Author Archives: Lila

Group Mind and the Stopping of Thoughts…

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“John McMurtry writes that the first rule of the “Group-Mind” is that it cannot adopt itself as an object of critical reflection:

“When the most self-evident line of thought has been blinkered out across a people, only an a priori thought system can account for it. As with other great problems of our era, the group-mind disconnects by stopping thought before it arises.”

Christian ascesis is the practice of giving attention to thoughts as they first appear, thus it is a practice wholly at odds with a priorism and with all forms of mechanical, psychic or associative activity which masquerades as “thought.” According to Father Sylvan, a hundred, a thousand times a day, thoughts that challenge or contradict assumptions and beliefs, thoughts that might provoke self-questioning or discomfort about some fact or emotion or received wisdom, thoughts that might force one to confront one’s own laziness, anger, lack of love, lack of integrity — such thoughts are continually circling the perimeter of the mind and sometimes even penetrate its arena. And yet they come to nothing, they are quickly repelled, conveniently forgotten, dispersed, and covered over by compulsive action, rationalization, explanation, or emotional reaction. Father Sylvan calls this incessant activity of covering over the Question the “First Dispersal of the Soul.” It means that the force of attention is wasted, degraded by absorption into one part or another of the psycho-physical organism, and rendered useless for the growth of the soul. Man becomes trapped in an “automatism of non-redemptive experience,” which he likens to St. Paul‘s “body of death.”

The struggle of Christian ascesis is to contain the energy of the Question within oneself so that the Soul can come into being. Thus, the existence of the Soul is not a given, not an a priori assumption. It is an energy formed through the confrontation with question and contradiction, an energy that has to be sought, recognized, collected and accumulated – “pondered in the heart.” This is why “God can only speak to the soul,” according to Father Sylvan, “and only when the soul exists.”

From the Catacombs

Comment:

This is a fascinating post. The teaching of Philokalia is not different from that of Raja Yoga texts, or, for that matter, from the writings of Jiddu Krishnamurthi, if you put aside the doctrinal content and focus on the psychological observation.  Thoughts that arise in the mind involuntarily seem to correspond to the samskaras of Hinduism and Buddhism, those predispositions and unconscious impulses which attract us to the situations in which karma (fate, moira) plays out.

What has all this to do with politics and the markets?

Much….

i) Being “embodied minds,” the nature of our thinking alters what we perceive – both in the past and in the present. That alteration in perception allows us to strategize action, anticipate problems, and to form coalitions, none of which we would be able to do if we remained obsessed with rigid mental constructs.

ii) Self-awareness of our own internal contradictions permits us to be more generous in our assessments of our antagonists and cures us of the rancid self-righteousness and inflamed dogmatism with which we approach every issue….That, in turn,  gives our opponents space to rethink their own self-righteousness…..and draws thoughful people out of neutrality…

Digital Reading Encourages Risk-Taking

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“While the testimonials of digital literacy enthusiasts are replete with abstract paeans to the possibilities presented by screen reading, the experience of those who do it for a living paints a very different picture. Just as Griswold and her colleagues suggested the impending rise of a “reading class,” British neuroscientist Susan Greenfield argues that the time we spend in front of the computer and television is creating a two-class society: people of the screen and people of the book. The former, according to new neurological research, are exposing themselves to excessive amounts of dopamine, the natural chemical neurotransmitter produced by the brain. This in turn can lead to the suppression of activity in the prefrontal cortex, which controls functions such as measuring risk and considering the consequences of one’s actions.Writing in The New Republic in 2005, Johns Hopkins University historian David A. Bell described the often arduous process of reading a scholarly book in digital rather than print format: “I scroll back and forth, search for keywords, and interrupt myself even more often than usual to refill my coffee cup, check my e-mail, check the news, rearrange files in my desk drawer. Eventually I get through the book, and am glad to have done so. But a week later I find it remarkably hard to remember what I have read.”

