Existentially Speaking in the New American Dark Age

FASCISM…

It’s an ugly word.  Yet, it appropriately fits the present state of the U.S. government.  I recently learned that 70% of our intelligence budget goes to private corporations.  In Iraq, private corporations received no-bid contracts from the U.S. government for the reconstruction of that country after the American incursion of 2003.  Also, there are over ten thousand private security forces receiving US government dollars for military operations without any US government oversight.  No Iraqi corporation can act upon its own to participate in the reconstruction of their own country.  All corporations and companies must sub-contract to Halliburton.  The decision to put Halliburton in charge of the Iraqi reconstrucdtion was made through Vice President Dick Cheney, its former chief executive, and others in secret, closed-door talks before the war began.  Michael Moore made reference to the corporate control of Iraq and its pre-planned exploitation of a soon-to-be-bombed and warred-upon Iraqi people in his film Fahrenheit 9/11.  Michael Moore may present the facts with humor and sarcasm, but he does present the facts.  You may check his documentation and resources for the film at www.michaelmoore.com.  When the minutes of this meeting were sought by congressional members, the White House and Cheney’s office refused to supply them.  Worse, a newly corporate-favoring and politically conservative US Supreme Court supported Cheney, a key employee of the American people, in holding back vital information about how US taxpayer dollars were spent in these secret meetings.

Fascism is the detestable marriage of corporation and federal government.  All three branches of our government are controlled by corporate interests.  Corporate lobbyists and lawyers not only push for legislation affecting their industries.  They write the legislation.  Corporate monies heavily line the campaign coffers of just about every congressional, senatorial and executive member of our government.  It is a sad fact that it is always the candidate with the most money in their campaign coffers that win federal elections.  Our communications media are controlled by a handful of global corporations whose interest and priorities are far removed from the working class people in the United States,  and also far removed from providing any relevant news concerning the health, welfare, education and enlightenment of US citizens.  Our highest courts have been stacked with pro-corporate judges and justices to ensure that corporations wield absolute control over private citizens in the United States.  This is the most powerful fascist alliance in world governmental history.  Yet, the word “fascism” is seldom used, because the popular media are part of the fascist regime and, thus, cannot stand outside of themselves with any objectivity to report the truth.

For more information about the fascist US government, please link to the following:

http://www.oldamericancentury.org/14pts.htm

An Election is Coming, But Will Change Come With It?

The 2008 election is coming.  A number of “debates” have already taken place among the plethora of candidates for each of the two parties, but no one who cannot buy their way into the White House is allowed much of a voice.  Dennis Kucinich has been a consistent voice for democracy, peace, universal health care and a mutual respect among all peoples regardless of race, creed, color, faith, gender or sexual preference.  John Edwards has been a similar voice of compassion, reason and a desire for peace, as well as a strong pro-labor voice.  But, a substantive address of important human issues is not what the campaign for the presidency is about.  The Electoral College doesn’t allow a multiplicity of political parties to exist, representing the diversity of three hundred million Americans.  Instead, we have a meager and ineffective two-party system that distills issues into either/or propositions, and disenfranchises voters who do not have a bundle of money or property at stake, only survival against a receding economy and a healthcare system that is non-inclusive to the working poor. 

Let’s face facts.  An American presidential election is about who can coalesce a massive campaign chest of corporate donations, and in this respect, Hillary Rhodam Clinton is the frontrunner.  We actually have only a one-party system.  It is the corporate lobbyist party, and whomever rises to represent corporatism the best will win the election.  The candidate with the most money has won the presidency every American presidential election since Kennedy.  Therefore, the interests of banks, insurance companies, weapons-makers, pharmaeceutical manufacturers, energy producers and corporate media are put ahead of issues of public health, labor, the environment, reason, compassion and common sense. 

