This is an idea I sound in my new book, “The Change I Believe In.” The book is about the journey I and millions of Americans took, from the exhilaration engendered by Obama’s election and the first months of his presidency, through the disappointments and frustrations that have followed. It is, above all, about recognizing how transformational change comes about in a system rigged against it.These people really need to get religion or something, because this is the worst journey imaginable. Well, look, the change I believe in comes from cultivating mindfulness, equanimity, and compassion. The whole lib shebang, the whole Obama schtick, the wholesale misappropriation of Gandhi's exhortation to be the change you want to see in the world--oy, outside of a philosophy of rigorous Hindu asceticism it is exactly the platitude it's become. And that is really the problem with these well-meaning progressives, I mean, the problem other than the problem of their eagerness to return a child-murdering capitalist stooge to the Throne of St. Lincoln for four more years . . . the problem is an entirely outward-looking vision of transformation; a management-guru spiritualism: five principles, six steps, and seven processes for a better tomorrow, today! It takes the pilgrimage, which is a ritual physical metaphor for a movement of the spirit and flips it and reverses it; it imagines that a lot of banal shuffling about in the phenomenal world is gonna get everyone's Kundalini nice 'n uncoiled. And so you end up at mere tautology: transformational change. Yeah, okay, we are going to transform the change in the system that is rigged against transformation in order to immanentize the system to transform itself to change us? Uh, how about we cultivons nos jardins and all that. Do you consider "navel-gazing" an insult? Maybe you oughtn't.
-Serena van der Woodsen
49 comments:
Ooh IOZ- that was so Phillip Wylie "Generation of Vipers" that it made my leg tingle ... just like Chris Matthews' did in 2008. I love it when you play that scary music, Gene.
On a more serious note, this is where it helps to conside Kazantzakis' location of the Apollonian/Dionysian synthesis in the skill and courage of the ancient Cretan bull-dancers.
In other words, just tell these transformationalist quick-change artists that the price of failure is a horn or two in your gullet and you'll see how quickly they drop by the wayside ...
And of course, it goes without saying that the spiritual roots of the current crop of transformationalist quick-change artists lie in the claim of the 60's counter-culturalists that chemicals can replace years of disciplined mental and spiritual exercise ...
EL - wait, are you saying pot doesn't lead to enlightenment?
Too bad Miss E has stopped making music. Health problems? Burned out? I don't know, but wish she'd come back.
It’s the whole liberal trope in a nutshell. Evil forces (republicans etc.) have kept Jesus Obama from delivering us from evil. Obama is like Hamburger Helper for ground up Afghan, Iraqi, and Libyan babies that the Obama faithful eat for breakfast every morning. What they overlook is that Obama is doing exactly what he wants to do. The fucker murdered children in the very first week of his historic presidency but the faithful disregard such things as it doesn’t fit in with their belief of what Obama is. Obama has bragged about his murdering with a sneer on his face but the faithful shrug it off while concocting fairy tales regarding what The One is.
to lucid -
at today's prices, it will certainly enlighten your wallet ...
eer, who are you buying from? pot is like the only thing i regularly buy whose price has stayed the same in the last decade. i think you're getting ripped off.
nony@1156:
a pseudonymous moneyorder and equally pseuodonynous post office box address are in the mail.
Please send what you deem appropriate.
When I said "today's prices", I meant as compared to say 1969. I haven't run the numbers, but I suspect that the increase has outpaced inflation ... but maybe I'm dead-wrong about this and will be happy to stand erected ...
Bhante Gunaratana asserts:
We are just beginning to realize that we have overdeveloped the material aspect of existence at the expense of the deeper emotional and spiritual aspect, and we are paying the price for that error. It is one thing to talk about degeneration of moral and spiritual fiber in America today, and another thing to do something about it.
The place to start is within ourselves. Look carefully inside, truly and objectively, and each of us will see moments when "I am the punk" and "I am the crazy". We will learn to see those moments, see them clearly, cleanly and without condemnation, and we will be on our way up and out of being so.