As he tried to train himself to screen-read—and mastering such reading does require new skills—Bell made an important observation, one often overlooked in the debate over digital texts: the computer screen was not intended to replace the book. Screen reading allows you to read in a “strategic, targeted manner,” searching for particular pieces of information, he notes. And although this style of reading is admittedly empowering, Bell cautions, “You are the master, not some dead author. And that is precisely where the greatest dangers lie, because when reading, you should not be the master”; you should be the student. “Surrendering to the organizing logic of a book is, after all, the way one learns,” he observes.

How strategic and targeted are we when we read on the screen? In a commissioned report published by the British Library in January 2008 (the cover of which features a rather alarming picture of a young boy with a maniacal expression staring at a screen image of Darth Vader), researchers found that everyone, teachers and students alike, “exhibits a bouncing/flicking behavior, which sees them searching horizontally rather than vertically….Users are promiscuous, diverse, and volatile.” As for the kind of reading the study participants were doing online, it was qualitatively different from traditional literacy. “It is clear that users are not reading online in the traditional sense, indeed there are signs that new forms of ?reading’ are emerging as users ?power browse’ horizontally through titles, contents pages, and abstracts going for quick wins.” As the report’s authors concluded, with a baffling ingenuousness, “It almost seems that they go online to avoid reading in the traditional sense.”

More by “People of the Screen'” The New Atlantis.

Comment:

Aha! Here’s the real reason for the financial crash! Glued to their computer trading screens, all those “quants” and geeks who bundled up risk into little packages and shot them across the globe in a viral campaign addled their pre-frontal lobes. More seriously, computer interaction does encourage a kind of virtual reality of quick response, immediate gratification, high-wire devilry and flaring tempers.

Examples:

The Internet porn industry has higher levels of addiction than off-line porn.

Video games are used by the Department of Defense to desensitize potential recruits. Popular games like Grand Theft Auto, for instance, allow players to mimic and experience criminal activity.

Online addiction is even categorized by some people as a separate category of compulsive behavior. Whether that’s excessive or not, it’s true that what’s on our screen affects us in a quite different way than what’s on a printed page. And that’s why one of the best ways to counter government control of the web is to practice a little self-restraint in posting on it.

Libertarian Living: Depression Era Cooking With Clara

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Household thrift is back in fashion. The latest rage is nonagenarian Clara, with her recipes for tasty recipes from the Depression. A  Youtube of her cooking pasta with peas and potatoes is quite the rage on the net.

I found it mildly amusing, because that’s just how I’ve been cooking in non-Depression America.  Sometimes, it was because I wasn’t making enough money. Sometimes (for instance, when I was in graduate school),  there just wasn’t enough time to do anything more. Sometimes, I’ve had the time but lacked the inclination to do more.  But a lot of the time, it’s because I like simple hearty food. I like being able to experiment and cook different ways. I like making do with whatever’s around….or on sale….or in season.

That makes for some unhappy endings, once in a while. But you also end up with delicious surprises. And the best taste is the feeling of being self-reliant. Maybe that’s due for a come-back too.

To give you an idea, for about 4 years of my life (all told), I lived on a food budget that never went above $45/month and mostly hovered around $25-30. That included a couple of meals outside, vitamin supplements, and even some “luxuries,” like tea and chocolate.

No tricks. Indian cooking is relatively cheap, although labor intensive. You can use fairly inexpensive vegetables and the rest is mostly rice, lentils (dals), and spices. If you buy those at an Indian store, they won’t cost you very much.

Mind you, this isn’t the Indian cooking you get in upscale restaurants, which is usually Mughalai (Moghal -style).  Mughalai is typical of the wealthy and is also often Westernized to suit palates in America.  It’s delicious, but all those butter sauces are incredibly fattening, and so are the stuffed parathas.  And the rich spices and additions can add up to good money.

My own cooking tended to pick up on the lighter, simpler South Indian recipes, like rasam  (a delicious, very thin tomato, onion, pepper and tamarind soup that’s very healthy for you), sambhar (a soup of dhal), and vegetable poriyal.

To that, add a few simple stir-fries, salads, vegetable soups and spreads, some hummus and pita, a few tins of tuna, mackerel or salmon, and of course, rice, and you have a repertoire that shouldn’t take you more than 20 minutes, will save you megabucks, and shed a few pounds for you too.