The short answer is this.  The status quo that supports the major corporate campaign contributors will remain intact.  Imperative issues, such as “global warming”, ending the Iraq war, creating a universal healthcare system, ending torture as an American policy, repealing the damage to Constitutional rights resulting from the US Patriot Act,and restoring our dessimated international reputation with reasonable diplomacy among the world’s nations will take a back seat to the needs of corporate giants, their welfare and protection.  Changes will be few, progressive campaigns to the contrary, because the terrrible precedents of unreasonable, and illegal, presidential power have already been allowed to pass into policy, without a challenge by Democrats, without a call for impeachment, without the legal checks and balances.

An Election is coming, but don’t look for any change reflecting reason, compassion and a desire for peace.  The American Dark Age will continue.  The singular hope on which the fate of this nation rests is that Hillary Rhodam Clinton can rise above the means that will get her elected, creating a revolutionary presidency for humanistic and rational progress,  and use the new ”unitary exective” precedents set by Bush that are now so acceptible to Congress and the Senate to establish a benign dictatorship that reflect the needs of the American people.  If she can do so, my hope is that she can effectively lead and communicate her directions in a manner that is much more direct and decisive than her husband’s presidency.  Don’t get me wrong, I think that Bill Clinton has a rare gift for communication and speech-making, but he didn’t have the confidence in his own policies and his gift for communicating to courageously defend his agenda.  Thus, the Bill Clinton presidency was marked by watered-down promises, over-compromising on ideals that he could have persuaded the nation to put into action.  My hope is that Hillary will have the courage of her convictions, and use the revolutionary ocassion of being the first woman president in U.S. history to create a much-needed renaissance to the American Dark Age.

It’s a long, long shot of hope, with odds very much against it.  But, it is a hope.

Amen.

MH   

Tedium ad Nauseum…And Yet, Patience is Learned

For me, there is no greater Zen Master for patience, understanding and tolerance…

…than a computer.  I know.  I know.   It isn’t human.  How can I possibly learn from a computer?  Feel for a computer?  Relate to a machine?

  Well, for one thing, it allows me to be less anthropocentric.  I can demonstrate compassion and patience, even for a non-living, inorganic machine that is only doing what it is programmed to do, with little in the way of conscious thought, save for a bit of fuzzy logic that allows some of its programs to extrapolate and learn.  There may be ideosyncratic differences twixt the languages I understand and some of my computer’s programming languages, but if I make the attempt to understand and learn what it is trying to say, I can get to know what this machine expects from me.  Most of all, the computer is an imperfect thing that is programmed to to interrupt my processes, correct my processes, and consume my time with often necessary tasks and inquiries, but with a rude and impassionate sense of timing.  This morning, for instance, was a diversion into my credit card acccount, where a merchant had double-charged me for a restaurant bill.  This consumed a half hour of extra time without resolution of the problem which is still pending.  I had hoped to spend the morning writing a longer blog post, and not about these issues.  I was also diverted into maintenance issues in my email client program, as well as tweaking my scanner/copier/printer for clearer automatic text scans.  All of these things consumed most of my two-hour vested time for computing and Internet.  I am not angry, nor disappointed, nor frustrated, for all of the diversions were necessary for various reasons and will make my computing, account management,  and online time easier for future sessions.

I have a great appreciation for the artistic minds that can focus upon a specific task, be it writing, painting or sculpting, and not be diverted by other things.  A writer with a computer must either be putting many computing processes on hold to focus on word processing, or he or she owns a MAC, which thus negates the extraneous computing updates and tweaks that seem to plague most of us Windows system users.  I write with a PC, and use the extraneous and nagging update/tweaking/bug-fixing processes as a focal point from which to write, to learn, and to report on my lessons.

I am out of time, at this point however, and I haven’t begun to express my thoughts.

Lesson learned today?  Put off until tomorrow even those things which you could have done today.

Amen.

MH Pathfinder

Crossing Platforms in Midstream…Again!

The fickled finger of fate has poked me in the eye again, and thus another Zen Master beckons to me to learn.

