes what is presented to the world as a disabled boy. It is the resonance of an encounter with another self. His listening is an ongoing process of (re-)formation in the irreducible, intimate and non-linear temporal paradigm of ‘making the impossible possible’, as Feldenkrais has stated,73 and it is precisely this which is inscribed in the Lacanian Real.74
His outburst of laughter creates a symbolic cut in the Real that through its diferentiation signals the Real: it is like the tip of an iceberg that appears above the water, but in doing so it also signifes that below the water (apart from the rest of the iceberg, which is already integrated with the symbolic register) is the ocean’s void.75 In Nancy’s terms, Ephram is a paradigm of a ‘subject of listening [that] is always still yet to come’.76 With regard to Feldenkrais’s ‘listening for his next breath’, Nancy’s question is germane here: ‘What does it mean for a being to be immersed entirely in listening, formed by listening or in listening, listening with all its being?’ – and one might add here: ‘listening to all his being’.77 In this spirit of enquiry we might listen with Feldenkrais and ask: ‘Is it indeed possible (or desirable) to listen to all of another person’s being?’
This is a crucial question, and one fundamental to FI, because listening for Feldenkrais is a sensing through his hands of where someone else is stuck; where, through habit or injury, for example, the mind/body entity is momentarily incapable of utilizing a deeper intelligence to improve a function or action. Helping a person to fnd this intelligence within themselves is one of the primary functions of instrumental lessons and indeed of the Feldenkrais Method. Listening, then, as is shown in Feldenkrais’s work with Ephram, is an enactivist engagement with intelligence and awareness, not just with presence to the world or the self (pace Nancy).
Feldenkrais’s ideal of listening is intimately connected to overcoming ‘resistance’, a term borrowed from Freud. In their book The Language of Psychoanalysis, Jean Laplanche and Jean-Bertrand Pontalis defne this concept: ‘In psycho-analytic treatment the name “resistance” is given to everything in the words and actions of the analysis and that obstructs his gaining access to his un-conscious.’78
Laplanche and Pontalis point out that while Freud first discovered that resistance was ‘an obstacle to the elucidation of the symptoms and to the progress of the treatment’, he realized that ‘resistance was itself a means of reaching the repressed and unveiling the secret of neurosis’ and that ‘the interpretation of resistance, along with that of the transference, constituted the specifc characteristics of his technique’ that was part and parcel of the possibility of a cure.79 Feldenkrais extends this in profound ways elaborated through the examples given in this study.
Resistance is understood not merely as that which obstructs the change in the self-image; Feldenkrais ‘interprets’ this resistance as an active means of gaining access to Ephram’s motor cortex, rather than the psychoanalytic ‘un-conscious’.
princeton | I turned to Feldenkrais because a friend I respected a lot suggested it
as a solution to my hand and arm pain (RSI). I went to ATM classes and
took FI
lessons
from a local teacher in Princeton NJ. Though these whetted my
curiosity, they did not solve my RSI problems.
I found an excellent teacher, Angel DiBenedetto,
during a 5-month stay in
Seattle. She learned from Moshe Feldenkrais, and is herself a trainer
of other Feldenkrais teachers. Eight lessons from her
(over a 3-month period) completely changed my view of my body. My
hand was much better but still not 100%. Also, I sensed the tremendous
potential of this method and wanted to go further. So I took 8-9
Feldenkrais
lessons with
another amazing teacher, Anat Krivine,
during a subsequent 4-month stay
in Israel. Anat is also a trainer of Feldenkrais teachers. It was very
useful for me to learn from multiple teachers, since no two
teachers have
the same perspective. One important thing that Anat finally made me
realize and give up was my
tendency to ask for "the best way to do X"
which I think was limiting my learning. Furthermore, unknown to me, she
had a special interest in scoliosis (sideways curve of the spine) which
turned out to be relevant to my problems. By the end, my hand problems
were completely gone and my scoliosis (which the medical profession
thinks of as a skeletal problem, with no cure) much reduced. (See the
links below for an explanation of scoliosis and the Feldenkrais
approach to it.)
So what can you expect when you get Feldenkrais lessons from a good
teacher? The immediate sensation is one of calm that you
have never known. You may realize that you have lived in a background
of muscular tension that you had never noticed until it went away.
(Kind of like the change in background noise level you might notice if
you moved from Manhattan to Montana.) This
can be a powerful, even emotional experience. It is a good idea
to savor this calm right after the lesson, and to take a
nap. You may feel great, but avoid the temptation to go out and do
something strenuous. (Skip your usual exercise routine for a day or
two.) The calm may dissipate over the next few hours and days, but in
future sessions it will last longer and longer, until it becomes part
of your everyday state.