You can say a lot about the downside of recessions (and even depressions), but they can be  excellent for your body.

Fellow Counterpuncher (do I qualify any longer?), poet, and chronicler of torture programs  Douglas Valentine also shares my culinary predilections. He writes:

“That’s funny. I like cook shows. I do a lot of cooking too. Yesterday I made my special pea and lentil soup with carrots, celery and garlic, bay leaves and sometimes spices. Um, good, and good for you…”

Slumdog Slams Slumdwellers

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“It is no secret that Slumdog is meant to reflect life in Dharavi, the vast sprawl of slums at the heart of Mumbai.  The film depicts Dharavi as a feral wasteland, with little evidence of order, community or compassion.  Other than the children, the no-one is even remotely well-intentioned.  Hustlers and petty warlords run amok, and even Jamal’s schoolteacher is inexplicably callous.  This is a place of sheer evil and decay. 

But nothing is further from the truth.  Dharavi teems with dynamism, and is a hub of small-scale industries, whose estimated annual turnover is between US$50 to $100 million.  Nor is Dharavi bereft of governing structures and productive social relations.  Residents have built strong collaborative networks, often across potentially volatile lines of caste and religion.  Many cooperative societies work together with NGOs to provide residents with essential services such as basic healthcare, schooling and waste disposal, often compensating for the formal government’s woeful inadequacy in meeting their needs.  Although these under-resourced organizations have touched only the tip of the proverbial iceberg, their efforts must be acknowledged, along with the fact that slum-dwellers, despite their grinding poverty, have lives of value and dignity, and a resourcefulness that stretches far beyond the haphazard, individualistic survival-of-the-fittest sort shown in Slumdog. 

In the end, Slumdog presents a profoundly dehumanizing view of the poor, with all its troubling political implications.  Since there are no internal resources, and none capable of constructive voice or action, all “solutions” must arrive externally.”

Mitu  Sengupta at Counterpunch

Comment:

This is a short but really perceptive piece that reflects the way I felt about the film, as well as about other works on India’s urban poor, like the book,  City of Joy.  In addition, City of Joy – which is about Calcultta –  seems to imply that it takes a foreigner to get something going among the poor in India.

Despite the strong appeal of both works, and they do have a good deal of charm, they’re ultimately a little patronizing.  Slumdog also makes the fundamental mistake of showing poverty as almost inseparable from crime, when simple observation will tell you otherwise.

You’d think, with all the revelations about Wall Street, people would have figured that out.

Propaganda Nation: Iraq War Coverage Still Skewed

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“Claims that the mainstream media distorts the violence in Iraq are certainly correct, but not in the way that conservative pundits claim.  The American press has systemically ignored, marginalized, or buried deep within their pages casualty reports indicating that hundreds of thousands, perhaps over one million Iraqis died during the occupation.   What little reporting has been done on casualties focuses more on American lives.  An analysis of the 2003-2005 period finds that the New York Times covered American casualties three times more than Iraqi civilian casualties.  When violence against Iraqis has been reported, it typically portrays the victims of violence as the result of the actions of insurgents and militias, rather than also as the result of American bombing.   This practice, contrary to conservative punditry claims, allows for the U.S. to be framed in a positive light, as a force fighting against civil war and sectarian violence, rather than one that is destabilizing Iraq through its own bombings (which are estimated to have killed tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands).  Furthermore, when the media does report casualties in Iraq (in this case American ones), its reporting is heavily dependent upon the lead of the government itself.  According to one study, 75 percent of the stories filed on American casualties in the New York Times from 2003 to 2005 were based exclusively on press releases from the Department of Defense.  Statistically, the study showed that, as the DOD increased its press releases on casualties (during months when larger numbers of Americans were killed), the New York Times responded to increased DOD releases by increasing its own reporting on American deaths.  During times when the DOD put out fewer releases, the New York Times responded accordingly by reducing its coverage.   Coverage of violence, then, is heavily influenced by the government’s own actions and agenda….”

Anthony Di Maggio in  Counterpunch

John Bolton Jokes About Nuking Chicago

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Here’s John Bolton joking about a possible nuclear hit on Chicago at Think Progress.