I was completely set on converting my HP Special Edition L2005US Lance Armstrong Livestrong laptop computer into a complete Ubuntu system. A major obstacle had been eliminated. My Broadcom wireless network card was now flashed with compatibility via Ubuntu’s hardware manager and my Canon PIXMA MP150 printer became compatible. Until today, the laptop was a dual-boot system with Ubuntu as the default and Windows Vista, which is necessary for my Quicken home and business files and professional programs not yet made for use in a Linux operating system.

For the past week, since my last post, I’ve experienced some very slow Ubuntu wireless network connection, at times not even able to connect to a single web address. Rebooting into Windows Vista resulted in the reliable and fast cable Internet connection I’ve consistently experienced in this system. A second nagging problem is apparently still not resolved in Ubuntu. That is reliable use of the Synaptics touchpad with a laptop keyboard. When typing text, the cursor jumps to another line and space…while in mid-typing. In contacting fellow users on Ubuntu forums, it is apparent that the bug still exists. None of the suggested fixes has worked.

Today, after several failed attempts to create fixes to the above two problems, I…once again…decided to remove Ubuntu from my hard drive, and restore my second partion to a second NTFS logical drive. What I did discover, along the way, is that the previous method of restoring a Windows Master Boot Record does not apply in Windows Vista. When one installs Ubuntu as the second operating system alongside a Windows Vista system, Ubuntu creates a boot-up menu called GRUB. By default, Ubuntu will start in 30 seconds, unless I click on Windows Vista from the menu.

If one decides to remove Ubuntu from the hard drives, you must first repair the Master Boot Record to allow Windows Vista to boot at startup. In order to repair the MBR (Master Boot Record), Windows is booted from the operating system DVD, then click on REPAIR YOUR COMPUTER, then click on Command Prompt. At the command prompt, type bootrec.exe /FixMbr/ It should say operation complete, or something like that. Then type “exit” and restart the computer. Windows Vista will now boot up, without any boot menu or Ubuntu as an option. After Windows Vista has booted up, click on the Start button, right-click on COMPUTER, and choose manage. From the manage console choose drive management. You will see your Windows partition, and two non-descript partions. These two partitions are the Ubuntu root and swap partitions. Right-click on each of them, and choose Delete Volume. The two blank partitions will become one. At that point, you can right-click on the blank partition and choose Format. After the partition is formatted, you will have deleted any hint of Ubuntu or whatever else was on the partition. Your system is now fully restored to a single-boot Windows Vista system.

There is no escaping the fact that Windows Vista is very superior operating system. In Internet and network functions, software compatibility, ability to use Microsoft Office’s FrontPage web editor, by far and away the easiest creative instrument for web page editing and publishing, even for those with no HTML knowledge or experience.  It’s a WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) editor AND the FrontPage extensions allow one to make a change on one page that will ripple through relevant links to that change,  appropriately and quickly,  throughout the entire website.

Each venture away from Windows toward Ubuntu and other Linux distributions makes me appreciative that there are cooperative projects bringing operating systems and software to the developing world.  These operating systems are improving quickly.  Yet, each venture away from Windows brings me back to it, realizing how dependent we are, and how much many of us want, a universal operating system that works and performs efficiently, and does the things that we want to do with our computers.  Windows is still it.  Vista is a greatly improved product that is much more user friendly than previous versions, and with many built-in management tools to ensure that it operates smoothly with the least amount of technical problems and interruptions.

Windows Vista Home Basic on my HP Special Edition L2005US Lance Armstrong Livestrong notebook.  I added memory to bring it up to 2 gigs RAM, installed a fast 7200 rpm 80 gig hard drive and replaced the DVD burner with a Samsung DVDRW/CDRW burner.   Ubuntu will reappear from time to time, but for now, it is a single boot Windows system.  My desktop is dual boot with Ubuntu as the default operating system.

The best of both worlds, commercial and cooperative.

Amen.