The FI's implant new ideas into your body, and over the next few days
and weeks it will slowly imbibe them and change. Do not be surprised if
you find yourself doing things differently.
Another thought that might occur to you is that much of what you have
known
about pain
is wrong. You will learn that often pain is caused by faulty movement
patterns,
not any
kind of damage to the body. Thus pain can be produced and
taken away at will, using simple change in movements. This knowledge is
extremely empowering for people who have suffered from chronic pain.
(Update Aug 2008): During the
year since I first wrote my page, I have continued to do ATMs every
week, and felt continuous
and noticeable improvement. However, I also slowly became more and more
aware of the asymmetries still left over from my scoliosis. These were
interfering with my enjoyment of activities I had newly started (Capoeira,
rollerskating, and running). In
Summer 2008 I got a few lessons from another excellent teacher, Reuven
(Robbie) Ofir, in Manhattan. (I heard of him from a friend.) Robbie is
also a Feldenkrais trainer and a
former head of
physical therapy at a leading NYC hospital. Robbie helped me work
out some deep
asymmetries and tensions in my body. Robbie also taught me do
ATMs at an even slower and gentler pace that I used to, which has taken
my learning to a higher level. I feel truly great now. But Robbie
has helped me appreciate that there is no end to the process of
improvement with the Feldenkrais method. (Encouraged by this, I also
took my aged parents to Robbie for a few
lesson, which helped them a lot. They are from
India and Feldenkrais is unlike anything they have experienced.)
I plan to
get an
occasional FI or two in future years to continue this learning. In
particular I plan to explore the use of the method in voice and music.
wikipedia |Social credit is an interdisciplinary and distributive philosophy developed by C. H. Douglas. It encompasses economics, political science, history, and accounting.
Its policies are designed, according to Douglas, to disperse economic
and political power to individuals. Douglas wrote, "Systems were made
for men, and not men for systems, and the interest of man which is self-development, is above all systems, whether theological, political or economic."[1] Douglas said that Social Crediters want to build a new civilization based upon "absolute economic security" for the individual, where "they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid."[2][3] In his words, "what we really demand of existence is not that we shall be put into somebody else's Utopia, but we shall be put in a position to construct a Utopia of our own."[4]
It was while he was reorganising the work at Farnborough, during
World War I, that Douglas noticed that the weekly total costs of goods
produced was greater than the sums paid to individuals for wages, salaries and dividends. This seemed to contradict the theory of classic Ricardian economics, that all costs are distributed simultaneously as purchasing power.
Troubled by the seeming difference between the way money flowed and the
objectives of industry ("delivery of goods and services", in his
opinion), Douglas decided to apply engineering methods to the economic system.
Douglas collected data from more than a hundred large British
businesses and found that in nearly every case, except that of companies
becoming bankrupt,
the sums paid out in salaries, wages and dividends were always less
than the total costs of goods and services produced each week: consumers
did not have enough income to buy back what they had made. He
published his observations and conclusions in an article in the magazine
The English Review,
where he suggested: "That we are living under a system of accountancy
which renders the delivery of the nation's goods and services to itself a
technical impossibility."[5]
He later formalized this observation in his A+B theorem. Douglas
proposed to eliminate this difference between total prices and total
incomes by augmenting consumers' purchasing power through a National Dividend and a Compensated Price Mechanism.
According to Douglas, the true purpose of production is consumption,
and production must serve the genuine, freely expressed interests of
consumers. In order to accomplish this objective, he believed that each
citizen should have a beneficial, not direct, inheritance in the
communal capital conferred by complete access to consumer goods assured by the National Dividend and Compensated Price.[6]:4:108 Douglas thought that consumers, fully provided with adequate purchasing power, will establish the policy of production through exercise of their monetary vote.[6]:89–91 In this view, the term economic democracy does not mean worker control of industry, but democratic control of credit.[6]:4–9 Removing the policy of production from banking institutions, government, and industry, social credit envisages an "aristocracy of producers, serving and accredited by a democracy of consumers".[6]:95
The policy proposals of social credit attracted widespread
interest in the decades between the world wars of the twentieth century
because of their relevance to economic conditions of the time. Douglas
called attention to the excess of production capacity over consumer
purchasing power, an observation that was also made by John Maynard Keynes in his book, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, although he rejected the A+B theorem. [7]
While Douglas shared some of Keynes' criticisms of classical
economics, his unique remedies were disputed and even rejected by most
economists and bankers of the time. Remnants of social credit still
exist within social credit parties throughout the world, but not in the purest form originally advanced by Douglas.