Talk about irresponsible and dangerous blather by a man as responsible as any one for the Bush administration isolating itself  in the world and increasing international tensions. First, the ‘Obama terrorist’ cover from his pals, then the  ‘shoot the chimp that wrote the stimulus bill’ joke, now ‘nuke Obama’s town’.

On the other side, Obama and Holder keep up the focus on race in another way.

We don’t need more race talk….and we don’t need any racial slurs or incitement either.

We need someone who can add up the figures and explain how this stimulus bill and the rest of the proposals coming out of the administration do  anything but increase the power of the government and the kleptocrats.

Marc Faber Recommends Buying a Farm

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“Faber said gold was currently expensive relative to other commodities, and the bearish sentiment that’s driven investors from equities to the precious metal is likely to reverse soon. He had recommended investors buy gold since the start of an eight-year rally that this month saw the metal top $1,000 per ounce as skittish investors sought safe-haven assets.

‘Substantial’ Stock Rally

“I’m a little bit careful about the outlook for gold for the rest of the year,” he said. “A countertrend rally could occur soon where stocks would suddenly rise quite substantially.”

Faber today recommended investors short U.S. Treasuries, as a 27-year bull market likely ended in December, starting the beginning of a long bear market. Faber also recommends selling the Japanese yen, though the nation’s stocks may outperform global equities in the next one or two years because they have been depressed for so long, he said.

The yield on the 10-year U.S. government bond fell to a record low of 2.04 percent on Dec. 18, compared with a peak of 15.8 percent in September 1981. The yen has gained against every other currency in the world, except one, in the last 12 months even as the economy contracted at the fastest pace in 35 years. The Nikkei 225 Stock Average fell to the lowest in 26 years this week.

Head for the Farm

The best bet for investors may be to buy a farm and escape from the cities, as a prolonged recession could lead to war, as the Great Depression did, said the Swiss national, who now lives in Thailand.

“Buy a farm and let your girlfriend work on the farm,” he said, to the applause of investors. “If the global economy doesn’t recover, usually people go to war.”

Comment:

Faber lives in Thailand and is supposedly married to a Thai. So I daresay his recommendation to buy farm land in Asia (that’s where he usually recommends it) works fine for him. But as someone who lived there for two decades, I’d say a foreigner buying in any country in Asia, except Malaysia (where the language is English and the laws are British) should be on guard.  Title law is not clear in most of them and disputes are common. In India, where British legal institutions prevail, the courts are often exploited by scammers who bribe lawyers and policemen to overlook forged documents. Title insurance isn’t usually available either. Caveat emptor.

Obama Tanks the Dow

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More here

Comment:

Going further,  the Deal Journal gives the President some tips on how to make nice to the market and stop being Obummer.

The budget numbers are out, and they aren’t pretty, projecting a $1.75 million deficit for the year and including a provision to auction off permits to exceed carbon emission caps (frankly, this sounds like the sale of indulgences by popes during the Middle Ages – only now, we’re all so much more enlightened...).  This might tank the Dow even more,…

Especially if it also takes a look at  GM’s horrible numbers (a $9.6 bn Q4 loss and a decline in its cash position from the previous quarter of $2.2 bn ($16.2 bn to $14 bn).  And let’s see what London’s FTSE will do now that Royal Bank of Scotland has announced the biggest annual corporate loss in UK history ($34.2bn/24.1 bn BP)

The Financial-Academic-Media Complex

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“Harvard Watch, in case you don’t know, is [was] a group of academics who were formed ostensibly to be the conscience of the ultra secretive Harvard Corporation, whose 7 members have included the likes of Lawrence Summers, Robert Rubin and Dyn Corp.’s Mr. Pug Winokur.
“>The Harvard Corporation administers the ‘not for profit’ [now] 28 billion dollar Harvard Endowment Fund.  The largest such pool of capital this side of the Roman Catholic Church. This fund has been intimately linked to such financial fiascos as Bush/Harken Energy and Enron/California energy debacle.”