You can't make radical changes in the pattern of your life until you begin to see yourself exactly as you are now. As soon as you do that, changes flow naturally. You don't have to force or struggle or obey rules dictated to you by some authority. You just change. It is automatic. But arriving at the initial insight is quite a task. You've got to see who you are and how you are, without illusion, judgement or resistance of any kind. You've got to see your own place in society and your function as a social being. You've got to see your duties and obligations to your fellow human beings, and above all, your responsibility to yourself as an individual living with other individuals. And you've got to see all of that clearly and as a unit, a single gestalt of interrelationship. It sounds complex, but it often occurs in a single instant. Mental culture through meditation is without rival in helping you achieve this sort of understanding and serene happiness.
http://www.vipassana.com/meditation/mindfulness_in_plain_english_3.php
el,
well, im sure it's gone up quite a bit since 69. not as much as automobiles, im sure.
tv documentaries tell me that it's more potent now (cars are too, lol) but you can never trust anything on tv.
As a slogan, how does "cultivate your own garden" differ from that proggy platitude, "Act local, think global"?
Mental leapfrog from Chaucer to chossy really rounds out this one.
Hey Anon 1149: I know! Blahblah Nicki Minaj, yadda Kreayshawn blah. Mostly missing Missy.
i'm not sure you should be so far apart.
do we or do we not agree, roughly, that government is a gussied-up protection racket?
Yes, but for sheer flatulence, "we are the ones we have been waiting for" surely merits at least a bronze medal.
To LA Confidential Pantload:
How about a homeopathic version:
"If you're not part of the solution, don't worry ... you're helping somehow ..."
Fripp recently wrote:
If we are not free to say no, we are not free to say yes. Any authentic change, ie transformative and transforming change, comes from the inside; and moves outwards to direct and shape our behavior. If behavior is compulsory, if we are compelled by an external force or authority, there may well be “good” repercussions, but not transformations: it’s just more-of-the-same.
in my flesh life talking to flesh people, i tire of trying to explain that O is not , by any stretch a great orator -- not even a passable one. he owes his cadence mostly to self-help seminars, and the content of his speech is blindingly vacant. "but he said the most beautiful things"...
Please find the correct position of the 'h' in Gandhi. And very much missin' Missy. That is all.
Of all the nonsense corporate/bureaucratic/development jargon out there, no word is more nonsensical than "transformational." Whenever anyone uses it, I know I can safely dismiss that person as either a high-functioning imbecile or a public intellectual.
I like starscream
free, and completely legit
http://www.mindfulvalley.org/files/books/mindfulness_plain_english.pdf
everything is free ... if we steal it
Who knew a journey to the ballot box was hallucinogenic
Free your abs and your mind will follow
Too good to be believed. :D
no word is more nonsensical than "transformational."
Eh, I think it's a thirteen-way tie.
EL - a quarter bag today is the dime of yesteryear, but you can't buy a clunker for under $10,000 anymore and organic milk in a glass container costs $6.99/half gallon at the whole foods...
Btw, any suggestions on killing time at O'hare? I've got a 3 hour layover.
I don't know about mindfulness, but may I humbly suggest that equinimity and compassion are not really your bag.
puppylander, you anticipated this one as to protection rackets: http://higharka.blogspot.com/2011/12/professional-protection-rackets.html
Thanks for the price perspective, Luc.
O'Hare? I slept on the floor there one winter night somewhere around 1984 because the weather was so bad that no planes big enough to get me back to NYC could land - they were all being diverted due to lack of sufficient de-icing equipment, or something like that.
I'm afraid you'll just have to consider it time served against whatever stint in Purgatory you get.