The government of modern China has maintained systems of paper records on individuals and households such as the dàng'àn (档案) and hùkǒu (户口)
systems which officials might refer to, but did not provide the same
degree and rapidity of feedback and consequences for Chinese citizens as
the integrated electronic system because of the much greater difficulty
of aggregating paper records for rapid, robust analysis. [18]
The Social Credit System also originated from grid-style social management, a policing strategy first implemented in select locations from 2001 and 2002 (during the rule of paramount leaderJiang Zemin) in specific locations across mainland China.
In its first phase, grid-style policing was a system for more effective
communication between public security bureaus. Within a few years, the
grid system was adapted for use in distributing social services. Grid
management provided the authorities not only with greater situational
awareness on the group level, but also enhanced the tracking and
monitoring of individuals.[63][64] In 2018, sociologist Zhang Lifan explained that Chinese society today is still deficient in trust. People often expect to be cheated or to get in trouble even if they are innocent. He believes that it is due to the Cultural Revolution,
where friends and family members were deliberately pitted against each
other and millions of Chinese were killed. The stated purpose of the
social credit system is to help Chinese people trust each other again.[64]
The Social Credit System is an example of China's "top-level design" (顶层设计) approach. It is coordinated by the Central Leading Group for Comprehensively Deepening Reforms.[11]
It is unclear whether the system will work as envisioned by 2020, but
the Chinese government has fast-tracked the implementation of the
system, resulting in the publication of numerous policy documents and
plans since the main plan was issued in 2013. If the Social Credit
System is implemented as envisioned, it will constitute a new way of
controlling both the behavior of individuals and of businesses.[11]
Gurdjieff offers us a theory of laughter, independent of any state of amusement (= humor), that nevertheless distinguishes between laughter as a physiological response and the organismic cause of it, which he also calls “laughter.” This organismic variable (O), though not necessarily the same as humor, is shown to be a complex structure that is radically different from the visible laughter that results from it. Since his conception of O, though outlined in a most rudimentary and concise form, provides us the basis of the most viable theory of humor that we have been able to elaborate and immediately brings into relief some of the most conspicuous features of this humor-theory, we find it both convenient and opportune to begin with his succinct formulation of the structure of the organismic variable responsible for both humor and laughter. The passage on laughter is reproduced below in full and much of this thesis may be considered to be a systematic interpretation of his theory of laughter, its integration into a general theory of humor, and a sustained exploration of its consequences in various domains. We shall ignore his references to other aspects of his system such as his theory of yawning, of accumulators, centers, and so on, except insofar as they are relevant to our proper understanding of humor.
The framed web presentation is very cumbersome, but the analysis is on point and is the likes of which you will never encounter in the ordinary literature....,Gurdjieff’s Theory of Laughter1. Though only a theory of laughter, and not of humor, it distinguishes between the binary-structured organismic variable (O) and its physiological resolution (R). O provides the basis of the most viable theory of humor even while preserving its link with laughter (R).2. R is the discarding of superfluous energy due to O: an unstable structural opposition between two sharply contrasting simultaneous impressions, positive and negative, of a single stimulus (S). It is not the particular contents—cognitive, affective or motor—but the binary structure of the mutual neutralization that determines O.3. R is pleasurable due to relief from tension and not due to amusement (as in humor); O may nevertheless have a painful element.4. Though the convulsion O may be unerringly registered by the subject, the constituents and even structure of O may remain unspecifiable.5. This laughter mechanism releases possibly pre-existing negative emotions through the negative component of O. Thus, culturally it is a ‘luxury reflex,’ simultaneously valorized for the relative freedom from fundamental biological instincts it provides and also devalorized for its necessary dependence on the same. Marks the ambivalent threshold between nature and culture.6. Laughter being infectious, R in another can act independently of S for one’s own laughter (parastha-hâsa). Similarly, another’s laughter induces one to perceive the real S in terms of O.7. The possibility and frequency of O’s occurrence is doubly determined: both by the effectiveness of the stimulus (S) and the subjective state of the individual (also his psychic constitution).8. [61] Gurdjieff’s ‘behaviorizing’ theory of the psychology of the ordinary modern man is perfectly compatible with the traditional ‘psychology’ underlying brahmanical philosophy; just as the reversal of the ‘behavioral circuit,’ the finality of his system, is the counterpart of the ‘autonomy’ (svâtantrya) of the Trika ‘metapsychology.’ It is within this combined theoretical framework that humor-and-laughter, hâsa-and-hâsya, will be investigated in their universality.9. Hâsa classified as a pleasant emotion despite the neutral character of O, because the resulting laughter (R) is pleasant.10. Reduction of Freud’s ‘comic of movement’ to Gurdjieff’s ‘laughter in the moving-instinctive center.’
telegraph | Our animal ancestors, and most of their
descendants, laughed simply because they were enjoying themselves,
according to a new study.
But over millions of years humans have perfected how to use the sound to wound as well. Great apes which roamed the earth 16 million years ago are thought to be the first who developed the ability to laugh.