MH

Crossing Platforms in Midstream

I know that most of you out there are content with Bill Gates child, Windows, reaching a new stage every few months and a new version of itself every few years. We are creatures of habit, after all, and when we become accustomed to an operating system with its nuances and complexities, we are not too quick to change the software underpinnings of our work and home computers. It’s enough to contend with the vast amount of learning processes on one operating system and its features, without challenging our minds and anxiety levels with yet another. We would, after all,like to get some actual work done.
A small percentage have opted for the user-friendly MAC computer and its OS operating system, based on the UNIX platform. It’s reportedly easy to access, and to learn, without having to go behind the scenes of the operating system. Still, one has to learn to navigate the folder and file structure, to know where the programs and system utilities are, and still to contend with updates, albeit not as frequently as Windows users. Even Windows updates are usually automatic, loading up in the background of our broadband network connections.

A growing number of users, especially in Europe and Asia, have discovered a different operating system, LINUX. LINUX is not new, its based on the UNIX code upon which the MAC OS operating system is built, and is, in fact, the original code for operating systems everywhere. In fact, there are literally thousands of distributions built upon the LINUX platform, which is built upon the UNIX language. These distributions are products of cooperative projects of developers and programmers. The UNIX code, and LINUX operating system which is built upon it, is “OPEN SOURCE” which means it is available to everyone to use, to alter, to improve, and to share with others. The result is a wide variety of LINUX distributions, each with its own amenities and distinguishing characteristics, and packages of software. Most LINUX distributions are packaged with many open source programs, such as OPEN OFFICE, MOZILLA FIREFOX browser and THUNDERBIRD email client, as well as many multimedia, Internet and other office programs and utilities.

There are hundreds of free and commercial repositories of available open source and commercial programs to add to one’s LINUX system. There are a number of open source and free software advocates who are working to prevent an encroachment of commercial interests who would attempt to control, and charge fees, for use of their software, and thus threaten the free and open source software availability to the public. Thus, members of the open source software movement encourage users to use open source software only. This would be a great suggestion if the many multimedia Internet broadcasts, even from alternative news and information sources, were producing their material in open source software formats. Most of them are not, but mp3 and wmv files can be played in many open source media players. Realplayer streaming formats, however, require a Realplayer program to hear or see them. We users will, as we do with corporations and our government, simply have to keep close watch and collectively work to protect and maintain the free and open source software enviroment.

One of the most popular of LINUX-based distributions is the UBUNTU operating system package, which I am running on my laptop, as a dual-boot system which allows me to boot from either UBUNTU or Windows Vista. I have been runnng UBUNTU on my desktop computer in my home office for the past two years. UBUNTU has been improving by leaps and bounds with each new revision. The current version is UBUNTU 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon. The greatest improvement to UBUNTU, as far as I’m concerned, is the Restricted Drivers manager which includes a Broadcom wireless network card firmware update. For the past four years I have wanted a LINUX distribution on my laptop, but could only use one with an external network card. Finally, my HP Special Edition L2005US Lance Armstrong Livestrong notebook computer is fully compatible with UBUNTU Linux. I just installed it yesterday after reading about the Broadcom network card incompatibility issue being solved. Delightful.

What is it about LINUX operating systems that I love the most? They are free to the public, they work well in older computers with little storage space and without a need for an abundance of RAM memory, and they are developed through cooperative and creative efforts. If a working family can afford an inexpensive laptop computer with a wireless network card, then they have a tool to bring them into the Information Age without going into debt to do it. A used laptop with a 1-gigahertz CPU and 512 megs of RAM memory might cost between two- to three-hundred dollars UBUNTU is free and packaged with an office suite, Internet tools, multimedia, DVD and CD burning tools, and games. A multifunction printer that prints, scans and copies can be purchased for fifty dollars, with cartridges that can be replaced for as little as three dollars each (Epson CX3810, on sale).

To find UBUNTU, just click to http://www.ubuntu.com. For other LINUX distributions (hundreds) go to http://www.distrowatch.com.