“When the Harvard Watch did their own investigations back in 2003 / 2004, here are a few snippets of what they found.  In addition to giving guidance, such as choosing outside money managers, to Harvard’s 21 billion [at the time] dollar Endowment fund, Pug Winokur was the Chairman of Enron’s audit committee.

At the same time one of the Endowment Fund’s biggest outside money managers was Highfields Capital.  This is a hedge fund run by John Jacobson – a former member of the seven-man Harvard Corp.  He left the Corp. in 1996 with 500 million of Harvard money to start his own financial advisory/absolute return fund.

According to Harvard University 1999 tax returns Highfields topped the pay list of advisories at 30 million in management fees for the year. In fact Highfields did so well making money for Harvard, the Harvard Magazine was crowing about the job they did and they were reportedly awarded additional billions of Harvard money to manage.

Now, I’ll bet none of you will ever guess how Highfields made their astonishing returns for Harvard in 1999? This long/short fund only had 3 equity shorts (put options). Enron just happened to be the biggest – and the Enron short was 47 times the size of the next biggest short.

Of course, no guilt was ever found implicating Mr. Winokur or Highfields – because the SEC was on the job!!  Highfields’ 5000 foot grand salami of a homerun simply got chalked up to “pure brilliance”.

Now, for those of you who are not aware; Enron funded research centers at Harvard. This allegedly objective research – incubated at Harvard – was instrumental in legitimizing energy deregulation in California and defending energy industry monoliths against assertions of price manipulation. Nothing stinky here, eh?

Well, apparently something didn’t exactly smell quite right; because it was soon after these facts came to light that Mr. Winokur had sufficiently spread an aroma of his doings about Harvard that his presence was no longer required and he resigned his post to make room for none other than Mr. Robert Rubin. Here’s a snippet of the statement the Harvard Watch published at the time regarding the changing of the guard.

“Winokur’s departure from the Corporation, however, represents only a first step in cutting Harvard’s ties to Enron. There remain multiple Harvard research initiatives funded by and effectively functioning for Enron and its executives. Notable examples include the Harvard Electric Policy Group, the Belfer Center, and the Winokur Public Policy Fund. Moreover, the Harvard Corporation’s remaining members include several Enron insiders. D. Ronald Daniel, for instance, was Jeffrey Skilling’s boss at McKinsey during the 1980s, when Skilling consulted with Enron to design the energy giant’s unsustainable business model. Because of the work of Daniel and Skilling, McKinsey is now a defendant in the largest suit against Enron. Moreover, it is remarkably telling that just as the university prepares to bid farewell to one of the Enron club, it has already announced the entry of another one. Robert Rubin, the Corporation’s latest addition, is a director of Citigroup, Enron’s largest creditor. Rubin attempted to obtain a Federal bailout for Enron as it approached collapse-while its top executives cashed in on Enron’s falling stock and drained the pension funds of thousands of their employees”:
Admittedly, the Enron / Gibson’s Paradox Harvard guffaws occurred before Niall Ferguson’s tenure at Harvard [began in 2004]; but with him being such a sharp economic historian – he probably knew all this stuff anyway….”

—  Ronald Kirby

Obama Declares Day of Reckoning…

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“Bluntly declaring that the “day of reckoning has arrived” after years of financial irresponsibility, President Barack Obama told Americans on Tuesday night that “we will rebuild, we will recover and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before.”

Comment:

Hmm……some of that reckoning talk sounds suspiciously like the language that Nina Totenberg as well as some NY Times writers were using a while back….shortly after NPR cited “Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets”…..shortly after we sent them the book……..

(Coauthor of said opus is the principle writer and creator of the Daily Reckoning....a newsletter very familiar to Beltway and non Beltway critics of empire as well as libertarians of all stripes, left and right….)

Meanwhile, here’s another headline that caught my eye for a different reason:

“Can Obama Save the Planet?” asks Robert Roy Britt at MSN.

Quite a mandate.  Not only is the president going to “fix the economy” (as though the economy were some wretched stray in need of neutering), heal racial tensions, win the “war on terror,” – now he’s going to save the planet too. Last time I looked a certain rabbi had that job…

Erk.  How do journalists come up with this stuff?