Modern-day Orangutans, the only species of Asian great ape, laugh when
they are having fun, while African great apes, which include gorillas
and chimpanzees, have learned that the sound can be used to influence
others, but still only use laughter while playing.
However, human have gone much further, using laughter for a range of negative emotions, including to ridicule or sneer.
SA | For instance, how can the sometimes opposite functions of humor, such
as promoting social bonding and excluding others with derision, be
reconciled? And when laughter enhances feelings of social connectedness,
is that effect a fundamental function of the laughter or a mere
by-product of some other primary role (much as eating with people has
undeniable social value even though eating is primarily motivated by the
need for nourishment)?
There is much evidence for a fundamental function. Robert Provine of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, showed in Current Directions in Psychological Science,
for example, that individuals laugh 30 times more in the company of
others than they do alone. In his research, he and his students
surreptitiously observed spontaneous laughter as people went about their
business in settings ranging from the student union to shopping malls.
Forabosco notes that there is also some confusion about the relation
between humor and laughter: “Laughter is a more social phenomenon, and
it occurs for reasons other than humor, including unpleasant ones.
Moreover, humor does not always make us laugh.” He notes the cases where
a person is denigrated or where an observation seems amusing but does
not lead to laughter.
A further lingering area of debate concerns humor’s role in sexual
attraction and thus reproductive success. In one view, knowing how to be
funny is a sign of a healthy brain and of good genes, and consequently
it attracts partners. Researchers have found that men are more likely to
be funny and women are more likely to appreciate a good sense of humor,
which is to say that men compete for attention and women do the
choosing. But views, of course, differ on this point.
Even the validity of seeking a unified theory of humor is debated.
“It is presumptuous to think about cracking the secret of humor with a
unified theory,” Forabosco says. “We understand many aspects of it, and
now the neurosciences are helping to clarify important issues. But as
for its essence, it’s like saying, ‘Let’s define the essence of love.’
We can study it from many different angles; we can measure the effect of
the sight of the beloved on a lover’s heart rate. But that doesn’t
explain love. It’s the same with humor. In fact, I always refer to it by
describing it, never by defining it.”
Still, certain commonalities are now accepted by almost all scholars
who study humor. One, Forabosco notes, is a cognitive element:
perception of incongruity. “That’s necessary but not sufficient,” he
says, “because there are incongruities that aren’t funny.” So we have to
see what other elements are involved. To my mind, for example, the
incongruity needs to be relieved without being totally resolved; it must
remain ambiguous, something strange that is never fully explained.”
Other cognitive and psychological elements can also provide some
punch. These, Forabosco says, include features such as aggression,
sexuality, sadism and cynicism. They don’t have to be there, but the
funniest jokes are those in which they are. Similarly, people tend to
see the most humor in jokes that are “very intelligent and very wicked.”
“What is humor? Maybe in 40 years we’ll know,” Forabosco says. And
perhaps in 40 years we’ll be able to explain why he laughs as he says
it.
TNR | The Buddha recommends practicing greater
mindfulness throughout our waking day. The ultimate insight, however, is
that when we peer within and try to gauge or pin down the elusive ego,
there is nothing there. As Zen master D. T. Suzuki put it, the fruit of
concerted and disciplined meditation is to see the “I” flapping like a
loose door in the wind, coming off its hinges with each breath.
Halo,
by contrast, promises to deliver only narcissism and self-obsession.
The device doesn’t offer real insight into your inner states but reports
on how you seem to other people. As Amazon’s medical officer Maulik
Majmudar explains,
“People are relatively unaware of how they sound to others and the
impact that may have on their personal and professional relationships.”
If you sound irritated, angry, restrained, or overbearing, you can
adjust your tone and delivery to seem otherwise.
Doesn’t this
invite you to second-guess every utterance and interaction and fret over
how you look in the eyes of judging peers? This is the least helpful
kind of self-knowledge since it is wholly insecure, constantly shifting,
eternally uncertain. I can and never will know how others assess
me—this is beyond my control. Trying to grasp this, or influence it with
any consistency or certainty, is a futile chase and a recipe for
madness. It evokes the anxiety that therapists attribute to social media
use.
But if Halo is of little use to me, who is it principally for? Amazon has vowed
that it will not pillage the data collected; Halo spies only for you.
For now. But it establishes an important precedent and inures us to
constant surveillance. Thus, it opens the door for hungry marketers.
Surveillance is at the heart of the digital economy; it’s what makes, or
promises to make, digital services superior. The more we divulge, the
more precisely, efficiently, and effectively these services help us.
They can tell you what you want before you know you want it. On the
promise of personalized service and greater convenience, we invariably
comply.