Bravo!
h.a.,
yes, it's fairly easy to draw the comparison between gov't and protection rackets.
for me, i was thinking more about protection rackets as the natural offshoot of anarchy. (and it doesn't matter whether we're talking about force/violence because it's possible to protect in other respects as well--hence, there's a sense in which every communal org, from mutual defense pacts to professional associations to tribes, families, clans to friendships and partnerships can also be construed as protection rackets--but i digress...)
so my criticism lately (maybe it's semantic) has been that pushing for anarchy is sorta not really pushing for anarchy.
that is, i posit first, it's all anarchy to begin with. second, it all remains anarchy (even now). third, it will continue to be anarchy. forever. summarizing, anarchy is the state (of being). as i said in another post, we're already at the end of anarchy's rainbow. (particularly fond of my own characterization when i think about rainbows, or rather, raincircles, when you're watering your lawn and the sun is behind you, light hitting the water just right. i.e., what "end"?)
social organization doesn't substitute away/replace anarchy, rather it overlays anarchy. anarchy is the game board. protection/preservation (social organization) is an immutable condition/rule (on the order of law of physics). we're pieces on the board. all that varies is the form/shape of protection/preservation which we adopt. but even there, the forms (protection rackets) don't vary much when you think about it. every form can be gamed. indeed, every form will be gamed.
ioz' insight, as i read it, has been that liberalism, as conceived today, presses for an impossible re-formation. (not that re-formation is impossible, rather that re-formation by way of the current form to an ungameable/perfectly just world is impossible.) with that much, i can agree. but where he has his slight-ish or more admiration for ron paul, tp & ows, as agents for re-formation, i find it puzzling-- because (i'm suggesting) even that kind of radical re-formation can and will be gamed. anarchy without social organization is unstable, like a universe of atoms from the bottom row of the periodic table. (so, "unstable", not in the "undesireable" sense of the word. rather, "unstable", in the laws of physics sense.)
that is, whether we push the program with full consent (conservatism?), push the program with minor correction (liberalism?), slow it down (by driving slowly in the fast lane), or destroy the current program (complete and utter revolution), the meta-rules still apply, and we'll return to where we are. there are no "game-changers".
Bayroobay!
I'm sad no one has discussed the fact that this post suggests IOZ has enough familiarity with Gossip Girl to make a Serena van der Woodsen joke.
WazzamattaU, circadianW?
The Soup and Fashion Police are my personal favorites ...
"Gotta have it"
or
"Make it go away"
todd and blair 4eva!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNJFq6VjHJI
Totally off topic, but a regular commentor that used to be around here but haven't seen in a while has a blog that talks a lot about advertising campaigns and commercial imagery and that sort of thing, but I can't remember the commentor's name nor the name of the blog... I think there was a picture of a a panopticon on the blog header.... anyone have any idea what I'm talkin about?
i don't know who that "panopticon" guy was - but i don't know who you are either - and similarly in reverse, categorical imperative-wise
seasoned greetings
@7:28
http://www.consumertrap.com/
this?
@Leon Trollski
Yes! that's the one.
Thanks
Hello,
Thank you so much for posting the video. Anyway, I watched it and I think its good. However, the sad part is Miss Elloit already stopped making good music. Well, that is something a big lost to the music industry.
Aren't Jews supposed to blog on Christmas?
Noty Notie
It is ' Saturnalia' for the history of religions knowledgeable, pagans- bashing Jew.
Capt'n Obvious
yeah, no shit. ioz, stop fingering the trust fund billions & post already!
Just walkin' the talk, 11:50.
@Anon 11:50--so glad this one's theory finds outside support!
Paris, please let this one have a date!
Nixon and Rebozo.
He had a trickier dick than we thought ...
As if this heiress asshole believes any of this shit.
'Well-meaning progressives'? Please.
Every election a new marketing gimmick. Last time, it wasn't the empty suit that counted, but the movement he had inspired. This time around, that isn't enough. We have change ourselves so that our empty suit can change himself. But first, let's elect the empty suit.
KVH is a huckster. Selling war and theft and running interference against genuine dissidence. Same as ever.
You underestimate how truly fake these people are.
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