And do this, even if you are a happy Windows user. If you have an old working computer, or know someone that does, download UBUNTU for free and burn it onto a CD, then install it into the older system. Check out the features, play with it. If you decide you don’t want it, give it to some family that needs it, and help them get on line. You will have explored a new operating system and helped a family get into the Information Age, and thus to move deeper within the human sphere through learning and communication without it costing a lot of money.

Amen.

MH Pathfinder

The Preponderance of Maintenance Time in Computer-based Work

Updates…

Unending, perpetual updates, each and every time I turn on my laptop computer. And, when I turn on my laptop computer, it takes at least two, often three minutes, for it to fully boot up to a ready state for use–memory tests, loading up software from the hard drive into the usable region of RAM. Between the boot time and the updates, whatever fresh thoughts I had intended to record in my word processor have been grown cloudy, fogged by the complexities of popup windows asking me if I want to install one of many software and antivirus database updates.

I remember the days of times gone by when I could generate a meaningful thought, then scribble it down in a few paragraphs on a piece of paper…with a wonderful communication device. It’s called a pencil. Even a typewriter would be ready to receive my finger taps, no waiting necessary, and I could allow my immediate thoughts and ideas to flow through my fingers onto a blank piece of paper.

Don’t get me wrong. I love the marvel of computers, now much more than calculators or word processors, they have become invaluable communication tools to access the seemingly unlimited amount of information and resources on practically any subject from nearly any region of the world. I can write and research my facts and figures at the same time. It has become a fluid process. Yet, I am ever aggravated at the amount of maintenance time I seem to have to spend on my various software appliances. Yesterday, I spent half a day repairing my www.truthwalker.org website, as well as repairing and reinstalling my Microsoft FrontPage 2003 web editing program. Again, I am only half-complaining, because MS FrontPage is an amazing web editing tool that cuts corners and monitors every single minute change one makes in a page. If you want to make a change in the background or formatting themes of all of the pages of a web site, it takes only one step and then it ripples the change throughout all of the web pages in an instant. Then, the changes can be published to the remote server in seconds. I’ve used other web editing programs. There are others that can manipulate graphics and benefit knowledgeable HTML users. I don’t want to spend a lot of time behind the scenes of my web content, I just want to produce and edit it, so I wanted the best of WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) web editors, and I’ve always returned to Microsoft FrontPage for this reason.

Finally after a day of web site repair and program reinstalls, not to mention a week to transfer my www.michaelhovey.com website to a new domain registrar and server, I am ready to get back into the groove of productive work. I just purchased an inexpensive external portable drive to back up my data, so I won’t have to retrieve my web site too often in the future.

Computer maintenance = tedium ad nauseum

Amen

MH

The Pathfinder

If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him

It’s a quote from ninth-century Zen Master, Lin Chi, a warning to rely only upon the self and not to trust external forces as “authority figures” who wish to dictate one’s life or even simply to imply a certain way that one must be, and Lin Chi would warn not even to rely upon his words I just cited, but to reflect upon one’s own self as one’s guide. Alexander Pope wrote, “Know then thyself. Presume not god to scan. The proper study of mankind is Man.” The only guru one can trust to control one’s life is the guru within, the self. Let no external force have absolute power over ME, even this author who is recommending such advice, or even me who is quoting him. This is in extreme contradiction to the religious paths that so many follow, surrendering their lives to the interpretations of holy books, rendered holy by scribes, priests and self-proclaimed religious leaders throughout history. Or, surrendering to supposed gods, figments of shared imaginations that catapult an ideal vision of human behavior up into the fanciful skies and netherlands of heavenly aspirations, unfounded and unproven by one’s own experience or tests of reason and logic.

This is not to imply anarchy or chaos as preferable means of governing human affairs. I suspect, and believe, that if we were to search within our selves, sans the sea of preconceived notions of multimedial messages that have been teeming into our minds since infancy, we would find a very humanistic self that would seek to create a social network of mutual reliance, because it would benefit the self, as well as other selves, toward a peaceful and mutual means of human cohabitation and prosperity. Not to appear as a naive fool here, I understand that a mutually human social consciousness has to be practiced and honed, learned and tested in a child’s life to have meaning. This seems quite paradoxical to the theme of this essay which seeks to diminish the influence of external authorities and gurus, teachers and sages, and to put forward the value of the self as the primary teacher and guide to one’s life directions. Yet, the choice to adopt an external force as a teacher, if even for a temporary time, can be a choice of one’s self, the result of a reflective process through which the mirror of one’s mind yields an image that one sees as needing an external influence.