Why might marketers want to know about your
emotional states? How are they benefited by knowing you are sad for 1.6
seconds at 12:30 p.m.? Marketers can take advantage of you in such
moments and pitch products and services that you are susceptible to. As
media scholar Zeynep Tufekci argues,
it’s but a short step from identifying your vulnerabilities to creating
them. If Amazon determines you are depressed, for example, it may know
exactly what movies you will indulge in, what snack foods you will load
up on—what “retail therapy” soothes you at that moment.
They call me the Back Door Santa
I make my runs about the break of day
They call me the Back Door Santa
I make my runs about the break of day
I make all the little girls happy
While the boys are out to play
I ain't like the old Saint Nick
He don't come but once a year
I ain't like the old Saint Nick
He don't come but once a year
I come runnin' with my presents
Every time they call me dear
I keep some change in my pocket, in case the children are
Home
I give 'em a few pennies so that we can be alone
I leave the back door open so if anybody smells a mouse
And wouldn't old Santa be in trouble if there ain't no
Chimney in the house
They call me the Back Door Santa
I make my runs about the break of day
I make all the little girls happy
While all the boys are out to play
They call me the Back Door Santa
Yeah, that's what they call me
They call me the Back Door Santa
Yeah, that's what they call me
A man who is able to do all
that is demanded of a Christian, both with his mind and his essence, is called a
Christian without quotation marks. A man who, in his mind, wishes to do all that
is demanded of a Christian, but can do so only with his mind and not with his
essence, is called pre-Christian. And a man who can do nothing, even with his
mind, is called a non- Christian.”
G.I.Gurdjieff /Views from the
Real World / Separation of Oneself from oneself
"If instead of religion in general we take
Christianity, then again there exists a
“Christianity number one,
that is to say, paganism in the guise of Christianity. Christianity number two
is an emotional religion, sometimes very pure but without force, sometimes full
of bloodshed and horror leading to the Inquisition, to religious wars. Christianity number
three, instances of which are afforded by various forms of Protestantism, is
based upon dialectic, argument, theories, and so forth. Then there is
Christianity number four, of which men number one, number two, and number three
have no conception whatever. "In actual fact Christianity number one, number
two, and number three is simply external imitation. Only man number four
strives to be a Christian and only man number five can actually be a Christian.
For to be a Christian means to have the being of a Christian, that is, to live
in accordance with Christ's precepts. "Man number one, number two, and number
three cannot live in accordance with Christ's precepts because with them
everything 'happens.' Today it is one thing and tomorrow it is quite another
thing. Today they are ready to give away their last shirt and tomorrow to tear
a man to pieces because he refuses to give up his shirt to them. They are
swayed by every chance event. They are not masters of themselves and therefore
they cannot decide to be Christians and really be Christians.”
G.I.Gurdjieff/
In search for the Miraculous / Chapter 4
"First of all it is
necessary to understand that a Christian is not a man who calls himself a
Christian or whom others call a Christian. A Christian is one who lives in
accordance with Christ's precepts. Such as we are we cannot be Christians. In
order to be Christians we must be able 'to do.' We cannot do; with us everything
'happens.' Christ says: 'Love your enemies,' but how can we love our enemies
when we cannot even love our friends? Sometimes 'it loves' and sometimes 'it
does not love.' Such as we are we cannot even really desire to be Christians
because, again, sometimes 'it desires' and sometimes 'it does not desire.' And
one and the same thing cannot be desired for long, because suddenly, instead of
desiring to be a Christian, a man remembers a very good but very expensive
carpet that he has seen in a shop. And instead of wishing to be a Christian he
begins to think how he can manage to buy this carpet, forgetting all about
Christianity. Or if somebody else does not believe what a wonderful Christian he
is, he will be ready to eat him alive or to roast him on hot coals. In order to
be a good Christian one must be. To be means to be master of oneself. If a man
is not his own master he has nothing and can have nothing. And he cannot be a
Christian. He is simply a machine, an automaton. A machine cannot be a
Christian. Think for yourselves, is it possible for a motorcar or a typewriter
or a gramophone to be Christian? They are simply things which are controlled by
chance. They are not responsible. They are machines. To be a Christian means to
be responsible. Responsibility comes later when a man even partially ceases to
be a machine, and begins in fact, and not only in words, to desire to be a
Christian."
G.I.Gurdjieff/
In search for the Miraculous / Chapter 6
"Generally speaking we know very little about Christianity and the form of Christian worship; we know nothing at all of the history and origin of a number of things. For instance, the church, the temple in which gather the faithful and in which services are carried out according to special rites; where was this taken from? Many people
do not think about this at all. Many people think that the outward form of
worship, the rites, the singing of canticles, and so on, were invented by the
fathers of the church. Others think that this outward form has been taken partly
from pagan religions and partly from the Hebrews. But all of it is untrue. The
question of the origin of the Christian church, that is, of the Christian
temple, is much more interesting than we think. To begin with, the church and
worship in the form which they took in the first centuries of Christianity could
not have been borrowed from paganism because there was nothing like it either in
the Greek or Roman cults or in Judaism. The Jewish synagogue, the Jewish temple,
Greek and Roman temples of various gods, were something quite different from the
Christian church which made its appearance in the first and second centuries.