And, what is a self? Does one’s self end at the perimeter of one’s skin? Or, is the human self even those ideas and things shared with others, outside of one’s body and mind? I have conversations with dead people, many of whom are my favorite authors whose books I have read long after they have expired, and whose words I allow to bounce among the other ideas in my mind, and I will argue points for and against, be awestruck by novel ideas and synergistic alliances between an author’s ideas and my own present experience. These people are dead, yet their human selves have been transmitted into written texts that communicate with us centuries, millennia after the physical person has expired and rotted away. This metaphysical process takes place through the written word, through film, through music, through architecture and visual arts, through dance, and long beyond the life of a person who created any one of them.

Who is the Buddha? Can he even be identified specifically outside the realm of the self, as we each walk down our paths of life, to killl him? If we kill the Buddha, do we kill part of our self? And…of course…what is a self? Is even a hermit, alone in a cave, a solitary self, if he or she is using the products of other minds on which to sleep, with which to prepare food, and with which to sustain other aspects of their “solitary” lives? At the other extreme, are the social constructs of authoritarianism that discourage individual thought and freedom to choose.

The constructs of American legal and governmental systems mimick the authoritarian constructs of institutional religion. Government chambers are oft designed to loft the executives into higher chairs than their organizational subordinates. Court rooms loft judges into higher chairs as if their authority was the supreme over all in the room. The pulpits and lecterns of many a Catholic and Protestant church are raised to lift the priests and ministers to higher positions than their congregations, as if they are supreme mediums between congregations and gods.

These physical constructs of religious and governmental authority combine to create an illusion of executive and priestly authority over the citizens of a nation-state, and thus relax an individual citizen’s sense of personal responsibility and power over his or her own life and directions. Citizens become pliable human clay to be manipulated and molded into uses that suit the executives of governments, religions and corporations without the central concern of a person’s being and well-being, or their ecological context of existence.

This is a supreme folly, but I am no authority either. I merely ask the reader to consider these thoughts, reflect upon them, and wonder how they fit with your own balance or imbalance of external and internal messaging and personal power. I would hope that a very deep reflection on these issues and ideas would be made on the days and hours before one casts a vote for a particular political candidate and/or votes to adopt or reject a specific bill, initiative or resolution.

So Be It.

Amen.

The Pathfinder

Notes on “I Am a Strange Loop,” by Douglas Hofstadter, and Loops Into Other Things

Douglas Hofstadter has been writing books on the strangeness and loopiness of self-referential thinking for about thirty years. His books include the following:

Godel, Escher and Bach: The Eternal Golden Braid

The Mind’s I

Metamagical Themas

I Am A Strange Loop

His latest book is an attempt to simplify the complexities of self-referential thinking. He would argue that each of his books have been attempts to do so, but he would also admit that they ended up being longer essays with more complex explanations and extrapolations of the complexities of self-referential thought than he intended. GEB (Godel, Escher and Bach) is one of my favorite reference books, and a book just to recapture my wonder and curiosity for the universe when reading the media news of of the New American Dark Age and George Bush’s continual march of determined ignorance gets too depressing. So, he offers “I Am A Strange Loop.” I enjoy all of his books. Hofstadter’s “I” is a playful child full of curiosity which never seems to age into complacency about the wonders of loopiness, and the seeming paradoxical nature of human consciousness, or the consciousnesses of other beings as well. When do the thought mechanisms of a machine or living thing reach a point of self-referential thought? Hofstadter lets us know that this is not a phenomenon that is easy to pin down, nor an issue that is concretely black and white, nor absolute.  If we paid attention, we might be amazed at the array of lifeforms in which this strange loopiness arises, and the degree of complexity in creatures that we might not usually consider closely related to us in “intelligence.”