The Christian church is—a school concerning which people have forgotten that it
is a school. Imagine a school where the teachers give lectures and perform
explanatory demonstrations without knowing that these are lectures and
demonstrations; and where the pupils or simply the people who come to the school
take these lectures and demonstrations for ceremonies, or rites, or
'sacraments,' i.e., magic. This would approximate to the Christian church of our
times.
"The Christian church, the Christian form of worship, was not invented by the fathers of the church. It was all taken in a ready-made form from Egypt, only not from the Egypt that we know but from one which we do not know. This Egypt was in the same place as the other but it existed much earlier. Only small bits of it survived in historical times, and these bits have been preserved in secret and so well that we do not even know where they have been preserved.
"It will seem strange to
many people when I say that this prehistoric Egypt was Christian many thousands
of years before the birth of Christ, that is to say, that its religion was
composed of the same principles and ideas that constitute true Christianity.
Special schools existed in this prehistoric Egypt which were called 'schools of
repetition.' In these schools a public repetition was given on definite days,
and in some schools perhaps even every day, of the entire course in a condensed
form of the sciences that could be learned at these schools. Sometimes this
repetition lasted a week or a month. Thanks to these repetitions people who had
passed through this course did not lose their connection with the school and
retained in their memory all they had learned. Sometimes they came from very far
away simply in order to listen to the repetition and went away feeling their
connection with the school. There were special days of the year when the
repetitions were particularly complete, when they were carried out with
particular solemnity—and these days themselves possessed a symbolical meaning.
"These 'schools of
repetition' were taken as a model for Christian churches—the form of worship in
Christian churches almost entirely represents the course of repetition of the
science dealing with the universe and man. Individual prayers, hymns, responses,
all had their own meaning in this repetition as well as holidays and all
religious symbols, though their meaning has been forgotten long ago." G.I.Gurdjieff/
In search of the Miraculous / Chapter 15
from Gurdjieff's "Views from the Real World," pp. 148-150As long as a man does not separate himself from himself he can achieve nothing, and no one can help him.To govern oneself is a very difficult thing--it is a problem for the future; it requires much power and demands much work. But this first thing, to separate oneself from oneself, does not require much strength, it only needs desire, serious desire, the desire of a grown-up man. If a man cannot do it, it shows that he lacks the desire of a grown-up man. Consequently it proves that there is nothing for him here. What we do here can only be a doing suitable for grown-up men.Our mind, our thinking, has nothing in common with us, with our essence--no connection, no dependence. Our mind lives by itself and our essence lives by itself. When we say "to separate oneself from oneself" it means that the mind should stand apart from the essence. Our weak essence can change at any moment, for it is dependent on many influences: on food, on our surroundings, on time, on the weather, and on a multitude of other causes. But the mind depends on very few influences and so, with a little effort, it can be kept in the desired direction. Every weak man can give the desired direction to his mind. But he has no power over his essence; great power is required to give direction to essence and keep essence to it. (Body and essence are the same devil.)...Speaking of the mind I know that each of you has enough strength, each of you can have the power and capacity to act not as he now acts....I repeat, every grown-up man can achieve this; everyone who has a serious desire can do it. But no one tries....In order to understand better what I mean, I shall give you an example: now, in a calm state, not reacting to anything or anyone, I decide to set myself the task of establishing a good relationship with Mr. B., because I need him for business purposes and can do what I wish only with his help. But I dislike Mr. B. for he is a very disagreeable man. He understands nothing. He is a blockhead. He is vile, anything you like. I am so made that these traits affect me. Even if he merely looks at me, I become irritated. If he talks nonsense, I am beside myself. I am only a man, so I am weak and cannot persuade myself that I need not be annoyed--I shall go on being annoyed.Yet I can control myself, depending on how serious my desire is to gain the end I wish to gain through him. If I keep to this purpose, to this desire, I shall be able to do so. No matter how annoyed I may be, this state of wishing will be in my mind. No matter how furious, how beside myself I am, in a corner of my mind I shall still remember the task I set myself. My mind is unable to restrain me from anything, unable to make me feel this or that toward him, but it is able to remember. I say to myself: "You need him, so don't be cross or rude to him." It could even happen that I would curse him, or hit him, but my mind would continue to pluck at me, reminding me that I should not do so. But the mind is powerless to do anything.This is precisely what anyone who has a serious desire not to identify himself with his essence can do. This is what is meant by "separating the mind from the essence."And what happens when the mind becomes merely a function? If I am annoyed, if I lose my temper, I shall think, or rather "it" will think, in accordance with this annoyance, and I shall see everything in the light of the annoyance. To hell with it!And so I say that with a serious man--a simple, ordinary man without any extraordinary powers, but a grown-up man--whatever he decides, whatever problem he has set himself, that problem will always remain in his head. Even if he cannot achieve it in practice, he will always keep it in his mind. Even if he is influenced by other considerations, his mind will not forget the problem he has set himself. He has a duty to perform and, if he is honest, he will strive to perform it, because he is a grown-up man.No one can help him in this remembering, in this separation of oneself from oneself. A man must do it for himself. Only then, from the moment a man has this separation, can another man help him....The only difference between a child and a grown-up man is in the mind. All the weaknesses are there, beginning with hunger, with sensitivity, with naiveté; there is no difference. The same things are in a child and in a grown-up man: love, hate, everything. Functions are the same, receptivity is the same, equally they react, equally they are given to imaginary fears. In short there is no difference. The only difference is in the mind: we have more material, more logic than a child.