Let me offer this paraphrased review, an appreciative rephrasing and personalization of some of the many fun, exciting and mesmerizing points of Hoftstadter’s book, mingled with an extrapolation or two (or three, or four…) of my own. Thanks Mr. Hofstadter for a metamagical thematic playtime in my mind, for my “I” to ponder and enjoy.

One can obviously understand the consciousness and self-referential thinking and feelings of beings, such as dogs, elephants, dolphins, chimpanzees and humans. What about a mosquito? How about a robot-activated self-driving car? Does the robot-activated self-driving car have a consciousness of “self”? If a human’s self-referential “I-ness” is a soul, does the mosquito have a soul, albeit with much less self-referential abilities, thus a “smaller” soul? Is my dog’s soul smaller because she doesn’t perceive the complexities of symbols and metaphors that I recognize? I certainly lack the olfactory linguistics of Truffle, my dog, so there are complexities of meanings and metaphors that my nose cannot decipher, therefore the nose of my soul is is not as gifted as the nose of the soul of my dog. Is a soul’s nose any less important to a mind’s “I”?

Well, you can see that the questions can be quite fun, puzzling and go into many different directions. What is more, beyond the self-referential loopiness of living, thinking beings, there is a loopiness to the universe itself. An atom is a seemingly stable element of matter, but it is in reality a temporal state of energy, a tension between two opposing forces–the strong and weak force of the atom. It may be that no matter exists at all, and that even stranger things occur within subatomic particles, such as a quark occupying two spaces at the same time or light behaving as both a wave and a particle. And, the mathematical explanations for the behaviors of some subatomic particles require at least eleven dimensions. We live in three dimensions, understand the curving nature of space/time through the fourth, but how much do we know about the other seven dimensions? Or, are there even more? These ideas are not clear and belong to the realm of quantum physics and theoretical designs which are often difficult to clearly demonstrate to satisfy our sensate thinking.

So, the “I” of me is not a tangible thing to be pinned down, and when one peers into the brain to see the electrochemical processes and neural firings of axions and synapses the “I” is not to be seen careening through them. A system often takes on a personality that is greater than the sum of its parts, or at least a result of the parts working as a whole. A human body is composed of various organs and entities, enzymes, bacteria and a host of other living things. Some people, befuddled by the directions and behaviors that come from their own thoughts, say things like, “I don’t know what my brain was thinking,” as if their brain was somehow detached and operating independently from the rest of the body and context in which that body exists. How large is the “I” of the mind? What is the mind? Is it only the cerebral cortex that tails down into bundles of nerves that branch out to the limbs and digits of toes and fingers? Does the mind stop at the spine, the nerve endings? Does the mind incorporate the lungs, heart, kidneys, liver, gall bladder, appendix and other organs, the derma and blood? Or is the “I” of the mind these things, as well, or none of them? Is the “I” a metaphysical soul? It may be something beyond what we can physically see or sense, but the mind’s “I” is nonetheless a result of the physiological processes of a human body that reaches that self-referential loopiness to stand outside of itself and look back and say, “Hey! That’s me!”

Well, after reading these few paragraphs, you may be able to understand how Douglas Hofstadter’s attempts to convey the nature of self-referential thinking could easily expand into hundreds of pages. Fortunately, Hofstader draws upon some very playful and creative analogies and self-referential sentence structuring that tweaks the curiosity and child within each of our “I”s. And I’m not talking about your left “I” or your right “I”, but the “I”behind your eyes. In THE MIND’S I he utilizes phrases from Lewis Carroll, author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, full of paradoxical metaphores and strange loopiness.

Douglas Hofstadter also is a contributing writer to Scientific American.

Amen.