thedebrief |In an exclusive feature for The Debrief,
U.S. military and intelligence officials, as well as Pentagon emails,
offer an unprecedented glimpse behind the scenes of what’s currently
going on with The Pentagon’s investigation into UFOs, or as they term
them, “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena” (UAP).
For the last two years, the
Department of Defense’s newly revamped “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena
Task Force” (or UAPTF) has been busy briefing lawmakers, Intelligence
Community stakeholders, and the highest levels of the U.S. military on
encounters with what they say are mysterious airborne objects that defy
conventional explanations.
Along with classified briefings,
multiple senior U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the matter say
two classified intelligence reports on UAP have been widely distributed
to the U.S. Intelligence Community. Numerous sources from various
government agencies told The Debrief
that these reports include clear photographic evidence of UAP. The
reports also explicitly state that the Task Force is considering the
possibility that these unidentified objects could, as stated by one
source from the U.S. Intelligence Community said, be operated by
“intelligences of unknown origin.”
Significantly, a retired U.S. Air
Force brigadier general and head of RAND corporation’s Space Enterprise
Initiative has—for the first time—gone on record to discuss some of the
most likely explanations for UAP.
His responses were surprising.
Overwhelmingly, everyone The Debrief
spoke with said the most striking feature of the recently released
UAPTF intelligence position report was the inclusion of new and
“extremely clear” photograph of an unidentifiable triangular aircraft.
The photograph, which is said to
have also been taken from inside the cockpit of a military fighter jet,
depicted an apparent aerospace vehicle described as a large equilateral
triangle with rounded or “blunted” edges and large, perfectly spherical
white “lights” in each corner. Officials who had seen it said the image
was captured in 2019 by an F/A-18 fighter pilot.
Two officials that received the
report said the photo was taken after the triangular craft emerged from
the ocean and began to ascend straight upwards at a 90-degree angle. It
was indicated that this event occurred off the eastern coast of the
United States. Several other sources confirmed the photo’s existence;
however, they declined to provide any further specifics of the
incident.
Regarding the overall theme of the
recent report, officials who read it say the report primarily focused
on “Unidentified Submersible Phenomena,” or unidentified “transmedium”
vehicles capable of operating both under water and in the air.
The three officials we spoke with
said the report suggested the UAP Task Force appears to be concerned
that the objects being termed as UAP may be originating from within the
world’s oceans. Strange as this may sound, the idea of “USOs” or
“unidentified submersible objects” is not something exclusive to the
current UAPTF.
We
have several active Freedom of Information Act requests with the
Department of Navy to pursue more information related to the research
that led to these patents. As those are being processed, we've continued
to dig through the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's (USPTO) Public
Patent Application Information Retrieval database to get as much context
for these patents as possible.
In doing so, we came across documents that seem to suggest, at least
by the Navy's own claims, that two highly peculiar Navy patents, the room temperature superconductor (RTSC) and the high-energy electromagnetic field generator (HEEMFG),
may in fact already be in operation in some manner. The inventor of the
Navy's most bizarre patent, the straight-out-of-science
fiction-sounding hybrid aerospace/underwater craft, describes that craft
as leveraging the same room temperature superconductor technology and
high energy electromagnetic fields to enable its unbelievable speed and maneuverability.
If those two technologies are already operable as the Navy claims,
could this mean the hybrid craft may also already operable or close to
operable? Or is this just more evidence that the whole exotic 'UFO'
patent endeavor on the Navy's behalf is some sort of ruse or even gross
mismanagement of resources?