MH

The Pathfinder

An American President…of Reason, Compassion and Peace: Jimmy Carter

This existentialist in a New American Dark Age recalls a time when America was weary of war, of aggression, of global cold wars and other paranoias, and longed for peace–a peaceful planet, a clean planet–and we had an American president that was leading us down the path toward these ends, Jimmy Carter.  He was then, and is now, a man of deep spiritual and humanitarian convictions, and he was radically changing American policies toward peace and cleaning up the environment.  He provided incentives for developing solar and other renewable forms of power, and was pressuring the automobile industry to develop and manufacture more fuel-efficient cars.   He worked toward a lasting peace among nations in the  Middle East.  As a former president, his services as diplomat and statesman have been elicited by successive presidents, and governments of other nations, as well.  His ongoing Habitat for Humanity projects have provided low-cost housing for many, many poor families.

His presidency occured just after the fall of Richard M. Nixon in the wake of the Watergate scandal.  It was a time when confidence in government and authority figures was shattered, and he developed a national reparte with Americans that was unpretentious and informal.  He tried to melt away the authoritarian facades of presidential power and truly sought to provide what was best for Americans.  One of my favorite presidential speeches was made by Mr. Carter after he fired most of his cabinet, secluded himself at Camp David and called in the social leaders–teachers, professors, priests and ministers, civil rights figures, and economic leaders, to determine a new direction for America.  The speech was entitled, “A Crisis of Confidence” and for the first time in my memory, a president stood and spoke not to spew hollow and empty promises, but to invite the people of our American democracy to take responsibility themselves to restore confidence in government by actively being involved in the democratic processes, and to truly be a government of the people, by the people and for the people.   You can hear the speech online at AMERICAN RHETORIC:TOP 100 SPEECHES at http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/jimmycartercrisisofconfidence.htm

 Alas, many Americans want a demi-god, someone to lead them by the hand, rather than a true statesman and a dedicated administrator of the will of the people.  People didn’t want to exercise their will.  They didn’t want to take responsibility for the rising inflation, the rising cost of oil, and to do for themselves.  So, the American people didn’t elect Jimmy Carter to a second term for his forthrightness and honesty.  Instead, they elected a not-so-successful grade B movie actor named Ronald Reagan, who had charm, a great smile, and promised tax breaks and wealth trickling down to everyone, even the poorest among us,, like magic.  Reagan’s empty presidential promises were just that, and he took the federal budget surplus under Carter and left the Americans with the deepest federal budget deficit in U.S. history, along with a much larger pool of impovershed people.  However, illusions of wealth, provided by an explosion in the credit card and loan industries, convinced people who were deep in credit debt, that life was better, because they were consuming so much more…albeit on borrowed money.  Such is the short-sidedness of American thinking, and why the long-range intelligence and planning of a Jimmy Carter could be so easily foresaken for the immediate “feel-good” (translation: short term enjoyment for long-term payments) economics of a Ronald Reagan.

Jimmy Carter has been much more successful in meeting his personal humanitarian goals as an ex-president, without being amid the forest of political trappings and influences.  Mr. Carter’s statemanship, his dedication to peace and to true democratic participation of all people in the quest for happiness and realizing one’s dreams has kept him and his wife, Rosalyn, busy into his mid-eighties.  His participation in international diplomacy earned him a Nobel Peace prize, and he continues to work dilligently to help the poor and oppressed in the world.

Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman conducted an in-depth personal interview with President Jimmy Carter last Monday.  Here is a link to a conversation with my favorite of modern American presidents:

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/10/1518224

Listen, Learn, Enjoy

Amen

Reason, Compassion, Peace

MH

Five-Minute Essay No.1

Coolness returns to the southern California coastline after a long heat wave.  Sanity is restored.

Luciano Pavarotti’s voice has left its body, a spirit that will remain with us through the wonders of recorded music and video.  His charasmatic and energetic performances epitomized the glory and romance of Italian opera, bellowing through the beautiful resonance of Pavarotti’s tenor voice to the ears of his listeners and settling deeply into their souls.

Bravo Luciano.  You are with us always.