At the heart of these questions is the term “operable.” In most
patent applications, applicants must assert proof of a patent’s or
invention’s “enablement,” or the extent to which a patent is described
in such a way that any person who is familiar with similar technologies
or techniques would be able to understand it, and theoretically
reproduce it.
However, in these patent documents, the inventor
Salvatore Pais, Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division's (NAWCAD)
patent attorney Mark O. Glut, and the U.S. Naval Aviation Enterprise's
Chief Technology Officer Dr. James Sheehy, all assert that these
inventions are not only enabled, but operable. To help me understand what that term may mean in these contexts, I reached out to Peter Mlynek, a patent attorney.
Mlynek
informed me that the terms “operable” or “operability” are not common
in patent applications, but that there is little doubt that the use of
the term is meant to assert to the USPTO that these inventions actually
work:
counterpunch | The notion that the COVID-19 pandemic was ‘the great equalizer’
should be dead and buried by now. If anything, the lethal disease is
another terrible reminder of the deep divisions and inequalities in our
societies. That said, the treatment of the disease should not be a
repeat of the same shameful scenario.
For an entire year, wealthy celebrities and government officials have
been reminding us that “we are in this together”, that “we are on the
same boat”, with the likes of US singer, Madonna, speaking from her
mansion while submerged in a “milky bath sprinkled with rose petals,”
telling us that the pandemic has proved to be the “great equalizer”.
AAA estimates that the average cost of maintaining a vehicle in the United States is $706 per month. https://t.co/WfD7POPMix
“Like I used to say at the end of ‘Human Nature’ every night, we are
all in the same boat,” she said. “And if the ship goes down, we’re all
going down together,” CNN reported at the time.
Such statements, like that of Madonna, and Ellen DeGeneres
as well, have generated much media attention not just because they are
both famous people with a massive social media following but also
because of the obvious hypocrisy in their empty rhetoric. In truth,
however, they were only repeating the standard procedure followed by
governments, celebrities and wealthy ‘influencers’ worldwide.
But are we, really, “all in this together”? With unemployment
rates skyrocketing across the globe, hundreds of millions scraping by
to feed their children, multitudes of nameless and hapless families
chugging along without access to proper healthcare, subsisting on hope
and a prayer so that they may survive the scourges of poverty – let
alone the pandemic – one cannot, with a clear conscience, make such
outrageous claims.
Not only are we not “on the same boat” but, certainly, we have never
been. According to World Bank data, nearly half of the world lives
on less than $5.5 a day. This dismal statistic is part of a remarkable
trajectory of inequality that has afflicted humanity for a long time.
WaPo | The
beachside dance floor was packed. The pulse of electronic music
throbbed. In the middle of the pandemic, in the crowd of maskless
dancers, some tourists commented to each other: "Tulum is back."
“It
felt like covid was over. The borders are open. The world is back to
normal. Let’s just have fun,” said Alexandra Karpova, 31, a public
relations executive who flew from New York to attend the November
festival, called Art With Me, on Mexico’s Riviera Maya on the Caribbean
coast.
But in the days after the festival, dozens of attendees tested positive for the coronavirus. Some brought it back to the United States.
The
incident prompted a question at the heart of Mexico’s economic
recovery: Is the country — with among the highest coronavirus caseloads
in the world — taking too many risks to re-energize its lucrative tourism sector?
Remarkably,
the number of American tourists visiting the state of Quintana Roo,
where Tulum and Cancun are located, has increased by 23 percent compared
with 2019. With Europe closed to most Americans, Mexico has
successfully marketed itself as a desirable alternative. Roughly 100
flights from the United States are now landing in Quintana Roo every
day.
Many
tourists are coming to stay at coastal resorts, where masks are
mandatory in public places. Others are going on scuba diving tours or
taking kite surfing lessons. But Tulum’s global reputation as a party
destination has not changed during the pandemic.
“There
are parties almost every night,” said Maria Prusakova, 30, the founder
of a public relations firm, who traveled to Tulum in July from San
Francisco.
When
the restaurants closed at 11 p.m., she said, the parties started at
private villas. No one wore masks. Prusakova got sick at the same time
as 12 of her friends. They all tested positive — in her case, only after
she returned to San Francisco.
“I’m still so happy I went,” she said. “I was so glad to see people. The food was amazing.”
Prusakova
is returning to Tulum for New Year’s Eve, when the city is typically
packed with parties. This year, authorities say they won’t permit them.
State officials say they are scanning social media to find any mention
of large gatherings. Event organizers are quietly telling tourists that
they will find a way to host parties.
“We
need to find a way to create jobs. Otherwise, the situation will
continue getting worse,” said Marisol Vanegas, the state secretary of
tourism. “But we always prioritize public health.”
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